Randall Flagg

I know their offense sucks, but like clockwork, it's like a 50% cut from their season average if it's particular tv stations lol think NE last year, Cincy last preseason, and the thursday night jets games of the last few seasons And NFL preseason football is simply an abomination

It's of courrrrrrrrrse just preseason, but it's amazing how whenever the Bills are on national TV, their offensive performance tanks They did this last preseason too

I'd love to sign that punter the Pats cut. No way he's worse than the two scrubs we have now.

Gotta love Sid the Kid: The story in text: I’ll tell you my favorite Sidney Crosby story, which is in 2016. I went out there - I go to his hockey school every summer, to do a bit with him. So they won the Cup in 16, so he’s got the Stanley Cup and we went to a children’s hospital, which is, you know, pretty emotional. We were done there and Sid said “Well, where else can we go?” I said “well there’s a veteran’s hospital I went to once, around the corner.” So we went, we called over, went over there, and they’ve got - everyone’s kind of in the main meeting room. And someone said “oh, too bad Joe’s not here. Joe would’ve loved this...Joe would love this.” And someone said “who’s Joe?” and they said he’s a Korean War veteran, but he’s blind and bedridden; he’s upstairs. So I said “Sid, let’s go.” So up we go, and they knock on the door to his room and “Joe, Sidney Crosby’s here with the Stanley Cup.” And Joe says “Oh I’m sorry Sid, I’m a Montreal Canadiens fan.” And Sid says “no problem, who’s your favorite Montreal Canadien?” “And he says Rocket Richard!” So Sid brings the Cup over, and traces his finger over the Rocket’s name engravement.

Tage's shoulders definitely looked beefier at the development camp, and he still had three months of training left to do this offseason from that point. He's gonna be stronger.

The thing is, you can't touch Point without sending out one of Jack or Dahlin

Like I said, I chose placeholder names that I like, but the main idea is that you can get a much better player, possibly one that is already doing what we hope Mitts can one day do (be a very good NHLer at a very important position). And point totals tell you absolutely nothing about the current difference between Cirelli and Mitts as NHL hockey players. There is a chasm between them right now. I believe Mitts had the most offensively sheltered minutes in the entire league, while Cirelli picked up the scraps behind Stamkos and Point lines each getting first and second dibs at anything useful offensively. He was very, very good at the other end of the ice, and was Tampa's best penalty-killing forward. But anyway, it's not about Cirelli. I am sure Jason has guys that he'd want to get and I hope he's not afraid to go get them.

That's usually my first go-to! Mitts, Risto, Laaksonen for Cirelli and Palat Stuff like that. The details don't matter - it can be whatever player/centers Jason wants to target.

That's why every opportunity I get I'm adding copious amounts of assets to Ristolainen in trade proposals lol

Skinner - Jack - Vesey Johansson - Mitts - Reinhart Olofsson - Rodrigues - Sheary Zemgus - Larry - Okposo There's twelve, and I don't think anyone believes we are done making moves, since we have 10 defensemen capable of playing in the NHL. It's time for guys like Smith, Asplund to be injury call-ups too. It's not a choice of Pominville over Sobotka. I'd rather have Jason than Sobotka too, as our 15th forward. But neither of those guys should see a second of ice time for us in 19-20.

In his second stint with Jack, that lasted ten games, he had 3 points. In the last 7 games of the first stint, he also I had 3 points, if I'm comparing the hockey viz lineup pairs to his game log correctly. I don't know a smoother way to do this, but that's 6 points in his last 17 games with Jack while being a slow-skating anchor the way he was for him in 17-18. If these numbers are wrong, they're only a game or so off, because for some reason Micah doesn't, like, label his game columns. This team doesn't have roster spots to spend on Jason Pominville. Who I adore. But we need to be real here. Fancy stats can't see how plays that should materialize never do because of Jason's footspeed - sure, he can make the "right play" given his own circumstances, which are severely limited by the weakened physical skills/abilities, but too often that "correct decision" happening is worse for the team than the array of options an able-bodied player in his place would have at his disposal instead. When you point out that Jason basically needs to be stapled to Jack to have production, well, it's more critical than ever that Jack's wings are able to win those races and puck battles, rather than just be capable of meekly picking spots and being pragmatic. It really was a great run that line had in November, but I'm already having trouble shoving Vesey into a roster spot when projecting a defenseman-for-forward move, I just don't see any serious reason for bringing Pominville back to this team

The shut down problem, there. Our forwards, in the offensive zone, need to rejoin the rest of the NHL. The D, while not well-rounded, doesn't face that same task

I know this has nothing to do with the thread, but I don't know how to move posts over to different threads. The idea of who plays "shutdown D" without Risto is interesting. We really don't have a Stralman pairing, or a Hjalmarsson pairing, or a McDonagh-Cernak for a more recent example. Parayko, etc. Pittsburgh in their recent cup wins also didn't have anyone you could plunk on this roster and confidently say "there's the guy/pair." Toronto's last three seasons saw this too. Both of these teams have seen levels of success we'd kill for - the question might not be "who is our shutdown guy." What moves can we make the rest of this summer to ensure that we're dictating OUR game to other teams, and they're going to have to outscore US, take the puck AWAY from us first? Because our defense, for its lack of Parayko-esque shutdown abilities, should be able to sling pucks all day. We need to make sure the forwards can do something with them. With the current roster setup, there is certainly a possibility to get to a point where we can find significant success while still trying to solve that problem. It likely won't win us a cup, but Toronto hasn't won a cup either, and I'd love to be dealing from a position of trying to jump up from 100 point regular seasons and first round exits. With a Dahlin in the cards. And I feel that the work of Gallant in Vegas shows that to some degree you can create team defense that's greater than the sum of its parts - maybe Krueger can work some magic along the way. Though I get the concern people have for not having on the back end what Risto represents, I do wonder if the path of least resistance involves focusing the next big move or two on something completely different to emphasize what we have, rather than try to do patchwork on one of our several theoretical roster holes, possibly not the most important one.

And your zoning in on the center spine is exactly right as far as what we can know about this current roster and its flaws. There was no weaker area on this Sabre team than its centers behind Jack, and I've put forth the argument that no team had a worse situation behind their 1C than we did. How we handled that spot going into the offseason was always going to say more about next year's team than most other realistic avenues of roster moves.

I think Chad knows more than an average fan would, as far as inside stuff goes, but I'm pretty skeptical he has legit info on potential returns that has escaped the usual names so far.

Pi might be able to provide more details, but when he's on the ice he's an NHL difference maker right now, with more room to grow. His skating and hands are very good, and his shot is above average. He looks to have good off-the-puck instincts, not just floating around unsure of where to go like Jack (who needs to have the puck on his stick at all times anyway). His main concern is the injury concern you highlight - I'm seeing three concussions since 2015. It'd be risky to send Risto off for any player with that injury history, but if he's healthy, he's almost certainly our fourth best forward and will likely develop more.

Very few teams have 3 top line players on the top line, 3 second line players on the second line, etc. If you want to do that, switch Sam and Ondrej. I'm going for stylistic meshing here

Trade built around Risto and Kase McCabe for Toffoli Sign Gardiner Sheary, Scandella gone for whatever just to make room Pretend Vesey does't exist just cuz there's no room Olofsson - Eichel - Kase Skinner - Mitts - Reinhart Johansson - Rodrigues - Toffoli Zemgus - Larry - Kyle Dahlin - Montour Gardiner - Miller Pilut - Bogosian/Jokiharju Nelson The center spine is still weaker than you'd want, but the wings are deep as hell. I'd try to trade just picks for Toffoli and keep McCabe

Was hoping you'd chime in - I've only watched like 6-8 Ducks games the last two years, but he was among the most noticeable players on the ice every time I've seen him.

I think I could make a cutoff for "elite" around there - that's the top third of all top liners, or roughly within the top 7/8% of all forwards to skate in the NHL. Now, I wouldn't call a player elite just because they had a P/60 in that range, that's a different story. My tier of descriptive words would probably go generational, superstar, star, elite, very good etc. So Boeser isn't the problem, eh? That's a completely reasonable ask IMO

Kase is a real good hockey player. Overall though, those returns make me sad and I'd be willing to beef up our end to make them better.

Also these are outstanding writeups dudacek. Haha, should have checked the first post before saying anything. Given that I'm one of the bigger Mitts bashers here, I'm surprised that he made it to four. he was my number two behind Dahlin.

I've got Jokiharju here. What's 1-3 again? Also, some of those twitter nerds have been applying their stat tricks to prospects now too, and one (Maybe Tierney?) had the Sabres as the best forward prospect pool in the league. The model (no idea what the model was) was incredibly high on Davidsson.

Big Provorov fan. But my god, what an ask, after the season he had last year

I was using the phrase "Kyle hands" before his concussion stuff even happened