Randall Flagg

Nope, because he's better than Hoyer and probably better than Stidham

In the chart with my blue circle, it's also worth recalling the isolated defensemen. There are only fifteen defenders to the right of the u in Montour's name in the chart with the blue circle, and they're almost all below the average line. No team's defenders impact their zone entries via skating anywhere close to as much as the forwards do. It's just not that telling of a measure and certainly doesn't mean anything concrete about Krueger and how he would like to move the puck

The Sabres' roster is bad enough that there is zero chance we'll have to worry about this debate They WOULD beat the Leafs first tho

This is my problem with Chad as a whole. It's really, really hard to sort hockey events into a small number categories, with all events being uniform/similar in nature in each category. Something like this analysis he does takes a billion situations and reduces it to two or three choices/types. I discovered how hard this is to do properly when I did the Bylsma/Canes project: I had 15 distinct, unique "results" when I counted Sabre/Cane transition attempts, and that was after consolidating for time purposes in the hopes of not driving myself crazy and being able to keep up with the game live(you'll see that some tallies are underlined, those underlines meant something specific, and the colors did too). He's using 4, dump failures/successes and carry failures/successes. I had to count dump ins for changes differently, and whether or not the skater in question was facing pressure. I WANTED to quantify this pressure, as not all forechecking attempts are equal, but it got way too complicated. The less in-depth you are when you do this, the more you are fulfilling the stereotype of perusing your stat sheets, scoffing at the notion of "watching the games." Because there is a massive variety of characteristics of each of those "successful carries," which are ignored. Maybe Colorado's blazing fast, intimidating forwards make entry attempts a lot easier on Cale Makar than Miller has it coming up the ice with the glaring mug of...Evan Rodrigues...and the prospect of defending him. What Chad does is look at the chart, say "dumps are bad because they result in goals less often" (no *****, but that doesn't mean every scenario that leads to a dump-in would present a successful skating entry if merely a different choice was made by the skater) and then post articles about it on twitter, always condescendingly like the "old boy's club just doesn't get how cutting edge we are," and then is really ***** touchy and pathetic the second someone tries to critique the way he's "analyzing" things. And then he pulls ***** like the way he presented this publication (he ABSOLUTELY wanted it to sound like it did), and it makes me so angry that once in a while he calls the Rodrigues trade and therefore DOES have a shred of credibility

OK - the carry part of that article is certainly interesting, and the Sabres are definitely an outlier compared to the rest of the league. However, I don't think it impacts our offensive capabilities all that much - because I think for any team, a defender's role in transition is far more likely to be an initial pass than either carrying the puck or dumping it in (and let's be real here - when McCabe or Miller or Dahlin or Risto is dumping it in, it is quite often the case that the Sabres need to change, in which case NO entry attempt is going to be successful, or even try to be). These "Defenseman passing" cases are only treated in the first graph posted in the article. If you look at ONLY the defensemen[NOTE - I discovered that there's something wrong with this graph, but left it here, read on for details]: The Sabres' distribution is fairly safe and average, based on a qualitative glance - the general shape of Sabre distributions matches the overall profile of all NHL defensemen reasonably well.They are perhaps a little bit below average with controlled zone entries on the whole (purely looking at the x axis) but the top 10% of offensive zone entries only average about 3 zone entries more per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice time than the Sabres' defenders. Jake McCabe was probably used averagely by our staff, and had something like 15-18 5v5 minutes any given night - so if that is typical, then the Sabres' individuals differ from a high-end zone-entering-defenseman by about one zone entry per game each. And that's from the high end players - other teams are not composed entirely of Cale Makars. I think this impact on offensive performance or even team identity is minimal, a couple of successful zone entries via a defender's legs per game at most. He did no analysis to determine whether or not the Sabres made up for this by passing the puck instead. This shows that four Sabres defenders were better than league average at exiting the zone with possession, and two were straddling the line of average, with only two being notably below it - showing that the Sabres' defenders were quite capable of executing the transition pass in question (this might also include skating exits, data not clear). But only 3 of 8 Sabres on the list are above league average in zone exit ATTEMPTS per unit ice time, which is curious. This characteristic is evident for the entire Sabres team in fact - zone exits of ANY attempt lag below league average, with more than two thirds of all Sabre skaters on this plot being below the average line, with no positive outliers. If the Sabres are exiting their own zone less often than the average team, of course their defender zone entries via skating will also lag behind - all entry types will. This is shown below: When you come back to the first chart: The guys in circles are all defenseman (and I see something wrong with the first chart I posted then, which was supposed to be the same one with defensemen isolated - there are defenders in this circle that aren't in the first chart). Four Sabre D are above average in "shot assists" from the neutral or defensive zone - passes from these areas that lead to shots on goal. Three are below. Considering that we are very bad at generating shots as a whole, it is impressive that more than half our D are above average at doing this per minute of ice time, and it tells me their transition methods may well be to focus on passing over skating, not on "dumping" over skating. I don't have numbers, but you can all close your eyes and picture "Sabre D dumping the puck in" - it's when the forwards are rapidly skating to the bench for a chaneg after a puck recovery, or when they are stationary after an offsides faceoff, won back to the D, who have nothing else to do with the forwards flat-footed and covered. It's not something any team's D will try to do in the type of controlled setting that coaching styles attempt to influence. Our defenders pass well, and create shots above average, according to this graphic, even considering that the team's low shot attempts on the whole are stacked against them performing well on this axis. When you look at the shape of the Sabre distribution, compared to all other NHL skaters in this last graph, I don't see a huge problem with team transition - more than half of the skaters are at or above average in each dimension, with good outliers like Eichel, Joki, Mojo, Miller, Sheary (what?). This graph measures results, not attempts, and the Sabres get good transition results WHILE getting low transition attempts.The offensive problems of this team arise solely from what happens once they get to that zone, as Swamp points out in many, many fewer words. So going forward the things that interest me are: 1.) Why do the Sabres head up the ice with the puck less often than other teams? Is it a function of the long, dragging style of offense they play? (Safe, around the boards, cycle, board battles, no rapid-fire slot pass chances that are dangerous but more prone to promptly ending the zone time with a turnover) A function of their defense chasing for long periods of time? (I don't think they chase longer than most teams, they're not that bad at defense) 2.) What are our issues once we finally get to the offensive zone? Because this is definitely the area in which we SEVERELY lag the rest of the league. Like, fewest scoring chances for three years running, stuff like that. I tried to answer that with a project last summer, I don't think I got all that far, and rakish is really onto something I think. I can't seem to get rid of this last image^ pls ignore it

I've actually followed an account on twitter for a year or two, a small (almost personal) account, that posts a lot about philosophy, and actually wound up in that documentary/movie/whatever it is. Haven't watched it

Chad's hockey (and insider) input is not worth how obnoxious he is about it i didnt read this one, but I see you guys are talking about dumping in the pucks versus skating it into the offensive zone. There aren't that many times I'd want a defender skating into the zone with the puck, even Dahlin. Did he analyze passing sequences as well? Because Dahlin had many great transition passes at all levels of the ice this year

Idk, I don't think it'd be worth a summer of triumphcommunes condescendingly telling us that Botterill "ended the playoff drought"

Yes but if you were to trade 22 & the other picks we gave up to move up, it'd only move us a few spots, roughly to 18 by most guesses. It was definitely just unfortunate to happen right when BOB gave up Hopkins for trash

I know those draft pick value charts aren't perfect, but from what I read they basically told us that we gave up pick 18 for Diggs, and none of Lamb/Jeudy/Ruggs made it to 18. So I'm thrilled with that trade

Thrilled to see future Bill Derrick Brown heading to the Panthers

i did notice that! Then they gave those two examples, and I didn't find anything to outrage over and left. Did they talk about the nature of that increase? Is it something gained illegitimately, to the detriment of the public, something like that? It can't have been driven by the gains of Zoom and Amazon, right? Genuine questions - I know less about the nature of wealth, capital, its creation and transfer, than you do in your typical warnings that precede your posts - by a lot.

Yup. Hoping the Phins take Herbert and not Tua

Yep. We were never going to shut down until numbers hit zero, vaccines complete. The amount of destruction that would cause on uncountable levels would dwarf what we will see from (proper, careful) reopening (which may not be what places like Georgia are doing unfortunately)

I have no attention span and just glanced through the article, which appeared to highlight the heads of Zoom and Amazon. No ***** those guys would be making more money than usual during a time when nobody is allowed to have in person meetings, and people are scared to shop in stores (or not allowed to buy "nonessential" items in some cases) Why wouldn't they be?

Went in public for the first time since early March. Saw about 6 people. One person didn't have their mask over their nose, another was wearing knitted winter gloves and doused them in hand sanitizer on her way out. They will be soggy all day

I feel personally attacked by this article

I've watched some pretty empty WJC games, and enjoyed them well enough.

The funny thing about any topic on any message board is that the discussion of the topic almost invariably gets worse in quality as time goes on. The depth of the ROR discussion now, and the points made by this poster, pale in comparison even to the points made by the pro-trade crowd in the months after it went down. The discussion built up from foundational points to a lofty height, and it's been so long that he's rehashing some of the original points at the bottom of the mountain, and nobody has the energy to walk all the way through to the understanding we all left off at like a year ago

I'm up to 153 now. Want to settle in at 175

? I'm safely rail-thin enough that I can announce that I go to the gym and be immune to the typical (deserved) criticism that comes with it. I'm 6 feet tall and I got down to 127 pounds at my lowest point. I'm not a swole lunkhead, I'm just trying to not waste away

Gym closures have been the business closures that have impacted my own life the most compared to pre-coronavirus times. That said, they should definitely be one of the last things to open. They're ***** gross

It's also possible Graham just wasn't being careful, unsuspecting of the dissection one part of one of his many sentences would endure

Interesting that Tim Graham says, over and over, that the internal worries for Jason are based on him "lacking a plan." That we were spending over the cap in real dollars to be so bad signifies to them a lack of a plan. The SS consensus has been that there is a well-defined plan that's pretty easy to see, and the execution has been bad, leading to things like spending a bunch of money for a bad team. I feel like the latter is more damning of the GM than the former, in saying that he's bad at the functional part of his job versus just not having an optimal checklist, which he would in principle be competent at if he had. I'd be quicker to fire the second guy than the first. So I do think Jason gets another kick at the can This probably doesn't make sense, I'm just going stir-crazy over here don't mind me

Just got my stimulus deposit.