Randall Flagg

What if I framed it for you differently: I am not giving up on Casey's potential NHL utility. However, given the state of our roster, I deem it worth attaching high value assets to him to functionally "upgrade" him to what we'd like him to become someday, but right now. An example would be the proposal I put together last summer, that Hoss called the worst one he's ever seen on these boards. Risto, Mittelstadt, Borgen and 7 for Cirelli, Cernak and Foote But it could involve fewer players than this. Find a team that wants to blow it up and start over, and offer Mitts and our first 28 points per 82 games isn't something to discount, but it's not something to be impressed by either

Don't you usually take issue with pi's TRPM? Because you're literally using exactly that right now hehe

Would you have said the same thing the day he was hired, if someone told you "yeah, they'll probably be able to compete for a playoff spot in Jason's fifth year, maybe" ? The idea that next year being a wash to wait for his third first round selection to possibly be 2C shows that you're just liking Botterill to like Botterill, rather than seriously examining his work

He's an internal candidate for 3C, but they'd better not treat him as a serious one for 2C. Like always, that's not to say he can't blossom and become one, but don't plan for it

Monahan is the perfect 2C, but yeah, just because CGY wants a 1C in front of him doesn't mean they want to move on from him

They also have three highly losable games before March even starts, and could easily find themselves ten points out or more by the time they play their first March game.

0-4-0 against Colorado since they bottomed out. 20 goals allowed, 6 goals scored. We may get smoked

Don't they have a Boston-Carolina-Carolina right after their next seven? Those teams have beaten the Sabres a combined 15 straight times

I would try and trade first overall for a center. I would add to it to get an even better center, or a nice package from a team ready to blow it up. I would insist, call around, call around again. I'm not saying that deal is out there, but I'd try and find it. And as far as my willingness to trade goes, the difference between 3 and like 6 is basically zero for me.

Also, no matter where the remaining Colorado game fell, it was always going to be a likely loss, so nobody should jump off a bridge just yet even if they blow our doors off tomorrow.

That's what I figure.

I read this and figured Howard was hurt and maybe only played a few games. The man has 2 wins in 26 games! Yikes!

I'd put Simmonds in Risto's spot (if he looks good there in practice) just because we need a rested Risto if we want to do something down the stretch.

We might quibble about how "much" of the season he played in a way I would describe as "petulant," but I'm not thrilled with the stretch of hockey that had those bad penalties in it either. Tough to quantify if that has affected the lack of goals going in now, but I know for a fact that stuff is left on the table almost every shift by the non-entities (offensively) he plays with, which really have no place being on this team in a non-4th-line role ever again. And stuff is left on the table by him in both zones too, so he's not perfect. But the Jason Botterill offensive zone allergies are inexcusable at this point, and have permeated the roster for years, and Jeff's line for all of this one. People cite Jeff's Carolina linemates, but while those guys weren't stars, the difference between their offensive creation potential, whether that is just making passes or making space or scoring, is large compared to Jason's yearly depth forwards' I agree that having fewer goals than last year from a line that has a guy on it making 9 mil has a net negative impact on the standings, but I think you get what I'm going for with the post you quoted, in that I don't think our problems can be accurately boiled down to "Skinner should have had x goals in this situation this year, and that is the difference between us having a meaningfully different outcome on the season from the one we will end up having" which I am becoming more and more convinced isn't the case the more I watch.

I don't think that's relevant to this. It only hinges on performance bonuses

hfboards' resident cap guru guy guesses that we'll be in the 1-1.5 million range for how much cap will spill over to next season, but says it depends on stuff we don't have access to right now, I think.

I don't think Botterill is a good GM but I'm happy with how the Trocheck thing played out as of right now.

ie, if Skinner has x more goals, the Sabres aren't better because Skinner has x more goals, but because the environment in which Skinner is making the plays like I'm watching from last season right this second, x more times this season, exists in place of the one that is currently happening on whichever line he's on the ice with, night after night

If this is true, it's not through "Skinner should have had x more goals by now in his minutes, that's why we aren't in it." Adding goals isn't how hockey works. The thing that isn't working on Skinner's line all year isn't just Skinner being worse, it's other stuff which holds that under an umbrella of things going wrong, and this becomes clearer to me every single new game that I'm focusing on it. And what has me so insistent about this today in particular was spending this morning looking at 2018/19 clips that I have saved in memory, compared to what I've seen offensively from Skinner the last few weeks

It's possible, but I could also see that line being an absolute disaster haha Slumping Skinner, Johansson who hates playing center and has declined steadily while being in that position, and an unknown who is widely thought to be a shell of his former self

I'm actually gonna put something together on Skinner this offseason. I firmly believe that we don't need to be anywhere near the ledge on Jeff, as long as Jason does his job this summer. And I will have the film, stats, and arguments to prove it

I think Haula is probably in Florida's long-term plans. If he is, or if Florida makes the playoffs before letting him walk, then I hold firm on my preference. If he's not, then I guess, but i really hated the NHL pieces and Tage at the time of the trade, and the fact that the first was lotto protected even after how we were bent over, which was insulting Not by the people who were right about the trade all along I was arguing the day after the trade that they should have had negative value because of their play and contract combination

Even with all of this, if our cap genius ends up handcuffing a couple million in cap space next season, I'm justified in being pretty pissed off, right? Especially because of how bad Frolik is haha By reputations are you referring to Bob McKenzie telling us that Berglund and Sobotka were great depth? Because I'd much rather have the Panthers' haul today than I would have liked the Sabres' haul back on July 1st

I don't doubt that we'd be a little bit better with 10 more goals from Skinner, which I'd definitely like to have, but being able to "place them well" seems to be a bit of a stretch haha. We'd be a couple points closer, going into the same buzzsaw stretch that will likely end our season in the next two weeks either way. I always come off as excusing away Jeff's performance, but that's not the case. I'm just currently making the arguments that even this year he is not a comparable for Wayne Simmonds, and that I don't think our standings predicament has much to do with his lack of performance, even if it's not acceptable. We've also hit a point where, now that Skinner is playing more normally, I'd like to start to get on management for the fact that he is not being put into situations that maximize what you can get out of him. I don't care if Ralph would rather develop Olofsson with Eichel, but Jason needed to have something in place on Skinner's line that can reliably create the on-ice situations in which he terrorized opponents last season. It's hard to articulate, but I'm seeing so much of the same stuff out of Skinner off the puck offensively that is being quietly whisked away into oblivion because the potential for the play elsewhere and on-puck was not even close to being met by linemates. This is stuff that turned into some of the best moments we've had in decades last season. I'm watching it fail to unfold over and over and over again, while last year, it kept unfolding in an ideal way because Jack is a monster. Some sort of pro-scouting failure has led to the fact that the Sabres only have one line capable of making this stuff happen. I'm no longer irritated with the way Skinner is playing because I view his game as being back to normal after a ~28 game detour, punctured by shoulder injury. But the surface level results have barely changed because Buffalo Sabres offensive zone play with Skinner on the ice is materially different this year from last in ways unrelated to Skinner that has changed the environment from one Skinner succeeds in. But Marty says he tried hard because he scored a goal but didn't try hard the game before because he didn't score a goal the game before

I don't know about that. Last season we had great 1st lines and 4th lines, and at this point, Jeff hadn't started falling off yet and was still pacing for something over 50 goals. We played solid team defense and had bad goaltending and bad middle six play, just like this year. And we had an identical record