Randall Flagg

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

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the core, along with the Pegulas, are being shown all of the contract freedom we get on July first (by Jason/Ralph) as a sort of explanation for things to date, and a "just make it to here, don't worry, I've got a plan for all of these resources" type of thing. That could be the version they give to Skinner. It's my last Botts hope I'm holding onto. Skinner gets his 2C, we get our third line, etc.

Yeah I can't say I go as far as this poster in believing that Ralph hurts Jeff but I figured it was worth bringing over from that forum.

Also, the league has EXPLODED with goals the last two seasons. GA needs to normalize this before he can make the claims he's making

Of course they aren't playoff caliber, what I'm saying is that Jason has no real excuse for them not being playoff caliber for the 2019-20 season. and 100% of Sabres fans would have agreed at the time of his hiring

Toxic is a good word to describe the fan atmosphere right from the get-go of the last Detroit game.

They're an example that excuses are almost always just that - excuses.

There is simply zero chance that Lazar can sustain being a 2C for any meaningful amount of time. The 2Cs in our conference are incredibly talented and we need one to match if we want to beat them consistently

I thought this post by Bendium on hfboards was an interesting mix of the culture and Skinner discussions happening here. Presented without comment, except to point out that hfboards is generally more down on Krueger than Sabrespace: I have been thinking about this for a couple hours now and have come to one conclusion. I don't have enough information to answer the questions I now have. One thing is for sure, Howard Simon got Krueger to open up the curtain a little. I am just not completely sure what we saw in this glimpse. Some thoughts though.I have been in leadership/management positions for the last 30 years, from 8 years in the military through running a 200 million dollar operation. I have seen many different leadership and management styles from top 10% functionality to leaders being fired for criminal negligence and failure. There are plenty of different leadership/management styles that can be successful, but the key to me is two fold. First, as a leader you must have a style and philosophy you are confident with, truly believe in, and are committed to sticking with. You must be able to communicate it and teach it to the organization below you what that philosophy is so they can understand why you do what you do. Second, you must be willing to continue to learn and have the flexibility to adjust to the conditions in front of you to ensure your approach is the best approach to achieve organizational success. Ralph clearly has the first one going for him. I am presently questioning the second one.My concern with the handling of Skinner. I once had to replace a group supervisor that was retiring. We looked at both internal and external candidates to replace. One of the internal candidates was a senior hourly employee that had always been a hourly leader/influencer. However, he often used that influence against the management staff, pushing back against every move and being a royal paine in my arse. While the hire was my decision, the rest of the management staff was against his candidacy, and more importantly my boss was against him and had a strong preference for another candidate. I was nearly fired when I gave the disgruntled candidate the job. Why did I? My response to my boss and the rest of the staff, was that it was my job and responsibility to select the most talented, capable candidate available and then commit myself to developing them. If I was afraid to do that then I don't belong in my job. I have found over time that everyone wants to be happy and successful. When they are not it is because there is some object in their path that they are unable to get past. In the case of intelligent, highly talented people, it often comes down to being in a place and role in life that doesn't match with how they see themselves in their minds eye. In this case, the employee saw himself at a higher level, but was not being given the opportunity. I gave him that, and flipped his influence he was using against management, to one being used in its favor. He blossomed and in just a few years moved up several levels. Skinner has spent 8 years developing his game and thought he was signing up for 8 years more to play on Eichels wing in the style he has developed and sold. Now Ralph is trying to make him into something other than what he sees in his minds eye, and seems to be giving him an old school "my way or the highway." This often works on the bottom 80% who are open to doing whatever they have to keep their job. This doesn't work on the top 20% who require a little more flexibility for their talents to shine.Jeff has never been a defensive force. Jeff is a talented sniper who uses his unusual skating skills and creativity to improvise and generate scoring chances. Those kinds of talented, creative minds always struggle when they are overly bound by an inflexible system around them. Ralph needs to look at this from Jeff's viewpoint and find a way to adjust his approach to make room for Jeff to succeed.

Columbus lost all of Artemi Panarin, Matt Duchene, Sergei Bobrovsky, and Ryan Dzingel (who had 26 goals and 56 points last year) this offseason and sit in this position. I would say that almost no franchise deserves the excuses they get for being bad, unless they're two or fewer seasons into a rebuild after a long, successful stretch of hockey. Just about any franchise at any time is capable of a competitive, compelling product. Certainly one that's been in the position we have been in any of the last five seasons.

I genuinely don't know why I don't feel more strongly about Skinner's slump. I think the fact that it's sandwiching him missing about 4 weeks kind of spread out the angst/worry it causes. And I also think it's partly because I have no reason to believe he'll still be a problem the next time this team's hockey games are meaningful again, in October. This isn't an excuse, but I would put money on it not being an issue by the time the hockey matters again, and I just reserve my anger for the reasons it doesn't matter right now, about 2% of which I'd attribute to Jeff Skinner's scoring slump

Gotcha. I thought the pictures were related

Don't get that one either! I'm not particularly bright

Risto, Johansson, Sheary were strong tonight

Why did the PP not start in the offensive zone?

Scandalla proved me wrong this year, he really bounced back nicely.

Frolik is the worst sabre forward to play at least 10 games this year

No wonder eich has looked like his legs are made of lead for the last three weeks

It is idiotic for Eichel to be in that territory with that stat two incompetent team building organizations that force themselves to grind their prizes into dust

I cannot for the life of me decipher the meme

What on earth