Randall Flagg

Hah! Take that, dumb stupid hicks! Now vote how i want you dumb stupid hicks

For the record, Jason acquiring a player like Cirelli or better for 2C, in addition to typical moves, would be a ridiculously good offseason. Cirelli, and players like him in situations like Tampa's, are a unicorn in terms of YOUR favorite team pulling it off. We would be very lucky to hit on a long term 2C ready to help out now. Sure, at this point I need Jason to do it to salvage my patience with him, but that's a function of his past performance, not a characteristic of the difficulty of the task. ie it will never happen but if it does I will sing in the streets

It is not an overpayment. You'd think that our last decade of garbage teams and underwhelming high-but-not-top-2 picks would have lessened your vice grip on those picks. 7OA has real value, but will likely never impact the Sabres the way Cirelli or dozens and dozens of NHL players could. Those players have more value than the pick If we had the player, you would laugh at other fans suggesting you'd give him up for 7OA

https://thehockeynews.com/news/article/lightnings-anthony-cirelli-is-playing-his-way-into-small-club-of-selke-trophy-candidates

40 points in a shortened season. He was pacing for 55 pointing a shutdown role of a team where all major offensive opportunities are split between two lines, neither of which Cirelli is on. It's his second full season and he's likely going to be a Selke finalist. His scoring rates track consistently compared to Point, who was a 60 point player playing with Kucherov, until he was a 90 point player a year later. Yeah, id take a guy who can be a Selke finalist while pacing for 55 points getting just offensive scraps compared to the lines above him, all of this in just his second full pro season, over a chance to draft the next grab bag of Mittses, Nylanders, and Cozenses

Losing all chances at picks 1-3 is far more irritating to me than having a greater chance from falling to 8 or 9 from 6. Those picks and players are historically interchangeable compared to that range and the top 3

I hate this a lot the more I think about it. Kill our lotto chances so that we can't use our picks to trade for players that we might improve our team with next year because those teams still want to use those players this summer? Garbage

Or just draft the skater they tell us to and then trade them later

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-reinfections-were-false-positives.html This doesn't answer the question about long-term immunity, but gives good news regarding headlines from a couple weeks back that coronavirus was worryingly being reactivated and getting people sick a second time after an initial battle (and also potentially being spread a second time)

Not necessarily, just when I see a, say, 10 point improvement from Artemi being there (he is probably that dominant) I view it as more Hart-worthy because those wins/goals/whatever he contributes to are Big Games (TM) whereas Jack's, say, 10 point improvement is coming in between and during dreck hockey that doesn't matter and makes everybody watching angery Like I say it's not fair or necessarily intelligent, but team success will always matter to me with the award, so I'd go Panarin MacKinnon probably Jack and there are probably players I'm forgetting that deserve strong consideration too. Hockey was a while ago now And yeah, and Draisaitl is awesome but he and his teammate don't enter the convo for me because of each other

I think Reinhart is pretty good, but I can't bring myself to dive back in and get comparisons from the stats I just cited (and don't care that much about haha). I do think that, even though it's not a technical part of the definition, I want my Hart winner to be on a good team. It might be the case that the Rangers miss the playoffs had they played 82 games, but they were right there, and are victims of a ridiculous division in the current standings (6th place on a 93 point pace while we're 6th place too, and would be even if we were a 75 point team) I think the Rags without Panarin would be a similar drop in overall points as the Sabres without Jack, but the Rags are relevant and playing in important games (and winning them with Panarin contributing heavily). So even if you could prove Jack influence's the Sabres record a little more, the fact that we failed the "meaningful games in March" goal set 10 days prior just makes it hard to give Jack the vote over Artemi. Which is of course schtewpid - if we had independently acquired a good 2C and were a good team and Jack was identical, then I think the case is closer, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop feeling that way

I just paid my first visit to evolving wild and hockeyviz, the two advanced stat sites i use, in quite a few months IIRC. I don't miss poring over this stuff. I honestly wish that there was a similar resource that made it easy to watch every shift of an individual or a team or a line, and edit/manipulate the footage with ease. I'd choose doing that over scouring stat sites any day, and would waste years of my life watching film and trying to justify takes that are far more gut instinct than I'd ever willingly admit on a forum

It's garbage, and yes

If a below .500 Edmonton Oilers team, fresh off of years of incompetence and a bottom five NHL finish that specific season, had won the lockout cup after in-season alteration of playoff rules, it would be looked at way different than it was when a ridiculously dominant Hawks cap era dynasty team ran away with the regular season and then won it, using the same playoff rules they entered the season with and had used for quite a while And deservedly so We are the Oilers in this example

I do think that the winner of this one, particularly if it was a bad team like us, would be viewed way differently than the last lockout's champion, mainly because the last lockout's champion was pretty unambiguously one of the greatest NHL teams ever iced haha

I'm making up this case as I go along, mostly just throwing stuff down as I find it, so don't take it super seriously: The number of NHL players currently better than Panarin can be counted on one hand, and Zibanejad doesn't make that cut, while still being excellent Panarin has more ES assists this year than Zibanejad has ES points, and also has 25 ES goals. Yes, Panarin has been available for 12 more games, but his ES production per game is 40% greater than Mika's, who is a great ES player but definitely leans on the power play more, which is all well and good but I value ES play a lot higher than PP play. Panarin's total production per game is 5% higher than Mika's with worse teammates as described below: Panarin does this being centered by Ryan Strome, who has been dreadful for years since he was about the legal US drinking age, and playing on the opposite wing to Jesper Fast. Both of Zibanejad's linemates (Buchnevich and Kreider) are significantly better hockey players than those that Panarin has made a home with Panarin is +36 on a team that is -24 without him on the ice, versus Zibanejad whose team is +3 without him on the ice (he's +9) Mika does have 4 games in which he has 4 or more points, but he's less consistent in his production, playing 17 games of his 57 (30%) without any points, while Panarin has gone without points in 15 of his 69 games (22%) 29-24-4 with Zibanejad (89 point pace, 8-4-1 without him, a small sample size but a 107 point pace without him, and 13 games is a pretty big chunk of the season to date, almost a fifth of the material we're judging on) 37-27-5 with Panarin (94 point pace, only has missed one game) In the lens of a trophy given to a team's most valuable player, looking at these numbers, the main case Zibanejad has going for him is playing a more important position. But his shift-in-shift-out impact seems to be worse in all respects than that of Panarin's. If you like heat charts, and maybe you don't, they tell the same story: The top is Zibanejad, the bottom is Panarin. "Threat" is a less-detailed expected goal model, and tells us that Panarin's offensive "threat" impact is 23% greater than that of a league average player, while the Rangers as a whole are 3% less offensively capable than league average without him on the ice. Zibanejad increases the Rangers' "threat" offensively to 7% above league average when on the ice, compared to 5% better when he's not on it. (Regression is still applied to threat to account for usage/opponent differences, they just don't account for shot type if I remember correctly. These findings do help support the gap between each player's ES production and GF/GA differentials) Defensively, meanwhile, NYR still allow 9% more threat than league average with Panarin, but without him allow 21% more threat than league average, while the Rangers' defensive zone is more porous with Zib than without it (and again, the regression is performed meaning in theory it isn't just because Mika has more zone starts there, or plays tougher competition (both play tough competition, and of course Mika has a bigger role in stopping that competition, which he doesn't appear to do super well as an offensive center)) of course, it's totally fine if you don't like "threat" and heat maps, I'm just perusing and enjoying myself at this point If you like other advanced stats, like Goals Above Replacement, or GAR, an attempt to model all impacts of a player, Panarin is first in the league in GAR. (This is the top 24 skaters) Per unit ice time, since Zibanejad missed time, Panarin is 4th in the NHL in GAR for skaters who have played 1000 minutes, Zibanejad is 89th WAR, a similar metric that I believe can be derived from GAR, has Panarin 3rd in the NHL per ice time, and Zibanejad 89th These models also do regression with the aim of isolating impact from usage This is those RAPM charts people either love or detest And I got the email I was waiting for so I have to stop here lol not much of this work actually influenced my opinion, the smartest hockey guy I know in real life is a Rags fan and views Panarin as the obvious Hart choice this year and I am entirely leaning on his view of the situation. He was surprised that I even mentioned Zibanejad in the context of the trophy and MacKinnon is definitely a compelling choice, but for me his team is now too strong for me to pick him outright over other skaters. He scores a lot more than them (because of Rantanen's long term injury IMO) but there are some superb and defensemen on the ice with him every shift Jack's right in the convo too and would win if we were 10 points better than we are

So to more explicitly answer your question, I didn't see him do any of the things that made him a consensus top 10 pick, I only start the story with what I've seen with the Sabres

I was perfectly optimistic about him until I started getting worred about his NCAA D+1 production. I started getting vocal into the 18/19 season when it became more evident as time went on that he shouldn't be here. I didn't watch him before he was drafted or in college, and his coming from high school meant that I had no real bearing to understand how dominant he was, and how it might compare to others and their NHL success from that level. The more I saw, the less impressed I was with the things that were supposed to be his forte, and into his NHL season this year that was still apparent to me, and I'm happy he was sent down to properly develop and hope to keep him there until he generates the talk that Olofsson started to last year and last summer, and then does what Olofsson did to earn unanimous approval of his spot on the roster. I don't have a gauge on the likelihood of this, but I think it's closer to Tage's likelihood (which I view as slim) than Cozens' (which i view as high)

Dis me?

Panarin should get it IMO.

What I do know is that Casey's NHL film while producing ~10 goals and ~30 points was pretty freaking bad, and Thomas' with the same production was exciting. Maybe Glass has good film too

This analysis post-2018/19 would say the same thing about Casey and Robert Thomas, but anyone watching the two regularly at the time would have said it's foolish to classify them the same caliber of player/prospect/asset. I haven't watched Cody Glass at all, so I'm not saying I know he's better or worse than Casey, but it's entirely possible that Liger has and sees something notable, even if it hasn't manifested in counting stats yet.

Andy Dalton came real close to beating the Bills with THAT Bengal team. Way closer than Prescott, Elliott, and Cooper did. He has the same characteristics that made Fitz so prickly down the stretch for the Dolphins. The Bills still would have lost the first Pats game last year had Dalton played it. That's because Brady was awful, but Bill, his defense, and his special teams were a nightmare. Watch Hoyer's game with Indy last year. Watch Stidham throw from his hip like Tebow. There's a 100% chance that Dalton is worth 2 or more wins above a Hoyer replacement on that Pats team, and a pretty good chance he's a lot better than Stidham. Considering that we play NE twice, I want them going with the worse QBs, because they will give us a fit no matter what

I snorted when I read this. We are in trouble

All I know is that I'd rather have a less impressive amount of space, but 23/28/22/68/95 etc. signed and ready to go, versus "lOoK aT hOw mUcH cAp SpAcE" but also having about six of 18 spots set for next year, because that feels like an impossible task to do well in one summer especially considering we haven't been able to adequately fill just two spots we need the last two offseasons