Randall Flagg

Norman was awful playing man coverage in Washington from what I read, but made his name in McDermott's zone scheme. Hopeful that he can be a good piece in the secondary rotation for us

Also, my dream job would be watching clipped games like that in a pro-scouting role so I can tell Jason to ask for someone's besides Vlad/Berglund

You're likely correct that this was the reasoning of the only person or people that matter-the decision makers. But I was raised by sabrespace, and I vividly remember the countless posts that helped shape my hockey worldview, and one lesson I took away more than all others as a young buck - that core just didn't have the heart, the passion! I earnestly read, wide-eyed, and reported this fact to my friends the next morning in first period history, before the bell. That teacher, years later, let me bring in my guitar and jam with him during lunch. So I'll stand by the "main criticism" part

Thanks for all this. "We need our new GM to be great at analytics and I know who that person is and that ours aren't it" is something I was on board with until very recently, but things like this have provided a necessary dose of humility. Now I don't care what any candidate says about them and won't pretend I can make conclusions from what they do

I don't actually care, but I couldn't help noticing that upside of his proposition.

I quoted True, who was talking about never hearing another word from a professional athlete

We've seen the stupid levels of damage that this could prevent firsthand, too

Would you like a knuckle sandwich hey nice coach by the way you really nailed that one :)

In Ovechkin's last 20 games, he has 21 goals and 2 assists

I just remember Avs fans shredding Nathan MacKinnon in the same fashion, while he was healthy, for that 48 point Avs season, and getting on him for similar lapses in the 15-16 season the year before. Suddenly, with a functional team built around him such that the hockey was important and the team was pulling their own weight around him the next three years, those discussions are long forgotten I hope the Sabres can build their team to that point before it all needs to be flushed. I'm less and less confident this will happen with each passing season

I understand the frustration this causes, but I also don't think people watch other players/teams with the same critical eye that they do their own players/teams when things get bad. Because there isn't a player on the planet that is immune to three or four games of this

I haven't watched the last 2 games, but historically, Reinhart is absolutely up there in terms of willingness to get the puck on the boards, and in fact, I'd put all the money I have on him being quantitatively better at it than anyone else on this team over a large span of time. He's superb at using his stick and shins to protect the puck, and has the skill to actuallly find a teammate when he gets free again, rather than just flipping it further down the boards for someone else to try and fight for.

He rarely ever used either. I've followed him on Twitter for a long time and haven't seen him tweet

Yup, it's becoming clearer. Girgensons is the guy with the multiple three-stooges shifts, where a variety of physical follies rapidly pile up against him, usually from his own teammates. Shifts where he runs into his own man, and then promptly takes a dump-in attempt off the face

Didn't Girgensons get a delay of game penalty within the last two years for shooting the puck over the glass on the far end of the arena? Like not only did he clear the zone, he cleared teh zone over the opposing goalie's head

It seemed like he was trying to paint the potential loss upcoming in as best a light possible "well, we lost, but it woulda been CRAZY to expect us to SWEEP the vaunted Penguins!"

This was a while ago, probably 2016-17, but I vividly remember this play in LA where somebody sprung Deslauriers on a rush, he and Ennis were flying down the ice with purpose right towards the LA defensemen. Ennis was about 10 feet to Nic's right. The rush abruptly ended when Deslauriers passed the puck, not to Tyler's stick blade, but into the crook of his elbow - a play exceptionally more difficult to do on purpose than a pass to the tape from that close. It might sound like nothing but it was really funny at the time

The surface view of this really does look cartoonish, shooting ourselves in the foot.

My guess for next season based on what I heard from Jason yesterday: Olofsson - Eichel - Reinhart Skinner - Kahun - Simmonds (re-signed) or Anderson (Trade) Mojo - Mitts - Tage/Cozens Asplund/Ruotsalainen - Lazar - Okposo Dahlin - Montour McCabe - Jokharju Miller - Risto Ullmark Hutton I think he'll try to move an RHD for forward depth, but since he talked about building more depth rather than getting top end guys, I don't anticipate a big splash up front.

Eichel is focusing extra hard on 90 points, apparently - dude has ditched his instagram and twitter accounts

I don't mean that post to respond to the deserved criticisms of his effort, or pointing out the fact that we've never seen Jack, or the Sabres, go on a tear in the month of March. I'm talking mainly about the post before mine. It happens every year, and has had subjects including Jack, Reinhart, Evander, Lehner, and most famously, one Ryan O'Reilly. Time after time, the problem actually reveals itself not to be who these players are as a person (and I mean some of the ROR ***** i read here and elsewhere was downright vicious) but, after these players succeed elsewhere, the original thing that people spent months noticing beforehand - how bad the hockey team has been constructed Edit: the first non-Weave post before mine hehe

I expect him to sound competent when talking about hockey in general, and about things his team needs. He is talking about things that this team needs, only he's doing it incoherently. This is how these interviews have gone for three years, and this questionable projection of hockey intellegence couples quite nicely to the bizarre moves we've seen the last three years, and makes our on-ice results make a lot of sense. I've never heard a GM sound less polished, not in public-speaking ability, but in understanding of what makes a successful hockey team. I don't purport to know how that should sound, but I am capable of comparing, and all Jason does is list off the most recent games in order, recapping what happens, and saying he likes that Ralph will continue to focus on the little things, we like our group, player A doesn't have as many goals so we just need to find his chemistry etc. etc. It's like he's unaware that all teams oscillate above and below a baseline level that represents their true abilities, sometimes playing better, sometimes playing worse. He takes those brief moments we spend playing well and talks like that should be our baseline, and would be if not for some mysterious factors, and seems to think that a conversion of our team's baseline to this level should be trivial and not related to roster construction.

Sheary is absolutely one of the guys I'd love to hear talk off the record. Something about him always made me think he was raising his eyebrows the whole time he was here.

Amazing how, every year, when the March swoon hits for a bad team, all of a sudden the players become bad people as well

He used the phrase "from that standpoint" or some slight variant of that (for example, "from a win standpoint" or "from a defensive standpoint") 13 times in this interview "Situation" count was 7