Randall Flagg

Love you Sam

You have summed up the state of the talent on this team more concisely than anyone has to this point. I spend five thousand words trying to convey the same information that is in this post There is a reason this is an evenly matched game, even though Detroit is so bad

Did Rick almost call Hutton Miller?

Detroit almost seems more capable of multi-player skill plays than we do

Maybe! Its funny how often Zemgus is the victim of shifts like that

I'm pretty sure Sheary's shootout career percentage is double our power play percentage, isn't it?

That's a weird way to spell late July

You're talking about the season in which they constructed the worst slate of depth forwards a non-tank Sabres team has likely ever seen, with all of Nolan, Wilson, Josefson, Griffith, Moulson, injured/bad Zemgus and Larry, Bailey/Baptiste, Pouliot, Rodrigues, and Criscuolo got serious minutes throughout the season, while Beaulieu, Falk, Gorges, Antipin, and Nelson were key parts of the defense, to say nothing of the Tennyson disaster, coupled with their starting goalie's mental health unraveling and their backup goalie's sub-replacement level stats giving the team bottom-of-the-barrel goaltending? Combined with the fact that Eichel was not ready for the competition he was seeing, so that even though he scored a lot, he was scored on a lot more than that? It's nowhere near as simple as "well we sukked when these guys were here soooo" no matter what you're arguing.

I fully agree that Ralph and Jason have been big on fixing the culture. Has it worked? Do we think we're on the right side of the river at this point, having struggled through it but survived, building for the future with our new culture? Or am I going to keep reading more of these stories about how awful the culture is here this offseason, like I did in the ROR offseason, and during the collapse last year, and in the spurt of national attention we got last week?

I just hope Terry realizes that you can take either one of Beane's drafts, 2018 OR 2019, and find more promising results in rounds 3 through 7 of just one of those drafts, much less including all of the other facets that go into being an NFL GM, than you can for Botterill's totality of moves in three offseasons as Sabres GM Results matter and Jason has crafted the worst chance-generating offense in the NHL over a span of three years despite entering his tenure with Kane, ROR, Eichel, Reinhart, Olofsson already in the organization

FWIW, the number of PA posts about Jeff Skinner >> the number of the rest of Sabrespace's posts about Jeff Skinner combined This is an exaggeration but probably not a large one!

There's no way we lose this game. Im serious this time. ?

I would hope not, I just built a team that would be playing in May ?

The SwampD-inspired Sabres 2020 offseason: Re-sign Larry, Girgs, Reinhart Mittelstadt for Josh Anderson Montour and a prospect for Andrew Copp Prospect, pick to whoever has our third for our third back, so that we can offersheet Anthony Cirelli at something that would get him out of tampa (he's got a skill-and-sandpaper game, I think he'd be one of your favorites) UFA: Braden Holtby, Ryan Reaves, JG Pageau (not a tough guy persay but I want more centers), Radko Gudas Skinner - Eichel - Anderson Olofsson - Cirelli - Reinhart Johansson - Pageau - Copp Zemgus - Larry - Reaves extras: Lazar, Okposo Miller - Risto Dahlin - Jokiharju McCabe - Gudas hopefully Borgen is closer to making the jump, he and Pilut can split call-up duties, Pilut to replace an injured puck mover, Borgen to replace one of the other guys. Note: Gudas may well be fried now, but he was a surprisingly effective defenseman a season and a half ago, I haven't paid attention since Holtby (i know his stats have been down for a few years, but I'm predicting a Fleury-like rebound) Ullmark

I personally got caught up in the Johansson thing myself. (He's still fine, just, I am very disillusioned at this point)

The more I think about this, the more shocked I am. My case against Bylsma (and I guess Murray?) centered solely on the fact that our offense couldn't sustainably create given our transition preferences. The Sabres were fifth-last in xGF and scoring chances during their two years here. Botterill made it worse. Three offseasons and 220 NHL games later, we have fallen to dead last since he came in, and this isn't simply weighted by his first, last place season, as we are last and second last respectively (detroit is only slightly worse at generating scoring chances, less than one scoring chance for per game worse than us) THIS season. His forwards are literally incapable of playing modern offensive hockey, and this is even while Eichel and Reinhart are well above average, to elite, in doing so. That's how far back Jason's forwards set us

That's not what I implied, I was referencing Jason's propensity to stare at the even strength goal column when acquiring players, with his "not playing up to their NHL norms for goals and points" comments

Don't you understand? That's 11 million dollars that could be going to more Frolik, Vesey, Sheary, Berglund, Sobotka, Wilson, Griffith, Pouliot, Josefson, and Nolans! We'd be sitting pretty if not for GMTM

I wonder, though doubt, if we'd be able to build something around Montour for Copp.

I'd rather have Scandella's 17/18 and 19/20 than any version of any of the players in that trade, since the trade. It wasn't a bad trade, just not super impactful either way

Try this with Conor Sheary's season the year before he came to Buffalo. Even away from Crosby he had excellent "underlying stats" that didn't come close to telling the story of his struggles to do the things I'm referring to in that post.

And I'm pretty sure the Sabres have been around league average at that stuff for a couple of years now, too. They aren't some shutdown defensive unit but it's more than passable to get us where we want to be. We have forwards who play the perimeter, not because they're scared or weak or not gritty enough to deal with the netfront area, but because they don't have or trust their skills in maintaining possession and creating plays out in the open, they use the boards to aid with puck protection, they're basically a magnet for Sabres players and the puck in the offensive zone. It's better to send the puck back to the point, or into the corner for another 50/50 battle, then to peel away and immediately get stripped and have the opponent off and running in the other direction That's why I so emphatically oppose the apparent philosophy of our forwards just "being behind their NHL norms for goals and points" as Jason put it. These norms were put up in different systems where the players were almost always used with much better linemates (Vesey and Sheary) compared to what they get here (usually our 3rd and 4th lines) and these players never drove sustainable offensive zone tactics to these results themselves, and film study by pro scouts with competent eyes would have revealed this. We need to start acquiring forwards, not with their stat sheets in front of us, but in watching their game and seeing what they are capable doing regularly in the offensive zone. It's why I zoned in on Cirelli last summer - I saw a guy that fiendishly drove the puck to the slot and crease area, who had the raw stick skills, core strength, and mental reaction time to not lose the puck every time he tried it. The numbers wouldn't have told you to build a trade centering on Mitts and Risto for him like I had wished we would, but IMO the film says we should have tried desperately to go after him and give him a bigger role. Now that he's pacing for 60 points even though he's playing behind the Point and Stamkos lines, and is in line for a Tampa-like bridge, there's probably no chance to pry him out. We need to find the next under-utilized but incredibly capable forward candidate this offseason. I don't know who that is, but I do know that Tampa and Chicago churn them out like crazy.

Aren't you the one that's doing research on this???

I think part of what makes our defense look bad is that our offense is bottom of the barrel in terms of what they're capable of doing in the offensive zone. So in a game, we see our defense give up chances, looks, passing plays that we haven't seen ourselves in years, and think it's a function of our awful defense. In reality, we may even do better about limiting these chances than the average NHL team, we just never see our offense capable of doing this to other teams. The issue really is our offense (and backup goaltending). The talent of Jack and Olofsson and Sam and Skinner (until the last few months) has kept the raw goals scored out of the basement but we are the worst chance creation team since Botterill got here, measured by either of expected goals for or scoring chances for.

They have the collective roster talent for a ~77-87 point finish, fluctuations allowed for luck. They're on an 82 point pace. This team is producing in line with their talent level for the last 140 games