Randall Flagg

However many it is, I could hear it, and the same thing happened vs. Detroit when I was here, after a solid period, and it was Loud

This is why the booing is stupid. This has been a fun game all the way through. Our fans look unintelligent for booing in that situation. It was hardly Olympus Mons they've climbed. A tough, back and forth, hard fought game. boo when they deserve it, not just because it's 1-0 after 1.

Skinner has been very good

Illustration of the reason guys don't fling their gloves off every other second like fans want

They called that after everything they let go?

Let's boo again so he forces a trade and our center spine next year can be Turris-Mitts-Lazar-Rodrigues

For every good game by Sheary we get 12 where he's worse than useless

That was the shift we needed. Were winning this game

Less Risto passing more Risto smashing

Not a sharp night for either of our two staple lines

Can't be mad when the refs keep the whistles away both ways.

Says the dude who wanted Risto to full-on assault someone in a close game for poking a goalie

I blame the fans. It's ham-handed

The booing is getting out of hand IMO. They played well. It's not their fault the roster is substandard. It will do more harm than good.

The Sabres defense is generally solid, but sometimes things like that happen. The real question is why things like that happen for our offense about a tenth of the frequency that we see other teams do game in and game out

Hutton, I can't say I've ever seen anything like that

Rodrigues is back to his last year's form as of late

Like all other teams, the Sabres' level of play ebbs and flows around a baseline. It's just that their baseline is generally the 5th-8th worst in the league

Dahlin with two very nice defensive plays

He couldn't buy a goal that year. Didn't he finally score his first goal like three times that season? First two disallowed?

2000's night eh? 2000-2001 to 2009-2010? I only watched from 2005-2006 to 2009-2010. I'd rank those seasons as follows: 2005-2006 2006-2007 2009-2010 2008-2009 2007-2008 I suspect that is pretty uniform among all fans lol Not sure where any of the four early seasons fit in there. That 2009-2010 season was pretty dang fun. Myers Calder, Miller Vezina, Miller Olympic MVP. Tallinder had an excellent season. Hecht was amazing that year. I believe that was the year Connolly had something like a 17 game point streak. Tim Kennedy, fan favorite! Vanek - Roy - Pominville MacArthur - Connolly - Stafford Kennedy - Gaustad - Hecht Kaleta - Ellis - Grier Appearances from Ennis, Gerbe, Torres trade deadline Tallinder - Myers Lydman - Montador Sekera - Rivet Butler Miller Lalime That team also started out 8-1-1. They got to 20-9-2 and 28-11-4, before a slump where they won just 3 of 14. 10-3-1 just after that in March helped seal the division. Lots of 7-1, 6-2 type beatdowns that year. We blew out Tampa several times.

Yes! I just know that right before this explosion happened, an Art Ross winner had 87 points, whereas now we're gonna have like 10 guys go over 100, so it was important to contextualize those numbers. The issue is that it has nothing to do with Jason, why the Sabres are slightly better offensively. We had Jack and Sam before Jason, only Jack and Sam were little babies that were ~60-70/40-50 point players. Jack is now a 90-100 point player, and Sam is up about 20 points from what he was doing back then. All measures of scoring chances and quality of shots show that Jason's teams are worse at generating offense than pre-Jason teams (which I have shown went from fifth worst before Jason to dead last with Jason), even WITH Eichel/Reinhart, and any goal increase is essentially just because of their skill and league-wide scoring increases.

More specifically, our top line only broke even for the first 18 games,, before Jack's hot streak started. 11 goals for at even strength, 11 against. For a team that is built to lean on a line, this isn't acceptable production. Like I was keeping track at the time, we'd have needed all of our other lines to fairly significantly (compared to what is typically expected of depth lines) outscore their opponents to have a shot at contention like that. 11 goals for in 220 minutes gave them a goal every 20 minutes of ES time. ie, on average, they were scoring less than a goal per game. Then Jack got hot, but he must have gotten power play hot too, as until Olofsson got hurt, they played 311 minutes of ES ice time together and scored 17 goals in that time (a goal every 18 minutes of ES time, a bit better) and were now a +4. so for 41 games, the line was +4 and scored 28 goals at ES. In the 15 games since the injury (and including any time Jack didn't play with Olofsson between 11/15 and his injury, which I don't think is much) the top line has 23 goals in 330 minutes, or one goal every 14 minutes, and is +13. 28 goals, +4 in 41 games AFTER a hot streak, Jack & Victor vs 23 goals, +13 in 15 games without an Eichel 132 point pace streak, Jack without Victor (also with 5% more defensive zone draws) That's the surface level production, I'll also post some other stats for the fancy stats guys Eichel with Olofsson: 49.49 CF%, 47.35 xGF%, 49.1 scoring chance % Eichel without Olofsson: 53.52 CF%, 52.82 xGF%, 52.02 scoring chance % This is mostly just because, while Victor has shown tremendous even strength improvement over the years, he's still not quite ready to truly excel in all facets of the game in the role that comes with playing with Jack. Now that this year is kinda over, I wouldn't mind seeing them continue with Olofsson there because it's worked for his growth so far. But if we were absolutely desperate for maximizing every little thing we possibly can to win games, I'd probably not want Victor on the top line this season.

For the record, there was a long period of time where Jack-Sam-VO was just plain not getting it done, and even after their hot streak together I'm pretty sure that numbers suggested they'll tend to get outscored in the long run

He'd better not be smug. Even if things turn out brilliantly, there are literal years of unintended and unnecessary dreck He's a nice glue guy this year but hasn't shown me an ounce of sustainable puck skill needed for a role like 2C