Randall Flagg

I understand what the concept of Jack and Vesey is supposed to be, but color me extremely skeptical that it will ever manifest in a meaningful way given what we've seen from Vesey this year (which isn't a slate of awfulness, just a whole lot of meh)

Montour is a fun hockey player.

Skinner and Olofsson have learned his trait well, I see them doing it all the time.

Our players are utterly obsessed with missing the net such that the puck exits the zone hitting opponents in stride, especially when our defensemen have jumped in and everyone is at the faceoff dots or below. It's as if it's our favorite hockey play of all time.

Both teams played and traveled last night. I just really looked at the November schedule for the first time. Yikes. If they come out of this month with a good overall record, they just may be a good team.

My preference is the old format, and my reason is simply that it's far easier to immediately determine hypothetical opponents under the old format, because the only useful standings on any site were the conference ones so they'd take preference. Now whenever I look up standings everything defaults to division standings, which are impossible to instantly glean playoff situations or even which teams are in/out from, and then when you find a way to show the wild card standings, it's still work to figure out whose opponents are who, and which teams are closer to falling out (as often the 2/3 seeds actually are closer to missing out than the second wild card team depending on which division is stronger that year). It's annoying as hell. And I think teams might have more gripes than fans because two teams with great regular seasons have a GUARANTEE that one of them gets a lot less revenue than they should have a CHANCE at getting by each of them playing lower-ranked teams, as they each have to play each other. It weakens the importance of the regular season more often than the old standings do and that's a no-no for me

Not sure if anyone caught this, but a little while ago Gary Bettman quipped that besides Toronto fans, everyone really likes the new playoff format - the joke being that they've now twice finished as a high seed with respect to the league, only to be stuck playing another top 5-10 team in the first round, when the "ideal" and "fair" playoff system would be a perfect matchup of seeds 1 & 16, 2 & 15, 3 & 14, etc. I largely agree with this sentiment, as a couple years back the second best team in the league had to face the fourth best team in the league in round one, while the 12th and 13th best teams got lucky and got to play each other. With the split conference setup (which I do like) it can never be perfect, but I was curious to see if the old format performed better in terms of adequately bracketing out teams according to their regular seasons, which are 6 months long, filled with a grueling 82 game schedule, and needs to mean something come playoff time. I wasn't sure how to easily visualize this, but figured out a way that kind of works. Take this plot: The x-axis (horizontal) lists the playoff teams in order of their finish in NHL standings. The y-axis is the position of their opponent. In a "perfect" and ideally "fair" bracket, this is the shape it would have - the higher bars represent an easier opponent, and the lower bars are a team that finishes with a lower number (and thus higher position) in the standings. I went through and recorded the seeding matchups of the first round for each of the six years the new format has been implemented, and then the last six years of the previous format, to see if it's possible pick out a difference visually (each plot is one season): Old Format New Format It is. Neither system works perfectly, and there are wonky years in both, but it's pretty clear that the general linearly decreasing relationship is more prevalent in the old format than in the newer seasons, several of which are damn-near approaching scatter-plot status. There appears to be some justification for the griping of Leafs fans. Of course, the NHL is probably fine with this, sacrificing some "fairness" for the "creating rivalries" angle. I then looked to compare how each seed stacks up on average (it sucks having such small sample sizes, but I stuck with using 6 seasons of the old format so that the sample size error was the same in each case even though there are more seasons of data for the old format): The average standard deviation for any given position in the old format was 2.83 positions, and it was 3.51 in the new format, so the new format is more volatile on a seed-by-seed basis. In particular, the old format does a good job at the extremes, while it can sometimes jumble things up for seeds 5-11, but those teams in general are usually separated by only handfuls of standing points, if that, so it's not anywhere near as unfair as how screwed up the new format can get for the best/worst playoff teams, in particular for the 2-5 and 12-15 seeds. The new format in general is far more likely to give teams in the 2-5 league ranking range far more difficult opponents than is fair, while accordingly giving the 12-15 seeds an easy ride. For example, the 12th seed's ideal opponent is seed 5 and yet in the new format they face the 10th seed on average! These teams can feasibly be separated by 5-6 wins, which generally indicates a sizable gap between NHL teams. Further, the 4th seed's ideal opponent is the 13th seed, while they average facing the 7th seed under the new format. Remember when Philly made the playoffs 2 years ago? Probably not - they got smoked by the Caps. Toronto had 105 points that year, and Boston (4th) had to face that Toronto team when on average they should have dealt with the Philly team that didn't really belong in the playoffs, and only finished 1 point ahead of that year's Devils team, which was the weakest playoff team I've seen in a long time. The format differences don't make that big of a difference every year, because the points distributed among the seeds aren't ever the same and can sometimes group up strangely, but eyebrow-raising matchups happen more often than they used to.

Over a full season this team would lose more games than it wins given the performance of this wonky and non-ideal top line to date

Weren't you absolutely gushing about these very same players and coaches like 10 days ago? It's a loooooooooooooong season my friend. It happens

Our first official slump of the season: winning one of the last four, being outscored 15-7 while doing so

Was I really gone that long? I feel like it's only been a week or so? I thought I posted during the bills game Ah it was two bills games ago

I don't think we did. We were good in other aspects of the game, and better transitioning than we are now. But I have no memory of any Sabre team I've ever seen (reliable only back to ~2011) capable of doing what the Caps have normalized as far as moving up the ice with the puck goes

I don't really have the words to describe it properly, but the level at which teams like the Caps transition is something the Sabres are far, far away from. You can tell that Johansson has experience with it, and that he's the only Sabre to have it

That was the kind of play that usually doesn't result in a goal (like most point shots), happens often (wacky deflections leading to awkward stick positioning and thus a fan on a pass/clear, as Kyle kinda killed that puck in a bad spot too) and gets completely ignored unless everyone is already hyperfocused on the player, then it becomes a symbol of his continued struggles

Did I hear that Dreger said Botts wants a top 6 and bottom 6 forward? It's a shame it was Dreger and not someone better But if true, I like to hear it

One hockey loss is like giving up a long scoring drive in an NFL season I'm not sure why I keep making these comparisons, just had the calculator out We have been on a steady decline since games one and two unfortunately. Gotta start incrementally improving our play again

If the Sabres were the Bills, they'd be early in the Bengals game, ie the home opener, at this point of the season

VO had a couple shifts with Mitts and Sheary a few games back and they almost scored like three times, I'd be down.

It is unbelievable how good Joki is

He's played his way into my heart and that's what matters

Is Montour ready? I haven't been paying attention. Gilmour is almost certainly going to be the guy that sits when someone gets healthy A noble choice

All it will take is time to pass for the 3rd line to score goals reliably as two of the three skaters (the wingers) have multiple years of being in the top six in ES points per minutes on their teams, and Mitts has grown this year. They've played well today. Also the official Flagg Sabres defenseman rating for this season is as follows: 1.) Jokiharju 2.) Gilmour 3.) Scandella 4.) The rest are tied Who on earth woulda predicted that

Backstrom was like "I don't have a gosh-dang clue who number 58 is so I'm going to flush him out" and Gilmour was like "see you later motha trucka" Gilmour is my new favorite Sabre How dare you

Or you just don't make a trade for a mediocre depth player like Sheary, attached to Hunwick, for a net total of like 6+ mil in salary added There were a dozen very easy ways to have both

I have just one question Why is John Gilmour so good at hockey