In The Buff

I went Olofsson for both. No of course I didn't, Reinhart Reinhart. Not even close. Sam's younger, smarter, more well rounded, better along the boards, plays in front of the net & is a better passer. Also been much more productive over his career, on even strength & just in general, & has much more experience. Not much of a choice really. Maybe a better poll would be Skinner vs Reinhart

Read this article on our Defensive Prospects earlier today & thought I'd share it in case any of you want to read it. Goes into Borgen, Laaksonen & the bunch & has some not too rosy things to say about Johnson & Samuelsson. Its more of a general "where are they now" type piece & doesn't get too analytical or data driven. Still thought some might find it interesting https://thehockeywriters.com/sabres-defense-prospects-laaksonen-brysen-borgen/

i'd agree with the bolded for sure. Post draft lists like the one in the tweet generally don't amount to much other than a crap shoot. I'd also probably take off Jokiharju & Dahlin from your list of prospects, just from them playing for a couple years in the league already. You could i suppose make a case to remove Thompson as well. Its that age old question of what constitutes a prospect. And many around here would take a bag of pucks for Mittlestadt currently. Cozens looks the part, Quinn we hope wasnt a miss. The goalies we hope take a step forward & represent our future. But I guess a lot of it comes down to if you think the glass is half full or half empty. Regardless i think all of us will agree our pool should look better than it does, given how consistently bad our team has been for years (about a decade).

Well 6 years ago we did have a pretty good pool. Reinhart, Ristolainen, Zadorov, Joel Armia, JT Compher, Ulmark, Cal Petersen, Lemiuex, McCabe, Pysyk, Grigorenko. Its just that half of them don't play here anymore. Not sure i understand what you mean then. At 1st it would appear you're taking a jab at them for saying our pool was good back then, which infers they were wrong & hence could be wrong again now. But as far as prospect pools go, it actually looks pretty decent in hindsight, so were they right all along & hence could be right again now? I think its pretty well documented around here that our prospect pool sucks comparatively speaking to how many high picks we've had, where we should have more prospects to speak of that are worth something. But due to poor asset managing & bad drafting, we dont have much to show for it. So i guess im just confused by your comment.

not much to be positive about with this. The words OUCH & YIKES come to mind.

Yep, but do they need to pay him $6.5-7 million a year for that? Or can they get that for cheaper, on a player who also is more aggressive on the forecheck & tougher to play against?

Could be the leading story on the national Canadian news networks

It could take Mitts years to become a legit NHL player (if it ever happens at all). He's only 21, some players take longer to develop & don't reach NHL status til 24. Can we keep paying him & keep him around that long? If he could be moved for a goalie we need now, i think we'd be crazy not to do so.

I'm excited that we signed Hall no doubt. But I wonder if Toffoli would've been the smarter acquisition, had it been possible. Who knows what it would've taken to sign him here but just say its the same deal as Montreal, 4x4.25. Would 4 years of Toffoli at RW on a pretty good deal, been better than 1 year of Hall at LW for $8mil? I dont mean to sound like im throwing shade on the Hall signing, but i'm just wondering what some of you might think about it. Just seems with that price we could've added 2 good players for the price of one & that would seem to be the shrewder move imo. Of course it takes 2 to tango & Toffoli had his choice of teams to go to so theres no telling if he would've wanted to be here. The RaKru relationship with Hall seemed to be an important part of the Hall deal. Either way im not complaining 😛

2020 is a strange year i'll tell ya

Yep. So if that happens & i'd say its a pretty likely scenario, we would've traded a 1st rd pick of the 2019 draft & Guhle to end up with a 2nd rd pick in the 2021 draft. Sounds like hockey heaven to me

Yeah if anything players would ask for a GTC, a guaranteed trade clause

Well the chart is just for that particular statistic of GAR, which it just happens thats where Trouba falls on it. Last season with the Rangers he had a bit of a down year. He struggled with defending zone entries & while used on the PK he wasn't that good. He was dead last for short handed GAR on the team. If u want to read more specifically on him, this article here has a thorough breakdown of his past year. https://lastwordonsports.com/hockey/2020/09/12/jacob-trouba-bounce-back-candidate-new-york-rangers/

its goals This is the chart of the 30th WORST defenders in the league with Irwin being the 16th worst for GAR

Goals above replacement It measures the total amount of goals a player adds to his team relative to a replacement level player, and tries to do so by taking everything a player does into account.

Not a very positive article on Irwin lol From the piece: Frankly, the fact that we don’t have to look ahead to a future that involves either player being on the team is a positive thing Overall Grade: F+ Even compared to other third-pairing defenders, these guys were bad by all metrics. I only put the plus in there because neither one of them actually caused serious damage to anyone on the ice or scored an own goal.

Great video on him. Anyone wanting to know more about him & how his performance in the DEL league & tournaments correlates to the other leagues should watch this imo Thanks for sharing!

A bunch of other people in this thread made the same comparison. There are a bunch of differences tho. 1 being that historically speaking, both the Bills & the Sabres have whiffed on 1st rd picks. Just that the Bills have hit on them more often than not with the new regime. This was KA's 1st opportunity to disappoint & given Quinn's consensus ranking, we reached a bit, and went back on our pre draft statements of using analytics to influence our decision & picking the BPA. As with all things, time will tell how this pans out & who was the best choice

The big question i want to know the answer to is can he do a pull-up?

Interesting that Quinn wasn’t even included in Larry Fisher’s Top 124 Preseason Rankings released last August, and by November was still projected as just a third-rounder. Now he's been selected at the 8th overall by yours truly your Buffalo Sabres! Really hope this pans out & he's not taking Okposo's spot on the 4th line.

I think we just found out

If we wanted Quinn, why wouldnt we try to trade down then?

I'm glad they went to a commercial before the Devils pick & not before us, like what usually happens whenever Buffalo is drafting lol