Randall Flagg

I peaked over there too. It turned into a reading session. Their fans are patient, measured, calculated. It was a blast to follow honestly. They know that one mistake is one of millions in a six month season, and react accordingly.

Their top line is excellent. Not that that answers your question. but that sorta came out of nowhere

It certainly gives me more fuel for my continued interest in making one more forward trade.

This is indeed noticeable.

In the post game interview, Jack put the tying goal on himself and also gave credit to the Larry line for their work.

Are you talking about Ralph's coaching altering Risto's play, or a hypothetical discussion in which Ralph asked for time to work with Risto? If just the former, I would hope that after last season Jason wouldn't let 4 games of anything change his mind about anything. But I assume you mean a little of both.

Do you think point a is satisfied in their minds by Montour? I have to think that, if they were willing to move Risto in the summer, and he asked for it, Jason would still like Montour enough to be lining up a trade.

Holy *****. I don't know a lot about this stuff yet (a blessing), but chemo HAS to significantly alter your chances of being sick at some point in the future, in addition to how awful that time must have been already.

I'd have to see how it worked this year, I'm pretty sure he blew up that line's effectiveness last year. Edit: in their brief time together, Larry/Zemgus's metrics got worse, but they weren't BAD as a line. So I'd be willing to try that out. However, if Tage got called up, I'd probably first try him on the Mojo or Casey line.

This reminds me of a poster in my building that baffles me every day. It's some leader from some student organization whose purpose and doings are largely a bunch of buzzwords - you know what I mean, every college has a million of those groups. "Leader Ambassador of the Student Board of Advisory of Associations" blah blah And he's standing there, caught mid-laugh by the camera, and the quote is "I PLEDGE to NEVER commit or condone sexual assault." I do a slow clap every time I see it. Wao, so brave, thank you truly for your service to society, way to go out on a limb and sacrifice for the greater good

I feel like the only guys in the organization that wouldn't be hugely out of place on that line besides Kyle are Vlad and Lazar. Just a guess though.

Here's a different way to see it. Break the game down like this: 50% Offensive zone starts: 35% against depth/defensive players, 15% against good offensive players (top sixes) 50% defensive zone starts: 35% against two dangerous lines, 15% against depth These aren't perfect descriptions of how the game goes, but the hand-wave likely works. But it's not like we're taking 60 minutes created equally and handing some off to guys who can't score. we're taking minutes almost entirely from the bottom 50% there, more often than not from the more dangerous portion, and giving them to guys who can tire those guys out cycling the puck in the offensive zone. The nature of those minutes dictates that even if you put a good offensive player there, you're not going to get the bulk of your production from them. As evidence for this, see ROR's even strength numbers the year we broke a record for the most defensive zone starts per 60 minutes of ice time for a forward playing more than 1000 minutes. And compare them to his even strength numbers last year. Even good players struggle to produce with those minutes. When you give those minutes to someone else, you can stack Jack and Casey's lines' minutes the way you do, which means less Casey on defense, more Jack on offense. Coupled with the fact that we see how Larry and co. can control the puck while handling those minutes...it's a win-win-win.

^Beane is in concussion protocol per Schefter

It's the Bills that play the Dolphins next, not the Sabres! We're 3-0-1.

I think he looks a lot like early-season Risto of past years. His late-winters usually make people forget, but the Risto of the Toronto game last December, or the Washington/Oilers games of 16-17, and others, is an incredible hockey player. He has it in him to be pretty good all the time. He just falls apart physically and mentally playing 26 hard minutes for bad teams for 82 straight games. I think, if Ralph is going to be a positive influence on Risto, we won't see anything appreciably different until it's time for Risto to start declining, and he doesn't. He did play a LOT last night. Didn't see the ice time.

And, as overpaid as Kyle is, given the nature of his circumstances, it's really fun for him to have a real role in these games that doesn't hurt the team on the ice.

Looking at Natural Stat Trick, the line they played against the most against Columbus was Foligno - Jenner - whoever their winger was. Which I think has to be CBJ's second line, right? Behind Dubois? Against New Jersey they were given Hughes - Bratt - Wood. Definitely the Devils' third offensive line. Their most-played-against Penguins forward was Malkin. They held him scoreless (this is at even strength) in those four+ minutes, which isn't a lot, but was a third of his ES ice time (13 minutes). Shot attempts were slightly in our favor during those minutes. Against Montreal it was Drouin-Kotkaniemi they saw more than any other skater. They would basically play 4-6 minutes against these guys, and would get the top and third lines for 1-3 minutes otherwise (names like Crosby, Gallagher, Hall for first liners, and then Wennberg/Armia/Zajac otherwise). So those are their opponents. On their value: I think it's pretty hard to quantify exactly what value these minutes bring, but we can think about it relative to other things that may help us ground ourselves. 1.) Last year, Larry and Zemgus had a higher defensive zone start rate than all but three forwards since this began being tracked more than a decade ago. There are a lot of playoff teams on this list, but not a lot of guys that created appreciably more goals for their teams that season than Larry and Zemgus did. Because a lot of the teams on this list were playoff teams, I'm comfortable with the idea that a team can succeed with their level of offense in this role with this ice time, while they're as effective as they are at spending time with the puck. As for how effective what they do can be without this production, well, the lack of production makes it hard to quantify, but the value is, without a doubt, there. First, I recall at least two Malkin shifts that started with an offensive zone faceoff and were immediately spent with him chasing the puck around in his own end for a full minute. That's much better than Malkin doing the same in our zone, which would have happened every shift against fourth lines of Sabres past. (I'm going to keep calling them the fourth line because of their role and the typical role provided by that line.) So, relative to fourth lines of the past that featured the likes of Deslauriers, or Nolan, that would often have shot shares of less than 40%, making it impossible for the coach to use them outside of about 6 relatively easy minutes per night, this is a large upgrade. Those past fourth lines would get slaughtered, and it would mean that Jack/ROR/whoever coming out onto the ice next had to first expend energy to slow momentum down enough to be able to steal a puck, then traverse the length of the ice with it before getting the opportunity to set up and score. Our fourth line gives us in-game momentum, which is real, and tires the other team, and gives our skill guys opportunities to come onto the ice with full possession of the puck, or with offensive zone starts, and a reeling opponent. There are a lot of reasons for Jack's burst in ES production since this line was put together, but this line can claim a nonzero part of this increase. Jack is hitting the ice with our team in possession and with tired opponents more often than he was before 18/19, sometimes in part due to the 4th line. It really is impossible to quantify the value of this, but the hockey season is long, and tiny bits of value here and there have a LOT of time to add up into something big. So while they don't deserve any trophies, my view is that they're doing the team a service in a way conducive to being a playoff team, evidenced by playoff teams having players and lines that do virtually the same thing in the same minutes as these guys. If you have a checklist of things needed to make the playoffs, this can be checked off, and even if it's not the top item or two, it still feels damn good to check things off that list. Their production is the number one concern, but they SHOULD be the line you expect the least offense from, and they're not going to be significantly outscored by fourth offensive lines around the league on average, especially not the guys that eat the number of defensive zone minutes (which really are incredibly difficult, and SOMEBODY has to eat them) that they do. It lets us do crazy things like give Jack AND Mitts 65-70% offensive zone starts, which is simply conducive to us having a better chance to win (because of both lines' general defensive play, and the offensive potential Jack provides). If we start to have problems with depth scoring, the line that becomes the focus and problem is very obviously the Mitts line at this point. So they're cool, fun to root for, and they can contribute some amount, even if not massive, to winning hockey, and I don't think there's evidence that successful teams of the past NEED more scoring than they provide, especially among the teams that actually have guys they use in this manner (75%+ defensive zone starts).

From what we saw today our playoff series against the Habs this April is going to be insane

I wanted Hughes if we picked anywhere below 2nd in the 2018 draft. Kid is nuts

If we're actually good this year, I'd put money on this man winning us a playoff series on his own. Then he will rightfully skyrocket up these lists!

That'd be nice. We play them close even when we're bad. Some wild ones over the years

Pretty likely true IMO

I think Scandy and Joki each had a bounce back game.

Wow.