Randall Flagg

Theyre all LHD, but I'm almost positive Brodie spends his time on the right side next to Giordano

A situation where we're expending time or assets to put Kyle Turris in as 2C (or really any spot, but you know if we do it it's for 2C) is not going to help us in all likelihood, and even if he bounced back and it sorta did for a bit, the contract still makes it a nonstarter when we have real assets that we can and should be moving for guys who can help the Sabres' second line succeed in this beast of a conference/division playing today's hockey

Points shmoints. Bottom line, my opinion as scattered about in the other threads, is that I just don't see Turris as the "answer" for the next 5 years. Not as 2C on a contender, not as 2C on a contender which doesn't have a "superstar" 1C ahead of him, anyway. We need our 2nd line to be a real threat. Even if he bounces back to 20ish goals or 50ish points, he's a bit weak from anything I've seen. I think we can do better for $6M of cap space. The value of the cap space he represents outweighs any concern I'd have about getting anything back in a trade for him. "I don't find that what Turris did in his previous season before the injury is really all that different than what any of these other guys might have done, PP scoring aside. And of course Turris vanished completely in the playoffs in 2018 too. That to me was really when he stepped into the abyss, pre-dating this season and whatever injury excuses might be attached. His first regular season was ok-ish and his first playoff was abysmal. Then his whole second season was abysmal. Do we think he can step up his performance to something more like his best Ottawa numbers? I don't know - are we going to play him 19:30 a game instead of 16 mins and put him on a line with Mark Stone? I'm guessing we aren't. In which case... I don't feel like we have a lot of reason to expect more from him than we've seen so far. And that isn't much different than our Plan C guys behind him. If I wanted a soft C who doesn't really drive the play... he doesn't look that much different than Jarnkrok. And if Jarnkrok was on a 6x$6M contract he'd probably have a thread like this here too." "ive been watching turris at the worlds whenever Canada is on NHL network (3 games I've watched) and this isn't just me trying to be typical me but he has been soft as ever during board battles. he just isn't an impact player. he will need granlund to really elevate his game on the wing (or some impact winger, nothing against my boy Craig smith) or it's going to be another long season of turris being the whipping boy and rightfully so." "I think trading Turris is a pipe dream right now. You can blame injuries and perhaps that was a legitimate reason but with his contract I doubt teams are going to be willing to risk trading for him and hoping he bounces back." "I guess I just don't see Turris putting up a 51-point season either short of leeching off basically the same things it would take those guys to do it. Give Jarnkrok a season with Granlund and Smith, give him 2nd unit PP time, and he probably scrapes together the same points Turris would. And our 2nd line will suck. And Jarnkrok will probably get killed. And all the same holds equally having Turris in that spot. Our scouts just missed the boat figuring that out because he was already leeching 1st line minutes off 1st line players in Ottawa and they got fooled. " "He might have lost a step temporarily while his foot was still healing or something, but he seemed quick enough in the playoffs. Just ineffective. And I think he has always been scared to battle. Not a lot of players can go a full NHL season and get credited with just 10 hits. That's just who Turris is, nothing new on that front. " "and as far as turris, no. i don't think he is scared to battle. he is just weak and can't win the battles. remind me of the brief time we have seen with tolvanen. good hockey sense but either won't go to the areas to create scoring chances or just gets pushed around when they are there. tolvanen is still a developing kid.. that's the big difference to me." "Turris is just brutal in almost all aspects. He does not hit, shoot, pass or even backcheck well, his numbers prove that. I do not know what is going on with Kyle, but he is not worth $3 mill a season, let alone $6 mill. Second line centre is easily our biggest problem." "I do think turris still holds some trade value, not even close to what we paid for him, but he could bet a third I would think, even with his contract. I worry if we decide to hold onto him another season and he’s awful again (likely), then we will never move him." (this guy appears to be the outlier, the way he's speaking - and fans overvalue their players more often than not, and he's talking Turris for "a third I would think") "People need to pay attention to this. Turris is not 'back' because he scored against freaking Great Britian." "ive watched 3 of their games(Worlds). turris is still weak on the puck and has trouble winning board battles against non NHL players. he's just too physically weak imo.a passenger is the best way to put it even at the worlds against truly lesser competition." "I'm hoping his play in the World Championships can up his value abit. Maybe Columbus will bite if they lose all of Duchene/Bobrovsky/Panarin, the return wouldnt be incredible but to move on from him would be good." "here's his goal. the assist was the better play. a lot of these opportunities don't happen for turris on smaller ice against NHL competition.anyone thinking he is going to be a big contributor on our 2nd line is fooling themselves. craig smith is the better option as a forward on a 2nd line and his motor is always running.turris is useful on a 2nd PP unit off the halfboards and that's about it. with our anemic PP, he was really a skating dingleberry healthy or injured all year and i expect that to continue until he has more mass than a 16 year old boy." "Just as useless as ever vs Liiga players rn. Trashing bad teams inflated his WC performance tenfoldWe'll see if he can actually do something in the 3rd." "I did not see Turris play any better towards the end of the season. They healthy scratched him and it didn't have any effect. Turris was spoon-fed 2nd line minutes and did nothing with them. The system? Maybe it was a problem and maybe not - I don't know what it is or how much blame to apportion to execution vs. design. I also did not see other players completely drop off the face of ice surface. If the system held them back a little, at least it didn't cripple them. So yeah, I think you can say Turris stunk, quite independent of all other factors. If those factors helped him stink even worse, ok, but there was stink already in abundance. Even at the end of 2018. I'm not for whitewashing the obvious on this one." These views are the consensus in their Turris thread, which started in mid-May. The Preds' season was over. It's as consensus a view, from my reading so far, as any fanbase can be on any player. The one or two posters that express the possibility that he could turn it around cite no more than what dudacek does - points with no reference to gameplay, and vague generalities about how it (a turnaround) does happen sometimes. And even then, they do this 100% with the implication that they might then be able to dump him off and move on - not get something useful out of him on their team, none of them seem interested in this. This is alarming times ten. We should not be looking to add this player. Considering this discussion is about possible Ristolainen returns, I can't fathom how any person, GM or otherwise, would accept this in a Risto trade, except on a salary-balancing thing with a much better piece attached. Even then....five more years. Again, points shmoints. Before Moulson went 0 for 14 games, his presence on the roster in 17-18 was justified by plenty of Sabre fans because he had over 30 points the season before, even though he was obviously shot. Fanbases of successful teams don't talk about important impact players on their teams like this, their description and the limited Turris I've seen is not something that will improve the things our Sabres need to improve in shift-in and shift-out hockey, they describe what would make the problem worse. It's not acceptable as a return for Ristolainen

The man just put up an abysmal season as a floater who was disinterested in doing anything but let his teammates get him the puck (their fans' words en masse, not mine) and has an Okposo-like contract, only it goes a year longer than Kyle's. He hit a sharp decline at 29, is turning 30, and doesn't have the type of skating that tends to "suddenly come back." There's no way this guy has trade value, and if Nashville wanted to dump him, they'd have to sweeten the pot

I have a hard time picturing Kyle Turris's trade value as a positive number. So, it'd be a huge add.

I've read people break this down elsewhere in the past too. McCabe up at the right point because that's where his guy went, stuff like that.

I thought so, "buddy" was meant to be sarcastic

That future should entail one season on his buddy Jeff Skinner's RW

Any recommendations for specific videos? If not, I can hit youtube later this week and find some. I was originally going to do something with our team defense this summer, but I rapidly became overwhelmed when watching games and was incapable of seeing anything good or bad that I could really pin down as unique or a problem

My biggest problem with analyzing the defensive zone is also that I have no idea where people are "supposed to be" and when. I basically have no idea what I'm looking at.

I think his metrics are actually pretty bad. But he's the only one aside from Joki who has played in the NHL, and I've seen about five seconds of Joki's play in my entire life, so I found it tough to vote for him on purpose (but not on accident)

I think it's pretty hard to distinguish between those guys. I voted for Henri on accident, but I think Mittelstadt makes the most sense for reasons dudacek listed.

This was always interesting to me (not exactly what you asked for). When Risto wasn't playing with the worst players in the league at their positions last season, all of his fancy stat issues go away. If you remove Tage from the list, and just focus on Vlad and Marco, who were each a bit worse than Tage IMO, your sample size is basically 1000 minutes, it still contains all other Sabre players from good to bad, and things are peachy. You can't say the same about the actual-bad players on that list, because it's a chart of each of those players' stats without the other three. one of those is not like the others. When you re-watch games, you can see that when Risto's partner is as bad as Scandy was last year, he is far more likely to do what liger talks about - he views the only safe play as the one that ends the 45 second onslaught they just experienced, chucking the puck to safety. Like Liger, I always assumed that he did not discriminate situations when deciding to do this - and I still think he does it more than he should. But, and I've said this before, when I actually took some time last summer to watch games and count exits, and discerned between them when there was pressure vs when there wasn't, and when there were options available vs when there weren't, he actually stunned me with his transition ability with options available, both with and without pressure. I only got through like ~7 games, but I expected him to be the worst on the team at it and he was one of the best. Now, he gets a lot of minutes in non-ideal situations with these bottom-tier players, and in those situations when he recovers a puck he often has no real choice but to clear it, as a guy like Marco might be sluggish to make himself available as an outlet, or a guy like Tage might be in the wrong spot facing the wrong way when he gets the puck. But IMO the reason his fancy stat problems vanish without these terrible players (who were bad enough that you can't reasonably assume that removing them takes out all non-ideal cushy situations, because it's not like we loaded all of those guys up with tough minutes together or anything, Tage was sheltered and Vlad had less-defensive minutes than at least 3 other Sabre forwards)is because while he's not good enough to drag them to competence, he's fine when put out in more reasonable, less taxing situations. I've always thought this to some degree, but I believe it more now than I did then. That's why I think he was so good with Pilut - the one thing Pilut is great at is receiving a pass from his teammate and sending it up the ice successfully, and it was all Risto needed to complete the picture. This isn't a claim that he's Parayko in his own zone, or isn't prone to brainfarts. But coaches that send him out with Scandella against Crosby for extended periods of time do damage to our ability to see what Risto really is, and that's a player whose whole package isn't as bad as it can be made out to be. Karlsson and Burns each might be the kings of defensive zone low-light reels because of their sheer minute intake, but nobody argues that it puts a meaningful dent into the value of their contributions elsewhere - just that it stops them from being literally Bobby Orr. Risto is that on a much smaller scale, if he was given a reasonable, sensible partner and used like a reasonable team would use an offensive-tilted 2nd pairing, at 19 minutes. Not because he magically becomes better by removing minutes, but because you're minimizing the things that make him tank, rather than loading them up on his shoulders to an obscene degree. Like, what should be the whole point of coaching - getting your players into situations where they maximize their ability to help the team.

According to NHL.com, Mark Stone is the 14th best...winger in the NHL. Yikessssssssssss

Just saw this. I don't think Blake Wheeler had a great year, counting stats be damned, and I think Scheifele is really a top tier guy. This is also a prediction for next season more than a description of the last one. He just plays the kind of hockey I love out of my centers. I'd kill for Jack to have his off-puck instincts in the offensive zone. Couple a Crosby-like dedication to the game, and I'm sold.

Is Gretzky the best GOAT of all sports? Not "greatest" but "best"?

It doesn't matter what he actually says. It will be "Risto demanded a trade" to the common NHL fan by December, and that will never change again. Also holy hell I hope that offer sheet happens

The Rags, Devils, and Panthers have certainly added more hockey value to their teams than we have, after all finishing within 2-4 points of us (besides Florida who were 10 points better and have replaced bottom-of-the-barrel team goaltending with arguably the best goalie of the last three years).

What a goofball

That play where Ed pushed First Team All Pro Quenton Nelson into the Colts QB made me smile.

It's obviously just preseason, but this is still hysterical - the Pats only played one starter yesterday and still outgained the Lions 459 yards to 93 yards.

The Rugby player that was allocated to the Bills via a new "NFL International Player Pathway." He came from England, and he got here not knowing very much about the game. His first ever touch in game action was a 65 yard TD run in the 4th quarter last night.

The Wade TD was a great moment.

It's sports season!!! Remember - if they look good, they're promising and will have a great year. If they look bad, it's only preseason and it's meaningless. Go Bills!!!