LTS

Well, i hope the stats guys jump in after reading the paper. Thank you for sharing it. My questions that I have regarding the paper are that it seems to use seasonal scoring rates in situations and then apply those rates to a period of time when the players on the ice are not the normal players that are on the ice throughout the season. So, while teams may score at a certain rate under normal circumstances the real measurement I'd like to see is how often they score when the teams ice their top players respectively. We all can accept that the 5 guys a team puts on the ice to prevent a goal will be different than the 5 guys they put on the ice under normal shifts in the NHL. The same holds true for the attacking team. Additionally, I'd like to see those numbers over multiple seasons. Using a single season provides numbers are that a single output of a set of rules and tactics used by coaches and the NHL that season. Finally, there are no analytics for coaches who play a pure attack style in a 5 on 5 mode. If I were down by 3 I would be more likely to never pull my defender off that blue line and allow the other team a breakaway on a goaltender. In most 5 on 5 scenarios the team remains somewhat defensive even if its 1 guy who has in his head that "we can't give up a breakaway". I'd rather see what 5 of my top guys can do when they throw defense out the window rather than skate 6 and still have to have one player who is thinking defensive because if the puck makes it past center ice its a free shot for the opponent. (It's not a free shot in the breakaway).

So one last thing to consider with the Kane and Eichel thing for a trade. If Kane is not with Jack then Kane is not on the first line. If Kane is not on the first line then the la la land of hockey GMs Kane is not a 1st line player and as such does not demand as much value. Productive or not, if he gets 1st line minutes he's seen as a 1st liner and other GMs will think more heavily about him being a 1st line player and at a minimum 2nd liner with 1st line potential. Just because Kane and Eichel don't mix doesn't mean Kane and <insert trading partner's 1st line C> won't.

Typical, using two completely unrelated items to force a narrative. It's not a binary situation. It's not either all positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. Stop treating the world like there are only two options. You are speaking of a specific situation and in that case the action to pull the goalie is purely negative. It's not me being negative, it is negative. I suppose that if i were to say 3 - 6 = -3 you'd propose I was being negative? Based on what evidence? There is none. You may feel that way but let's be real here. If you could, go through every hockey game and find the number of times a team has scored 3 goals within a 2 minute contiguous time span, Now find the number of times it happened while it was 6-5. Now apply logic to it and ask when it happened was the team that did the scoring the one that needed to come from behind or were they already winning or the 3 goals in 2 minutes propelled them to winning. In addition, you score the first goal. Face-off is at center ice. Are you keeping your goalie on the bench or are you hoping like hell you win the face-off and get it deep so you can get the goalie to the bench again? Let's go a little deeper on this. When you pull your goalie you are, in general, putting the 6 players on the ice most likely to score. Do you anticipate that you'll be able to skate them for 2 straight minutes without a substitution? Do you think your next 6 best players are unlikely to give up an EN goal? The concept of pulling the goaltender to score 3 goals without giving up an EN goal would be the equivalent of a football coach trying to score two touchdowns on hailmary passes when his receivers are all 4'6 and the defenders are all 6'4. It's just not going to happen. The same reason you use nitrous oxide when racing, or slam energy drinks, etc. The 6 on 5 is a quick boost of stacking your talented players on the ice in a short period of time to score a goal. It is not a sustainable tactic and should never be treated as one.

Well, even if you aren't going to beat them there's no reason to not practice the game plan that you are expected to deliver on every night.

Agreed and this is what I've been saying. Whether the fans on this forum want to give the team a pass this season the truth is that Botterill and Housley have one. If you are making the long play you are attaching Eichel and Kane so that Kane's numbers go up. Either because Jack feeds him or because teams focus on Jack and leave Kane open more. Either way, if the Sabres can maximize Kane's trade value to make significant improvements in the team for next year then it's worth it. That said.. if the point counts stay stagnant I would expect them to move Kane to another line anyway. I'm just operating under the assumption that they are putting Kane out there to showcase him as much as possible so they can get a great trade. I am not thinking deadline deal either. I am thinking more like December or earlier if they feel they need to pull the trigger sooner.

The fans booed the team off the ice in the second game of the season if I recall. Saying there is a losing culture is easy because the teams (Bills and Sabres) have been unsuccessful for a long time. Fans can choose to not go to the games but at some point that won't matter. Let's be real here. Every suggestion of blow it up comes with the implication that you will hire the right person to rebuild it. They JUST hired a new GM. There has to be time for that GM to do things. You don't change a team over in a year. If Tim Murray was the wrong guy then it set the team back further and now there's a longer distance to recovery. And again I say, you speak of the culture of the team. Who instills that culture? The only guys still here are the equipment people, are they the problem? New coach, new GM, 10 new players on the roster. The guys who have been here longest have been here for 5 years and no one thinks they are the problem. The next longest has been here 4 years and no one thinks he's the problem. Where is the problem? At some point the only thing people are left with is some insinuation that these players who have busted their butts their entire lives to play hockey because they want to win the Stanley Cup somehow become complacent the moment they step foot in Buffalo. If that's the case, if there's some curse of Buffalo that exists then the best bet to recovery is to move the team elsewhere right? Either that or someone better hire some witch doctor to come and cleanse the city. It used to be that people would point to Buffalo as a dump but now it continually is noted as a city on the rise, a city that is changing dramatically. I feel pretty good that you can't even point to Buffalo being a blue-collar town anymore. There are no instant fixes and that's what people have to accept and sometimes changing the remedy in the middle of the recovery can cause a setback. This is what we are facing. The change in leadership has temporarily changed the team. Only time will tell if the change leads to improvement, status quo, or decline. Personally I think it leads to improvement and I think we all get to see it this year. Nickelodeon had green slime. Ghostbusters was pink. :)

I wouldn't agree with that per se. Scandella was brought in to shore up the defense. Antipin was signed because "why the hell not". And Beaulieu was traded for because if he pans out awesome and if he doesn't how much worse could it be than what was here? The D depth is not good enough. Period. Bogosian is taking his routine extended pre-season holdout and it will be nice to have him back. I'd like to think having a D of Risto, Scandella, Bogosian, McCabe, Falk, and Gorges would actually improve this team significantly over where they are at today. You can rotate Beaulieu, Antipin and Tennyson around in the 5/6 roles if you'd like.

Which player on this roster represents the last core that embodied losing? (wait, sorry, they did bring Pominville back). The core has been ripped out. The longest tenured Sabre on this team is Girgensons and McCabe (2012). The next is Ristolainen (2013). Two of those 3 you want to keep.

Can't vote because the options all come with extra explanation. The answer is No. You don't pull your goalie. There is no message to be sent to the team except you guys sucked so bad that we are going to pull the goalie and hope that putting 6 attackers on the ice can get us a goal when 5 couldn't do it. Meanwhile, we're do damned desperate for win who cares if they roll up a few more against us. Two weeks from now everyone will still remember that those last two goals didn't matter because we had the goalie pulled. Oh wait, no they won't It will be on the books as a blowout and no one will remember or care that they were EN goals. They'll just look at the score and think we sucked even worse than we already did. If teams could score 3 goals with 6 attackers why the hell wouldn't they play that way the whole game?

Fair enough... although they were still playing the same umbrella style. The key was not the players but the style. In order for the one-timer to work you have to get a team playing a diamond PK and not a box PK. If you play umbrella you get a diamond PK. The trick is then to move the puck into a corner, back to the top, and back over for the one-timer before the diamond can reset itself. For example, Risto down to ROR. The high slot has to slide toward ROR and the player in front shifts accordingly. The left diamond player has to drop to cover ROR and the right diamond player has to move into the high slot or else it leaves the high-slot player open. By doing this it leaves Eichel with more space to position for the one-timer. Now the puck has to make it either through the gap from ROR to Eichel or to Risto depending on the top diamond PK stick and body position. If it's to Risto it has to then make it to Eichel fast enough that the PK from the slot can't get back to properly defend the shot. Any off the mark pass or too slow and it breaks down. The pass from ROR to Eichel is even more difficult to one-time just from a pure distance standpoint. If teams fade to Eichel then the Sabres had to adjust. I should go back and just watch the SHGs and see what happens. In any event.. the Sabres went to the traditional two defenders at the top. This is designed more to get the puck to the player in front of the net to score as the PK shifts to a box and they float up and down the ice to keep pucks to the outside but in theory leave the player in front for the goaltender to deal with since the players should be in the shooting lanes to keep the screen from being an issue. I thought it was... I thought they started with ROR-Eichel-Reinhart-OKposo-Risto. Again I'd have to look. Either way.. the high slot and man in front are only there to occupy bodies and serve as potential shot deflectors when the outside 1 timers are not there.

So, I spend a few days of my life creating a training presentation, flying to Florida, spending 8 hours delivering the training and getting everyone up to speed on how things are supposed to work when they order from us. We get our first order from them and they do nothing but ask questions about everything. I answer them, then they bitch about how the contract looks (they knew it would have additional line item descriptors on it but the costs would be the same). Then they bitch about the discount structure and how its handled (they knew how it would work.) They take up 4 hours of my time in one day bitching and moaning and then they cancel their order. Meanwhile, my internal people, who are all trained as well do not get involved, and then have the audacity to ask me why certain things are the way they are. The other day I was talking to another person in the company and I stated it like this... "If this company were an NFL team we'd have 3 QBs and 50 punters". There are a handful of people that actually do anything, remember anything, or make decisions. The rest are just there to make our lives miserable.

The Umbrella with Jack on LW for a one-timer, ROR on right for one-timer, Okposo high slot, RIsto on blue line, and someone in front for deflections was the style they were playing to open the season. This style resulted in 6 SHGs. Housley switched it back to a traditional PP with two point men for now (both defense) to slow down the PK attack of the other team. They are less likely to give up a SHG with two players at the blue line and both of them being defensemen. The start of the season saw the same players on the ice in the same configuration as last year and it was broken. That's not a coach problem.. that's a 5 players on the ice problem. They were horrible with the puck.

I'm going to drink and watch SuperTroopers on IFC. I need to laugh tonight, not analyze. Cheers!

Other than the last goal what are we putting on Johnson tonight?

Well crap. Let's see what they're made of now.

C'mon, someone rip Jack for taking a Kane shot on goal. Right into the crest.

Right now it's hard to find any team better. They are flat out dominating.

Sorry missed it. I was drinking a beer. ;) The Sabres look very good right now against a top team in the league.

Well. I wouldn't say instantaneous but it was very common. Man that really sucked.

He is. That said he's not been TOO challenged. But it's coming.

Bobbo gonna let us know the real deal with Evander.

Beer #2- 2013 Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Beer 1 was Genny Coffee Stout. Also, that was a clear hook by Redmond and a terrible clear that led to that goal. That said... Sabres are looking good. They talk about CBJ on a 2 game losing streak. Yeah, to Tampa and LA the top 2 teams in the league. Go Sabres.

I love having Wes McCauley as the ref. I think he wanted to have a good call on that no goal but he kinda failed. There is still time.

Let's play some ####### hockey! Insert insane metal singer scream here.