LGR4GM

I guess we shall see

You don't agree that Zach Benson passing to Dylan Cozens, Jack Quinn, and Peyton Krebs for large chunks of the year impacted his assists? Ok. What's more likely, Benson shoots below average forever, or he had bad shooting luck mixed with not enough skill that can be corrected? Yup.

Let's look at the production of the 4th forward from the 2024 playoff teams in the regular season. I am using forward because teams often switch centers and wings around for chemistry so lets just look at forwards. The criteria is play forward, are the 4th guy on that team in points. Dallas: Hintz, 28g, 67pts Vegas: Stone, 16g, 53pts Vancouver: Garland, 20g, 47pts Nashville: Novak, 18g, 45pts Winnipeg: Perfetti, 19g, 38pts Edmonton: RNH, 18g, 67pts LA: Moore, 31g, 57pts Florida: Verhaeghe 34g, 72pts (interestingly the next forward is at 41pts) Tampa: Haegel 26g, 75pts (and then you drop to 46pts) Boston: Zacha 21g, 59pts Toronto: Tavares, 29g, 65pts New York: Zibanejad, 26g, 72pts Washington: Mantha, 20g, 35pts Carolina: Necas, 24g, 53pts Long Island: Palmieri, 30g, 54pts Without even going with the 6th best forward in terms of points (which could be a teams 2nd line LW) we get an average of 53.7points for the 2023-2024 season. This means that your statement of "I'll say this, if they deploy him on the first line and gets regular PP minutes, he could get close to 60pts.... which would be acceptable on a non-playoff team like Buffalo. That said, you want to be taken seriously as a playoff contender? Do. Better." isnonsense not backed up by anything when I used the best "2nd" line point producers from each team to run this. The 4th best point producing forward on all 16 of the playoffs teams in 2023/2024 averaged below 60pts and only 6 teams managed to have a 4th forward top 60pts. The only logical conclusion is that a top 6 forward who gets 60pts is really good, certainly in the mix to be called a top line forward, and heavily valuable to EVERY playoff team. If Zach Benson puts up 60pts (I doubt he will but idk, crazier things have happened) the Sabres would be sitting pretty. Of course if Buffalo does not get its goals against down, it won't really matter. If we go to the 5th best forward on each team that 53.7 drops considerably. Thought I should note that. Even if I do it for just the two florida teams that see a massive drop at 5th forward, that brings us down to 49.9pts. Do better is great advice, I encourage you to take it.

Zach Benson 5v5 minutes per linemate, he had about 908 total minutes of 5v5 ice time. Jiri Kulich: 286mins (31.5%) Peyton Krebs: 282mins (31.1%) Dylan Cozens: 238mins (26.2%) Tage Thompson: 238mins (26.2%) Jack Quinn: 217mins (23.9%) Ryan McLeod: 149mins (16.4%) Alex Tuch: 103mins (11.3%) Sam Lafferty: 65mins (7.2%) JJ Peterka: 63mins (6.9%) Jason Zucker: 55mins (6.1%) Now the first thing that will happen is someone will be like, "SEE! He played all those minutes with Tage and Kulich and couldn't do anything!" Zach Benson played 152mins with Kulich and Thompson (BOTH). Benson played 908mins of 5v5 roughly, so that means that Zach Benson played on a line with both of the players that he played SOOO much time with, 16.7% of the season (at 5v5). To put this in perspective, JJ Peterka spent 459mins with Tage Thompson last year or about 42.7% of all his 5v5 time. Ryan McLeod spent 223mins with Tuch, or 21.7% of this 5v5 toi. Other line combos with more than 70mins TOI: Benson - Krebs - Quinn: 92mins or 10% Benson - Cozens - Quinn: 70mins or 7.7% Zach Benson spent massive chunks of his time with Krebs (10g), Cozens (11g), Thompson (44g), and Kulich (15g) with some healthy doses of Jack Quinn (19g) in there. You wanna know why Zach Benson didn't have better assist numbers? Because Lindy Ruff, a guy who needs to retire, spent large chunks of the season wasting Zach Benson with guys who can't ***** shoot and moving him alllllllll over the lineup. Finally near the end he put Benson with guys who could shoot. Let's see if lines stay a bit more stable so ppl can develop some chemistry. Truly it amazes me that after spending all that time with Quinn or Cozens, Benson managed to still post good underlying metrics. It is truly a miracle if you think about it.

Y'all are aware that the Sabres scored more goals than both Florida and Edmonton last year correct? Right?

You've literally been disproven, multiple times. Do better.

God, even with Ruff being awful, the team being GMd by Kevyn, and the general malaise of the team, I hope Benson drops 70pts so I can come back to this thread and be like "cool, sure".

What nonsense. You're using projections, which fine okay, and then you picked wingers based on your own feels. Meier at those numbers for example, would be not only highest scoring winger on NJ but the 2nd highest scorer period. That's not a "2nd line winger" Just a total garbage analysis here. Be better. It's what's the average pt production for the 4th winger on a playoff team, not this nonsense.

I did this once but tomorrow, I'll pull the numbers for toi. Again if Zach Benson were 6'3" none of you would say anything. If he were a rookie this year, you'd be excited. It's because he's 5'10" and played last yr at 19. Show you're work then. Give us the last 3 years.

No he didn't. He got a healthy dose of ***** including Cozens. Half his time is with guys with the yips.

Just so everyone knows... He went down by .1 g/60 and .1a/60 He also went to .8 from .6 in primary A/60 so sure, you're right. He went down a whopping 0.1

You know how yall whine about the lack of players going to the hard places on the ice? That's where Benson passes to. Not here on Sabrespace apparently

Dylan Cozens was awful. Jack Quinn didn't score on a goalie until December. You're proving my point and I've looked at the toi at even for those guys. So no, I don't mean Tage and Jiri.

Sabrespace: we need more guys tough to play against, who play the game the right way, are gritty, go to the tough areas. Also Sabrespace: well no not like Benson cuz he's short or something and only had 28pts as a 19yr old playing with a center who couldn't hit water if he fell off the titanic. The truth: if Zach Benson was 6' tall and this was his rookie year, expectations would be sky high. The crowd that ***** most about playing the right way totally discounts Benson for doing that. The guy is elite defensively, already, today. Zach Benson is going to be an elite nhl playmaker sooner rather than later. The big jump in production is coming. Will it be this year? Maybe not but he's still a top 6 forward without it.

Yikes. Might be the worst take in the thread. Benson will be about a 16g, 30a player this season and provide his excellent 2way play throughout. Soon to be? Benson won't be 21 until May.

I don't see how Benson will have only 18 assists this year. He'll have more because he won't be stuck with shooting impaired players.

Did the Senate pass this bill? Did the president sign it into law?

Ottinger, Wolf, Gustavsson, Woll, Dostal, were all 26 or younger this past year and were better than UPL. Hell, Soderblom in Chicago has a better sv% than UPL and that team is bad. He's 52 in sv% while being 16th in TOI, every single goalie with higher TOI has better numbers and only 1 has a sub .900 sv%. You gotta get to the 25th goalie in TOI to find someone with a worst sv%. UPL has a lot to prove this year and I do not believe that his awful 2024 season was solely a result of the defensive effort his team gave. Dude was a sieve for large stretches.

Trump being involved or not, you don't pardon a monster like Ghislaine Maxwell. You also don't quietly remove her to a minimum security white collar prison. She's an evil person, truly heinous in what she has done. Special treatment reeks of one thing only, cover up. Conservative friend tried the stunt I expect here, "What if Bill Clinton or Biden were involved in the Epstein files! What then!" Well, you put them in prison and let them rot for the rest of their natural lives because the crime is so disgusting there is no redemption. This isn't a Republican v Democrat issue. It is a common decency and morality issue and sadly it won't play out that way. There's plenty of evidence that the political elite in the US are not beholden to the rule of law.

A lot of stats are contextual so they don't translate directly. That said, if a guy on Buffalo is bad and you swap him for a guy from a different team that's got better stats, hoping the new guy is better makes sense. For example Doan was basically Utahs Benson (high in xgf% and hdcf%) so there's a better chance he's going to be decent defensively in Buffalo than if we got Utah middle of the road guy in the stats. Will he be? Idk. Idk if Benson will breakout. Idk if Thompson will score 40g or Dahlin 60pts. Stats predict but don't guarantee a future outcome. Oh and I'm not comparing Doan to Peterka here. I'm comparing Doan more so to Lafferty.

You vote for a party and then that party gets that percentage of seats. It is how the electoral college should already work. It is insane that if you get 1 more vote than the other guy you get an entire states EC.

I don't agree. +/- only tells us that players even strength goal differential. I think within a team it can tell you some things but I don't think he tells us how successful a player was. If I take Zach Benson and deploy him with Bryson and Samuelsson and he gets UPL being a sieve every night, his +/- is going to be ***** regardless of what he does. In the end, I think ppl will use the stats they like and I can't really argue with that. I use xgf% because it helps be contextualize both offense and defense.

Zach Benson is the best defensive player on the team. But you're right, he imported that himself. It's why I want Wilford gone and why they need to understand drafting better.

Let's say Cozens is a 10% shooter, he's that because he doesn't get to the spots he needs to and takes the shot types he needs to. Now Tage is a 15% guy. So they get to point X on the ice and take a wrist shot. You're arguing that Tage will score more there because the league average is 11% and Tage shoots higher, yes. But you're looking at 4 goals on 100 shots. We also know the areas players score more from. Xgf% would not be the same because of Tage scores more from a spot than so does others, so the average goes up. If Tage prevents shots from those spots it prevents xga. Cozens would have to shoot from the same places meaning he's skilled enough to get there and defend the same shots. It's just not happening. Versus actual goals for. If I put Tage on a team with a real goalie his actual goals against goes down even if his xga stays the same. He's still giving up what xga says. It's also why on ice sv% is important. Idk, I think we just fundamentally disagree about what xgf shows and why it's better statistically than actual goals for and against. Doesn't mean they both can't tell us things.

No xgf wouldn't be the same. You wanna know why? Good shooters get to the good shooting spots. And xgf% is also looking at the defensive side of things. You're suggesting actual goals, which are rarer than shots, measure individual players contributing to winning more but stats says they don't. Sure that noise might even out over a career for actual goals but the funny part to me is so would the xgf. The good shooters get to the good spots to shoot, that's the key.