Brawndo

The Sabres also have Dan Giardi as an Assistant Coach on Staff for the Defense. By His own choice he does not always travel with the team, but is at every home game and home practice to work with the Defense. Per Andrew Peters on ATW, yes I was desperate for something to listen to on the way home from the 1000 Islands yesterday, Peca was offered a position as an Assistant with the Sabres, the reason he did not take the position is he wanted to be behind the bench during games and the the team offered the coaches box, that’s why he went with NYR.

I thought this Twitter Thread was very appropriate

Tage or the Sabres could have waited one more year to sign a long term extension and had Tage elected to do so what would his leverage be this offseason? Only one of the two is worth nine million. The Sabres not only locked up Tage for less AAV, but they also have him under contract for additional three seasons. That’s better asset management in my book.

To be fair smart organizations lock players into long term team friendly deals. Also being on a line with (at the time) an elite play driver in Patrick Kane certainly helped with those numbers. Chicago played a system which plays to his strengths, Ottawa did not. Guess which style Detroit plays? He had elite offensive metrics in Chicago, not so much in Ottawa. Last year his points per 60 minutes were lower than Tyson Jost. Detroit is betting that he is not a product of Chicago’s Offensive System, which is a gamble given the fact that Detroit scored less goals than Ottawa. Tage and Debrincat were drafted 14 selections apart, so comparing them is fair game. One was placed in a dynamic offensive system, the other coached by Ralph Krueger. One played his natural position, the other was asked to play a position he had not in a while. You know who would be an elite offensive play driver for Debrincat to play with? Tage Thompson. Hopefully Larkin can do the same for him, just not against Buffalo

The Moose is running from Cozens

28 fewer points, 733k more in AAV than Tage

When Murray refused to waive for Buffalo 7OA was sent to Chicago. Even had Murray waived for the Sabres, 16th OA plus would have been sent

They gave up 7th overalll for one year of Debrincat and a pick in the 14-22 range

There is a correction factor for that built in. Besides Jokiharju would have been second to only Jake McCabe in terms of rankings of all those defenseman listed with this years fancy stats applied to the 2018-19 Season And for fun here was Dahlin and Samuelsson this year

Dahlin was 18 for the entirety of His Rookie Year, while Power turned 20 in November. Poweris going to be very good, Dahlin is elite

Nope Dahlin had much better defensive stats

On the most recent Expected Buffalo Podcast, Chad mentioned despite Adams public statements, they are not comfortable with their goaltending outside of Levi. He mentioned Adams isn’t willing to overpay in the trade market however. It sounds like Helly is off the table, Gibson and Vladar are the targets they mentioned. Chad did a breakdown of Gibson’s play His First 40 games were good the final ones were a disaster. With Gibson expected to be split starts with Levi, would he better than UPL and Comrie with limited starts? Vladar looked good in the AHL and he was the target of Sabres in the Hall Trade. Also they pointed out that Friedman mentioned Pesce has the NTC and he brought up Buffalo and San Jose as teams that are probably on it.

Something else to remember, even though Dylan Cozens deal was announced during the All Star Break On February 7th. His press conference was February 9th. No Webster, Tom, Webster

Yes please

Swayman and Gustavasson both already applied for arbitration, we need those awards to be too rich for their teams

One of the steps that has to happen for the team to become champion quality is for Tage and Cozens to improve their defensive skills. I think there will ne more concentration on defensive play from the whole team this season though. As Eric Johnson said the Avs took the next step when they slightly dialed back on offense and dramatically improved the defense. This did improve their offense possession numbers as they had the puck more often

Any option is a good one, four to a lesser extent