Randall Flagg

Yes

Tayven and Brayven

Jason has one feather in his cap - he built a playoff-capable defense. it took 3 years, but it's here. We'll see what it looks like when he dips into it to try and boost his forward group to merely subpar from abominable It's hard not to come up from accidentally building a historically bad team in your first year lol You keep expecting us to be impressed by him doing this, and then improving to the 5th worst team in the league, to struggling along now despite a Hart-caliber effort from Jack

I did this a few weeks ago, but Murray's Sabres teams were bad offensively too. They were bottom 10 in chance creation, and in expected goals for, and they lagged behind in scoring because Eichel and Reinhart were 60/45 point guys. Jason's teams are the single worst in the NHL at chance creation and expected goals for, they are more allergic to the slot and to high quality offensive play than even the Bylsma/Murray teams, it just gets mildly hidden by the fact that Jack is going to have over 100 points this year, and Sam could push 70.

I'm not dismissing them. I'm putting them in proper context for a league whose goal numbers are up so much in a half decade that Art Ross winners are going from 87 points to 130 points, and then showing that Jason's personal contribution to an increase in goals scored is subzero, he has relied entirely on players that were on this team and in this system before he got there three years ago. Plugging your ears and going "la la la" to stuff that's been broken down with hundreds of hours of work over a few years, is actually what is narrative-pushing here.

On Scandella, were there not whispers that he had off-ice issues, and maybe some vertigo or something, last season? It would make sense that that stuff got squared away, because he was playing like 17/18 Scandy all year for us this year.

I would try! But I haven't had any desire to look at stats this year, and my top two sites from them are either now taken down or now charge money to look at anything.

Murray was fired with a team that was 24th in scoring, and 21st in goals allowed. Again, I repeat, this was a fireable offense. Jason then made a team that was 31st in scoring, and 29th in goals allowed. He then made a team that was 23rd in scoring and 24th in goals allowed. He now has a team that's 21st in scoring and 17th in goals allowed. Stunning, incredible work. Especially when you consider that our goal scoring is driven entirely by forwards who were here before he got here, while all of his forward additions comprise the single-worst middle 6 in the entire NHL

Well, when your first year is so bad that you plummet to tank-level numbers in both, that would make sense, ESPECIALLY when league-wide goal scoring is also going up each year. Do you think those numbers are compelling? Because this forum has dived into much greater detail on a day to day basis over the last three years than that

The other thing is, "bad" PKer Vesey was on the ice for 10 goals, and good PKer Lazar has been on for 6 (in more time). What percentage of the goals that separate these two guys have anything to do with their own breakdowns, versus those of other players, versus good plays for the PP like the one you break down? This is a problem that plagues any stat, a sample size issue, but at least other stats will have a lot more goals (and waaay more shots) to play with in that regard, to cut some of the noise. I'm sure Krueger has been told these numbers, but I bet his own eye for PKing is far more informative on who is PKing well than they are.

I wonder how much the variability of when players come out to PK affects those numbers. I feel like Larry/Zemgus always start (could be dead wrong). If other teams' power plays are like ours, there is a billion times greater chance that we score a goal in the first minute than in the second. That could help guys who come on second, like Vesey (though it doesn't appear to) or Frolik. Or it could hurt them, because often PK shifts are shorter and they'll change like 3 or 4 times compared to the PP's one change. That's a hidden variable in all of this that sort of makes it harder to just use straight up GA/ice time, because on the PP there's generally a bigger gap in scoring likelihood from a top unit than there would be in likelihood of different even strength opponents scoring on you in a comparable amount of ice time (just because it's far more rare for ES goals than PP goals in general)

It's really not, it's a fascinating way to try and quantify a borderline-unquantifiable sport. That people can be obnoxious and condescending when presenting the stats as something they aren't doesn't change that. When you stay in your lane, and use the stats as they would claim to be used best, you can do some neat things with them, like be correct about the 2013-14 Colorado avalanche, or the Nucks/Flames of the following season, or find diamond in the rough players a year early (they helped me (along with film) value Point as a 90 point center when others were betting me that Sam Reinhart was substantially better) or identify players you need to get away from or trick other teams with (Galchenyuk before he fell off the table)

Those charts hint at what we are all aware of - the Sabres struggle to break through into areas of the ice where goals are more likely, and rakish notices that we very rarely successfully get the goalie moving on passes THROUGH those areas. As a result, we only have more goals than the worst scoring teams because of things like the shooting talent of Jack (if he had the 5v5 goal total of, say, Barzal, the Sabres would be bottom 3 in scoring at 5v5). Most Sabre lines do the bulk of their work swinging the puck around the boards to the point, and engaging in 50/50 battles. These are things you have to be able to do, but it can't be all you do. Part of it is on coaching, as well. Teams like Montreal and Ottawa don't have a huge amount of forward talent but are capable of breaking open a defense. The Sabres tend to play into the hands of a defense trying not to be broken open.

yes

What were they wearing? Those teams look good in their usual garb

This is a bit of a silly way to look at it - for example, xGF/xGA peak in predictability something like 40 games out. So, early on last year, his RAPM charts are more likely to tell you about the quality of player he'll be in February than charts of any other stat we have on the planet, which is why they get used in that manner over stuff like "well Scandella has x this stat and y that one so he's having a good year and we'll be good if we keep using him over the next few months" I understand that hockey stats don't perform all that well when you cross over to other sports and certainly other fields, but to deny the fact that they can give you some information about the season a player is having, particularly in the extremes, especially if said player is on the west coast and you never get to see him play, is a bit pointless - you may have a grainy, surface-level point, but if you ever use any lesser-quality predictive or descriptive stat ever to try and tell me anything about a player, you're being even more useless, so. That said, if you have tape on a player, watch it before doing anything else, understand the team he's playing on and the situations he's playing in, and then compare it to any data you can find, and you'll have a nice picture of the player.

More or less. No QB has ever thought the game at that level - Tom is always three steps ahead. He not only knows what the defense is doing to stop him, he knows how they are going to respond to how they think he'll adjust, and already has THAT beaten too. And it goes far beyond vague, weak assertions of "cheating" (which is not to say that things like spygate weren't disgusting and bad and tarnishing of NE forever, they are). This is stuff that changes so often that it'd be impossible to not have caught them doing it a million times over, again and again, week after week, for cheating to be an adequate explanation for the mental chess that Brady is capable of. Teams go ridiculous lengths to change and disguise and rename and stunt their coverages and alignments, even on a drive-to-drive basis, no matter who they are playing against. With Tom, it doesn't matter, he beats defenses in the mental game more than any QB ever has.

And those RAPM charts don't tell the story that the analytics community does, when they suggest that Risto is the worst player to lace up skates in the last few years, or calling him an "analytics disaster" Most of that stuff is within one standard deviation of average, on poor team RAPM charts aren't interesting unless you have guys pushing 2-3 STDV in several categories

Honestly that one chart would tell me that Risto's defensive zone shot suppression is fine, but that his partner struggles. Which makes sense, as Montour isn't very good defensively, especially when asked to play left-defense

He's playing with Parayko? Good luck trying to score on those guys, especially if the Selke winner is out there

Wasn't this the duo that got torched in the NZ on Ottawa's PP goal to make it 4-2?

In almost all of those moments, they were displaying transition chemistry. Mojo's strength is transition, and it's really fallen off - and Skinner, by himself, is useless in transition. So their chemistry has evaporated as Mojo doesn't do much in the offensive zone that would give Skinner his characteristic netfront chances IMO

I feel like Johansson plays center like Larsson plays wing

We're gonna throw a 5th rounder at them for him and he's gonna score 27 next season being a bruiser on Eichel's RW

Simmonds is not gonna give us too much offensively it looks like, but I don't doubt that his presence is part of what energized/engaged us last night, I don't think that was a coincidence. And he hopefully doesn't look to be LOST offensively, completed some solid passes, maintained a few cycles. Excited to see Kahun tomorrow. And I still can't get Johansson getting mugged out of my brain. It's going to be the lasting image from this game.