Randall Flagg

Thought Lazar was Reinhart until now. Was wondering why Sam got so bad

Joki with a forgettable shift there. Two bad decisions in a row. ***** I love Dahlin. And Sheary is a reliable finisher on those partial breakaways.

LORD STANLEY HERE WE COME BABY

Jack was lined up as if he was going to play that PP on the right side. Then spent time down low. That will be something to watch going forward, what Ralph's PP will have him do. Miller has some nice mobility Lol that play from Scandella was wild

Uhhh, yeah dark, you're definitely right. Holy crap. he's faster.

Rather than trying to score goals, we should just focus on letting Dahlin and Joki play catch as much as possible, that's more fun to watch

Ooh, from Jack behind the net all the way up the ice that was nice. Gilmour from Vesey?

God i hate Penn State

Okay, just settled down with dinner. Let's score some goals and stay healthy

But my video keeps cutting back to that stupid picture Terrible pass by Vesey ?

Audio now!

Lol a lot of Bears/Broncos in that Trubisky stat

Okay I have video and no audio

^Same. Can somebody post when their feed starts playing something so we can verify whether or not ours are working?

I've low-key always thought a lot of the Housley hate was overblown (which is funny because of how much I detested Bylsma!!) I just never got a handle on what part of our problems were definitely his fault. Whereas after a while I found something with Dan that I saw happen a lot and thought was explicitly bad. This is not endorsement of one over the other, I just think Phil's stint here was very hard to understand

It's just so nice to not see Allen on that list, however meaningful that stat is. And yeah, Newton is fried. He spent so many years getting pasted over and over again, and just looks broken down.

I placed my Be A Pro winger on NHL 20 on Byfield's junior team, because my goal is to help him pile up enough points to unseat Lafreniere in the game's 2020 draft

Ah. Then like I said, win their matchups, which would surely entail significant even strength production from the three, particularly Jack, with visual evidence confirming that we aren't holding our franchise center back in a meaningful way. I think there's less than a five percent chance that combination of players is capable of that. (Because of how incapable Sheary was at scoring with Jack at even strength last season, outlined in my other post)

I think you actually read real-time criticisms and interpret them as absolutes. These guys are all professional hockey players, so it's not as if Okposo on the power play would be like ME on the power play. But the Sabres making the roster/lineup decisions that regularly get criticized as apparent absolutes are 100% the reasons why we're such a bad hockey team, because that's how hockey works over long periods of time. Typing about these bad decisions in "absolutes" is just an easy way to get across a point rather than qualifying every possible statement in every possible way and tripling the word count of every post as a result, to make it "technically correct." Nobody discounts the possibility of some of those things happening. What people do is have a fairly accurate, if rough, estimation of the probability of any of those things being false, multiply those probabilities together as probabilities are supposed to be multiplied, and realize that the chance of the things needing to happen to make our team good again with this setup is pretty low, thus making them angry at why we have to start with such long odds in the first place.

Just for the record, Jeff without Jack last season: 21 games, 7 goals, 3 assists, 10 points, all at ES. This would have made him roughly a 27 goal, 39 point guy projected over a full season. Eichel without Skinner: 15 games, 6 goals, 8 assists, 14 points. The key: most of these are power play points. In 15 games without Skinner, at even strength, Jack scored 5 goals and zero assists. This is 0.33 goals per game at ES, and 0.3 points per game at ES without Jeff. This is contrasted with 15 goals, 51 points at even strength in 61 games with Jeff, or 0.25 goals per game but 0.84 points per game at ES. Eichel literally picked up zero even strength assists in fifteen games without Jeff playing on his wing. This is our playmaking franchise center, and this is how bad Sheary was with him compared to Skinner last year. Jack's overall even strength production increased by 280% with Skinner over another linemate on his left side (Sheary), something glaring that was partially hidden by the fact that he still got to play with him and other good players on the power play. This is why the Crosby narrative drives me nuts with Jack, while all other superstars ride shotgun with their other superstars. Unless we really think that a guy a team with horrible depth was happy to dump for a 3rd rounder can replicate what Jeff did with our captain, I'm going to be incredibly skeptical of this working for our team. "Spreading the wealth" with Jack and Jeff is going to make both of them worse, and if there's one thing I've written more about than anything else, it's how important prioritizing what maximizes your best players is versus trying to minimize/hide weaknesses with your tail between your legs. If the roster is so bad that we want to neuter Jack and Jeff, fix your roster. If it's too hard to fix your roster, don't make horrifying trades with no reasonable replacement plans.

I'm gonna be quite honest here, if they did this, I'd be less angry than I was about 60 nights last season!

Success for the team? or for that line? That line can be successful while the team is losing. If Jack is a top 10-15 scoring center, and Vesey and Sheary don't look like plugs that make you think you're not getting the most out of Jack, and pace near their career highs, then it will be successful as a line regardless of what everyone else is doing. If they're doing that AND the rest of the team is floundering, then we're screwed, because the whole point of that line is to bolster lower lines with Reinhart and Skinner and Johansson etc.

Every time Jack hasn't played with Skinner in his career, he's handily lost his matchups against other teams' counter to him, while our depth had the same problem. I don't think the addition of Vesey and Johansson fundamentally changes this. We need another dynamic skater to make a 2nd line with Sam, so that we have two lines that can relieve pressure off each other and win matchups against elite players. Jack and Jeff can do it themselves for about a third of a year, but without anything behind them to key in on, they became overwhelmed. Adding mediocre middle sixers (hopefully Johansson can be a little better than that descriptor) doesn't fundamentally change this problem. Especially when you reason that they allow you to split Jack and Jeff up. Because that just takes assists off of Jack's plate and goals off of Jeff's, while still running out lines that will probably not outscore opponents over the long haul. Simply put, this team should offer sheet Brayden Point at 12 million dollars

Yeah you can always tune in to watch the start of the pregame show with NHL TV. All you have to do is go into the browser's advanced settings and manually turn the VPN on, and it lets you watch it, for whatever reason.