Randall Flagg

I'm pretty confident that Lazar is settling into a 13F role after a hot start with the Sabres, so I wouldn't call him a bona fide NHL center

Benoit Pouliot played more than double the time with Ryan O'Reilly that he did with any other center on the Sabres team, ROR was his leading teammate's ice time. He scored at about 60% the rate of Skinner, even after these 21 games, with that ice time. Skinner has more shots on goal in 24 fewer games

I don't find this idea meaningful

Detroit has only beaten two Eastern Conference teams in regulation or overtime: the Bruins and Canadiens. The rest they've either not beaten, or only beaten in a shootout. Crazy stat

A nice reminder that there's one real center on this team without Jack, and he's a 4C

I just bashed Friedman in the other thread, but from a poster's summary of his words on hfboards: Lastly, he [Friedman] says that the biggest wildcard with the team is what the organization looks like next year. Whether Botterill will be back, if Kevin Adams or Kruger are elevated into new roles, etc. Says that the Pegulas are really frustrated and that all options are being discussed.

Wow good stuff yet again from the gossips Friedman, Dreger etc. why do these guys get paid to perpetually provide zero value to anyone

Marty is a fun presence on the broadcast but the combined hockey insight he, Andrew, Craig, Duff etc. have ever given me is zero

They are not stunning lol. There are more compelling Skinner takes on this board every day, and he provided no examples/evidence of anything that COULD be stunning. "Not even working." "taking bad penalties, not drawing penalties." This is the kind of stuff I yelled at hockey games on the TV at age 12 I'm not even sure what you're second question is asking. What I mean is I'm going to continue to do what I've done on this forum every day for years

I've seen an apporopriate amount of Skinner criticism for his stretch of play, I'd say, to the point where what Marty says is uninteresting because I've already read it a hundred times. It's particularly prevalent in post-loss GDTs. Maybe 10-12 games in he wasn't getting much, but it's gone on long enough that everyone has had their say already. I don't mind that people post about it, but there isn't anything to say that hasn't already been said a bunch, and Marty's "insight" highlights that I'm far more interested in figuring out how to fix it than being angry that it's happening, especially because there are only parts of his goal-less stretch where I have real problems with his game, and we aren't currently in one

I just mean that, maybe they don't like the seeming guarantee that a bye week -> super bowl and would rather "increase parity" by having fewer teams on a bye week or something. I'm just babbling

Jeff has drawn 7 more penalties than he's taken this year. I can think of two bad penalties he's taken, and they were weeks, and then a month or two, ago. Marty is being pretty damn vague, so his comments aren't any more interesting than the shredding that Skinner gets here on a regular basis Anyone who thinks they were going to get structure from jeff hasn't watched any of Skinner's career, and doesn't understand what was successful about his season last year

Did he give examples of the attitude? I remember two bad penalties, but they were a while ago now.

I'd definitely wait til the draft lottery to do something like that. It was the kind of thing I was asking for last June

I am back to having no leads and it's pretty miserable lol. Never go to college and never major in something that isn't a specific branch of engineering that the place you want to live needs a lot of

Perhaps the point is increasing these odds then

idk, I just heard from the job I have gotten farthest along in the process with, and it wasn't good news, so I much prefer the time when I hadn't been hearing back yet lol

Did we actually think we'd get a 2C straight up for Risto? The NHL tends to think he's awful. You gotta put him in a package with Mitts, a first, both, more, something

Saw this sentiment elsewhere and it resonated with me - how many hours did they spend scouting Frolik and how did they not come to the conclusion that he was completely fried? It's unbelievable that they thought after putting serious research in that this was what they needed, at 4.3 mil with no retention imagine having an extra 2nd to beef up these trade proposals or add another prospect Burskovsky was added for a 2nd

I was reading that after a four year stagnation period, Ekblad has become one of the best D in the league, as he was projected during a strong rookie season that had never been replicated. Something we can keep in mind with Dahlin. Development is wild

Also it seems like you make that thing zoom in closer and closer each time you post it if so, brilliant

Pretending there is a discernible, let alone significant difference in the "heart" shown in NHL action by Montour and Reinhart might be the most pi2000 thing I've ever seen especially when followed one post later by the Trump GIF

It's a pokemon whose name is going to be the typo on Vincent Trocheck's Sabres jersey.

That original post began with an "On Krueger" because I'm doing one about Botts centered on this game too. On Botterill: There was only one thing about this game that made me mad. It wasn't the goalie situation, or the forward depth. I think they played hard, so it wasn't effort. I wasn't mad at coaching, though I have no idea why we didn't use a timeout. Go back to his introductory press conference in 2017. Paul Hamilton asks a question about Jason's vision for the team. "What I like about the group right now is, this is a league that thrives on centermen." In 2020, we have two NHL centers under contract: Jack Eichel and Johan Larsson. We have Curtis Lazar, Evan Rodrigues, and Marcus Johansson filling in the other two slots. We have one NHL center under contract for next season. Cozens and Mitts are in the pipeline, but will be good NHL 2Cs somewhere between a couple years from now and potentially never. For a team that simply MUST win next year, it's a tall order to take the next step to Jason's supposed vision. "The type of team that I would like to create here, in conjunction with the head coach we bring in, is a team that plays a high tempo... a high tempo puck possession game. Even without skill [referring to his AHL SWB team that models after its parent Penguins organization] you can still play a high percentage, high intensity game... ...Some of the success in Pittsburgh is from the standpoint of simplicity, of a north-south game. If you're asking me specifically what we're doing, up tempo, puck possession, north-south game." In other interviews, he elaborates on wanting wingers that attack with speed. He thinks a fast, north-south, high-tempo game is a good vision for a team, and I do too. he cited speed when acquiring guys like Sheary, Vesey, Montour. Montour can skate, but I haven't seen a lot of speed in the game from these other two. Anyway, the thing that made me mad last night is this. We gave up 7 goals, but it wasn't because of bad defensive coverage, sloppy play, lack of effort. It was because from behind their net, through the neutral zone, and into ours, Ottawa's high tempo, north-south, speed transition game absolutely broke us to pieces. We couldn't handle the speed at which they moved the puck with precision, straight up the ice, with minimal horizontal fanfare. We couldn't handle how fast they closed in on us, we couldn't adjust our gaps quick enough. We couldn't handle their closing forecheck speed, and as a result, we got to chasing and running around when the Sens got to our zone in a manner reminiscent of tank era teams. Our team can play defense, but any defense breaks if they're not built to handle a huge amount of one thing or another - and in the Sens case, they have a huge amount of speed. It opened us up in ways I've only seen Toronto, Tampa, and Washington do this year. The Senators are low on talent. They have the worst owner in the league. They were the national laughingstock for about 2 straight years now. They have blown up their identity and built their team as cheaply as possible, with a GM considered by most fans to be a joke (we're a team!). Why is this organization, who entered this "joke" status a year after Jason took over, destroying us with the game we set out to build three years ago? Why do we look nothing like this, even though we have pieces that he got here with and lucked into like Eichel, Reinhart, Dahlin? Ottawa's roster is an intentional scrap heap. It still shows a more successful manifestation of hockey ideology than Jason has ever come close to. That Ottawa team is, two years into being a joke, playing a game that we, of infinite resources and sky high building blocks, claimed to want to build three years ago, and are playing that game far better than this team ever will. We will finish with a better record, because we can play team defense, and not everything is doom and gloom, and our high end talent dwarfs theirs (though we'll be lucky if it doesn't take Dahlin a couple more years to reach the level of game-breaking ability that Chabot has, which is no insult to Dahlin, and no direct, full comparison either), but the vision Botterill supposedly couples to every single move he makes has never been further from being the Sabres' identity, and was used by a joke franchise to pick us apart three years after he told us about it.