Randall Flagg

I share these feelings. The only WRs I'd take in round 1 will be long gone by 22. I want this offseason to be almost entirely an offensive focus, but I saw a mock draft that had AJ Epenesa falling to Buffalo, and we desperately need an edge presence as Shaq may leave and Jerry is only getting older (and still not drawing any holding flags). So if a DE was BPA at 22 (or one of the crazy good linebackers falls for some reason) I wouldn't mind as long as we identified a good WR to take in the next round or two. Hell, take two of them. Find another OL, especially if Spain leaves. Draft a guy that complements Singletary. Cut Kroft and sign Hooper. Bring in a WR like Perriman (who looks damn good to me, but overshadowed by Godwin and Evans on that roster). Super bowl!!

Gallant will get another job quickly, and DeBoer is not a push-over.

The curse of Philly goaltending will propel the Sabres to the playoffs

I think it's weird, but I don't think it's an inherently bad decision. I'm just arguing that Gallant is a very good NHL coach. Not saying you're directing this at me, just putting it out there since I've been pumping him up in this thread. I don't think your Sabres fan base point holds any water. Here's how general NHL fans reacted to it, just on the first page of that thread alone on hfboards: "What." - Flames fan "W T H" - Unspecified "Is this a joke? Has to be for non-hockey related reasons." - Sharks fan "Wow. That's a shocker."- Bruins fan "What the ****" - Devils fan "I mean this can't be hockey related can it?" - Unspecified "Ehhhrrrhhhh... Ouatte?" - Unspecified "What??????" - Sharks fan "Well this is... surprising." - Unspecified "You gotta be kidding me" - Unspecified "They fired Gallant for Deboer? Lol what" - Leafs fan "Uhhhh... what?!" - Lightning fan "Why" - Bruins fan "What????????????" - Unspecified Unspecified means I can't tell what team they root for by their name, avatar, or location. None of the unspecified commenters is a poster I've ever seen on the Sabres forum. This is just from page 1 of the 21 page long thread on his firing. Some posters think it makes sense, but to say that there's something "telling" about Sabres fans being surprised by the firing doesn't pass the sniff test.

Jack's gonna enter that list this season

They "aren't winning" but are 3 points out of the 1 seed. I'd be comfortable betting that they get home ice in the first round, because they're a good team. You're retreating into broader points about the effectiveness of NHL coaches that nobody is talking about. What we're saying is that he has absolutely established himself as a very good coach, and that he can establish remarkably effective NHL systems and strategies, to go along with the human and psychological aspects of the job that has made Vegas the story of the last 5 years in this league. It's on tape, it's measurable, and the players will tell you all about it (Colin Miller's reaction was telling). What, did two stray posters say we should acquire him? Wasn't one of them pi? So, one poster making that comment in a serious fashion? ?

Olofsson got jurt January 2nd and they said 5-6 weeks. 6 weeks from January 2nd is Thursday, February 13th

bruh

Your second line is uselessly vague. They were a cup contender last year, and in the last two games against SJ were playing the best team hockey I think I've seen in the Stanley Cup Playoffs since the 2007-08 Red Wings. Had they not been shafted by that major call which wasn't even a 2 minute minor upon review, a situation that was so bad they literally changed the rules so it doesn't happen again, they would have won multiple playoff series. He's a really good coach. William Karlsson doesn't come to Buffalo in 2017-18 and score 40 goals and turn into the player he did. He's only proven nothing if you squint at the standings from far away and don't let yourself learn anything more about his career.

this is a weird comparison - Vegas were legit cup contenders the last two years and have a real shot at home ice through multiple playoff series again this year. No roster is perfect. Good teams don't have perfect rosters, they just know how to address holes over a several year span. Nothing about the way Vegas is run suggests that they'll indefinitely have problems at the defensive position just because they do now, just like even a bad team like the Sabres can turn weaknesses (check out our slate of defensemen in 2016, and 2017) into strengths (as you list now) in just a few years. In the meantime, while we've been god awful, they've been a blast to follow for their fans.

If I had to pick two coaches to lump together as almost identical to each other it'd probably be those two

I actually don't even want Reinhart to drive his own line. I want to build a second line with 3 Reinhart-tier players that all complement each other. We shouldn't have to put one of our 4 good forwards with trash year after year

I mean "fired" but used a phrase that was in line with what Bill Peters was doing to his players while on the bench

I'm wondering if it's a continuation of the stuff coming out that got Peters and Babcock slapped around

We can check and see if this has merit or if you're just making stuff up - in the last 3 seasons, Reinhart has spent 38% of his ES time away from Eichel. He has 25 goals and 67 points with Eichel and 20 goals and 21 assists without him. Prorating these rates out for a full season, we would have: With Eichel: 82 games, ~16 even strength goals, ~42 even strength points Without Eichel: 82 games, ~21 even strength goals, ~43 even strength points This includes the time he spent centering Griffith and Moulson in 2017-18, as well as his stretches with last year's Sobotka and Sheary/Rodrigues. So I don't really buy your random guessing. It makes sense that his assists spike with a guy like Jack and his shot (as well as Olofsson/Skinner when he's up there) but when he's NOT with Jack his linemates have generally been horrendous, aside from stints with ROR in the first year of this analysis (which was his worst ES year of the 3 by FAR, and so doesn't contribute heavily). These statistics indicate why we were so anxious to see Reinhart drive his own line in the first place, and the fact that I'm seeing the conclusion that he can't being drawn from the simple fact that our coaches don't DO it rather than actually seeing what happens, I am inclined to ignore the rest of what the people saying this have to say on the subject By the way, Sam averages ~15-20 PP points per season in the last 3, and there's no need to remove Eichel from the equation there, so that gives us the ~60 point player we see in that span. And he's gotten better at piling up points every season of his career and will approach 70 this one

I'm not following them closely, but they continue to have elite underlying metrics, and the surface ones show that they're 3 points behind the 1 seed in their division. This is pretty weird then?

That is a pretty silly exercise for the winger of a pass-first puck dominant center in a sport that involved being hounded by five opponents on a sheet of ice

Boudreau's Wild are notoriously stingy defensively. At least they were up to last season, I haven't been keeping close tabs.

Ugh, that 2008/2009 season was brutal. The Sabres had 41 wins, were +16 in goal differential, and hit 91 points in the standings. They were a playoff team with merely BAD backup goaltending. But Lalime gave them just 5 wins in 21 starts. If that was only 6 or 7 wins in 21 starts, they were a playoff team.

Two consecutive years of completely stunted development, for different reasons.

By retaining Hutton the Sabres have chosen to throw 15% of their season in the trash.

Yes indeed. The Blues cut Chad Johnson after 7 starts with 10 games played yielded .884 save percentage and 6 losing decisions. Hutton has SEVENTEEN starts and is sitting with .892, which IMO warrants cutting like Chad got (remember, that is what brought up Binnington and started their turnaround, as Allen got much better in a backup role as well). Doubly so when you consider the fact that in his last TWELVE starts, almost double what Chad was allowed, he has allowed 50 goals (4.17 per game) and has won only one of them, posting a .868 save percentage. His last 8 starts show no wins and 4.75 goals allowed per start, at .854 save percentage. Hutton should have been cut a month ago.

I definitely pumped him up. I probably shouldn't have, but I also think that anybody dumping on an assistant coach is probably blowing smoke because nobody has any idea what influence any of them have on what we see on the ice.

Branching off from your point completely, if you had told me in August that Zemgus would have 8 goals in 48 games I'd have signed up for that so fast Probably 3 summers ago I crunched some numbers and they showed that Eichel and Zemgus each get a lot more productive when they're paired together. I doubt that still holds, as Eichel has exploded offensively since then

I used to be on the Galchenyuk train but I'm not anymore