Randall Flagg

You've been my beacon of hope for next season's roster! also that trade is awesome and I would give a fair bit more than that to make it happen

Risto, Dahlin, Montour, Miller, McCabe, Bogosian, are six NHLers all better than Scandella last year. I'm quite confident that Pilut and Joker were too, because while they were overwhelmed at times, Scandella was more or less overwhelmed at every time. I'm comfortable putting both of them above him in the depth chart assuming we get last year's Scandella. I'm also comfortable putting Nelson over last year's Scandella, but won't do it to avoid unnecessary disagreement. Even if we don't get last year's Scandella this time around, his presence in our lineup through game 82 is something that I simply wouldn't have continued to allow as a GM while watching four months of a 60 point hockey team, when he was so clearly struggling. I understand that Scandella may bounce back to what he was before. But writing Scandy into a top six spot is assuming it will happen, and various roster assumptions like this, are a major reason why we're a 60-80 point team the last four years, rather than doing our best to maximize a roster with moves, and then playing the best of the best where they should be within that. We reason ourselves into it as fans watching them make these mistakes, but still get mad at mediocre hockey teams. You get out what you put in, eh? Sobotka the same way, but more drastically so. Eichel, Skinner, Reinhart, Rodrigues, Johansson, Mitts, Kyle, Larsson, Zemgus, Sheary, Vesey, Olofsson, Smith (who I don't even think is good), Tage (same deal), Wilson should all be unquestionably above a player who coupled statistically below average defensive play with worst-in-the-NHL offensive zone play. Sometimes players like Vlad appear on good teams too, and they are quickly flushed out of the lineup, much less continued in a top-4 forward role for months, much less brought back the next year. I anticipate another forward move to make an even bigger cushion, but even if not, NHL teams don't keep sixteen forwards. I totally get your general premise - but I think in this scenario with those specific two players (barring improvement from Scandella) there is absolutely no question what the proper move is here. It's not a "keeping Tennyson away" scenario, it's a "you're literally putting in known bottom of the barrel rather than stuff we know is better than that, for no clear reason." That said, I totally expect to see 60 games of Vlad this year

I agree it makes sense, but that doesn't make me like it! They both have similarly obnoxious voices

What I'm worried about is that my threshold for a guy like Sobotka or Scandella not being anywhere near the NHL ice is probably quite different from Jason's

I generally like Emerick, Alberts, and do they use Forslund sometimes? I don't like the color commentary guys or the intermission crews at all though. And it drives me nuts that we always get Tampa or Philly for those games, and they always use those teams' announcing crews.

Also, I thought at the time that Mitts would have ideally spent a lot of time in Rochester last season. Nothing about his NCAA season the year before suggested that he should have been given the entire season, and nothing about his play in the NHL told me that he was just fine where he was. The poor guy struggled mightily from game one to game 82.

I'm perfectly happy at the idea of Mitts doing that, as anyone else is. But I need that move to give him something to hurdle over. Doing what we did last year, while bettering his linemates but probably making his situational usage a bit tougher, doesn't do it for me, because if Mitts' play doesn't jump an obscene amount, it does what happens last year - essentially guarantees that we can't keep up with wild card teams over a several month stretch, having to trot out a struggling young player that doesn't produce much and can't handle anything else against the beastly second lines in our conference night in and night out. Hopefully your reading on Botts (I didn't hear the interview) is correct, and he is still trying to make something else happen. A fully functional team should never NEED Casey Mittelstadt to step up, much less into the role that sees Auston Matthews, Trocheck, Malkin, Stamkos, Kuznetsov etc. every night. It should always be a luxury when something like that (prospect blossoming) happens. This isn't a counter to what you said, merely tacking some of my thoughts onto it.

First bold: Yuck - that's a pretty fundamental violation of what I would consider good general managing Second bold: Botterill has routinely done the opposite of what he's said in interviews about this stuff, because why would he telegraph his mindset and moves for free? No reason to draw conclusions like that from a WGR interview.

Never heard of it and that was supposed to say friends, but I was thinking of them as Potter fans so that's why i said that on accident

I loved and still love Harry Potter. I can't wait for all my friends to discover other books tho

Yeah...nothing against Mitts at all, but he's way too green to have much interesting to say compared to everyone else. One season and a year at college and a whole bunch of golfing - that's essentially my younger brother, and I sit with him at every dinner while I'm home

To be fair to Mike, Auston is not yet prime Datsyuk or Zetterberg. I watched several games in Auston's 12 or 13 game scoring drought, and the effort level, especially on defense, was something two tiers worse than the worst we've ever seen from Jack. There was a particular play that led to a goal against in a game against Detroit that had me baffled. That wasn't yet a guy I'd want to give 21 minutes per game. He's really good outside of that stretch though, and Babs knows it.

That's my point - wow, we've done typical GM stuff and matched the vaunted NJD, except they got to watch playoff hockey in there at least. And aren't the worst team in the NHL over the span that we are Boy sorry to derail this whole thread. Given that we have things to do this summer, I have a tough time even imagining our 19-20 roster.

Duda, in three offseasons, Shero has added Taylor Hall, Will Butcher, PK Subban, Sami Vatanen, Nico Hischier, the very same Marcus Johansson, Jack Hughes, Kyle Palmeiri. Sure, there are two bottom of the standings finishes, but there was also a playoff appearance. He's developed low-probability prospects such as Jesper Bratt, and his prospect pool is on a level that completely took apart our own pool in 2017 in that tournament, I vividly remember them owning the puck against us. Dahlin helped us the following year, but they had also lost Hischier to graduation. Miles Wood, Pavel Zacha, and especially Blake Coleman have settled into very nice depth roles developing in his tenure. This list is more impressive than anything you've listed, and it's the freaking Devils, who nobody cares about or think will be anything notable, and it includes a goddamn playoff season. Why on earth is what we're doing special and noteworthy rather than baseline competence while also being a miserable NHL team and not winning a single AHL playoff game, and only having a good AHL season because of Murray guys and players like Redmond who will never factor into our real team in the future? This is not the same thing as saying we're doomed and will never get out of this - I think we're close and one big good move away from taking a fundamental leap towards something we haven't had in a decade. But I don't think I'm the only one tired of the perpetual , always-positive justification that fans build up whether it's deserved or not, and that's what led to the original comment you took issue with. It might become deserved shortly, but it objectively isn't yet, because no team ever HAS to go through what 85% of Jason's tenure has been so far, to become good from being bad. It's NEVER a requirement, certainly not from where we were when he took over.

My problem comes with the fact that comparing those players in to players out over three offseasons, and adding in all of the roster garbage that's been filled in with it, leads to the logical conclusion that is in complete conjunction with the garbage hockey we have seen to this point. And I'm not going to sit here and say it's being done well when it takes us three seasons to improve a negligible amount. And even if this year comes along and we surprise and make a big jump, there were two years of objective mistakes along the way that didn't need to happen anywhere near the degree that they did, and I don't think people are going to take being told that it was a necessary step along the way very kindly, because it simply wasn't, for all of the reasons that have been outlined endlessly on this forum. You can make a similar list of player additions or prospect "development" for any successful or failed GM to ever exist, while ignoring their mistakes in a vacuum, and make it seem like they were doing a good job, save a guy like Chiarelli or something. Tim also added NHLers, and added through the drafts some nifty names like Jack, Sam, and a whole host of guys that are the reason we like our NHL-ready part of the prospect pool now in the first place, while bringing along such youngsters as Risto, McCabe, Zemgus and Larry. He was ***** fired, and he deserved to be. What you outline is baseline NHL GM competence, in a list that can be compiled for any GM of any team at any given time, while neglecting the stuff I'm referring to, that has made us the worst team in the league since we stopped trying to lose, due to the current GM that has had the two worst seasons of the four in that span. It's not impressive, it's not a convincing outline. And you're right that I don't know what will happen this year, and I allow for all of the unknowns that namely reside in Dahlin, Mitts, and Olofsson's growth in figuring out this team's ceiling and likely standings range. But pretending that you can't make an educated guess before the season is also wrong, and given that I was one single point off of last year's final standings position in my preseason prediction because of all the work I put into trying to understand them (not to mention calling things like the fact that usage tweaks could turn a certain center into a 75 point selke winner before the trade even happened) paid off, well, I trust myself a little bit to have a general feel for what the given roster is capable of, and so does everybody else that allows themselves to form an opinion of Jason's offseason before the hockey starts. Add in the fact that I was regularly poked at for my "attitude" last summer, while ultimately ending up justified by reality, I have renewed faith in the work I put in to try and understand hockey. Just like anyone else trusts their own instincts. Not breaking any rules here. Pretending Jason is doing anything novel or substantially different in a way that will pay off uniquely for the Sabres and is worth the mistakes and the bad so far would be foolish and, especially before it's come even close to working as well as the dude who got fired, I'm not interested in reading about how we have such a good plan and how much sense it makes and this or that.

If Bogosian really will be ready...all the better to start forcing moves and making this summer interesting!

I really liked Wheeler two seasons ago, but I think he's a bit of a headache captain, and even though he still scored a lot this year, my impression is he definitely fell off. I just reeeeeally don't like Burns in his own zone. He's in my top 10 D though. And I know, I know, EK isn't great there either, but he's better and when he's on he's the best defenseman in the offensive zone that I've ever had the privilege of watching

You can simultaneously grow your prospects and build your NHL roster. Ours is half-patched together, was unceremoniously gutted in a very particular way last summer, was laden with garbage depth hurting the precious young pieces set above it the summer before, and we're already talking ourselves into being okay with another middle six nightmare this season while we wait again, because of The Plan. There was no plan in 2017 that involved the likely playoff miss in 19-20 among any rational fan that decided to flesh out their expectations for this organization on this site. Much less in 2016, 2015, or 2013, or 2012. Each and every season along the way, the prospect conversation has been completely and utterly identical. Each and every season, we enter with our empty roster, leave with our tails between our legs, pick something new to blame, and shoot ourselves in the foot in one way or another. Botterill has been just as bad with this as anyone else. I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I'm not asking to trade our prospects for middling 29 year old hockey players. I'm not saying we should have done this last year or the year before. I'm the one calling BS here, and it's on the new post-tank status quo that is going to spin our trek from 79 points to 80 points over a three year span as acceptable because Casey Mittelstadt exists as a reasonable offensive prospect in the mold of Tyson Jost, and Dylan Cozens scores 93 points in the WHL next year, and because we got incredibly lucky in a lottery. Go anywhere else to neutral fans that are knowledgeable of hockey prospects, and flaunt our situation to them, emphasizing both Casey and Dylan, the defensive prospects, the culture, whatever else you'd like, and see how they react to the roadmap of our entire organization, top to bottom, the last three years, and going forward into this one. They will have heard the same thing from fans of almost every other team, and every other team will have more of the important tangible NHL stuff to show for it along the way. The last four years, yes, including Jason's two and especially Jason's two, have been a ***** mess, even if it winds up okay soon because Samuelson is a "pillar" on some team whose existence I have no clue the nature of, and Ryan Johnson, who nobody heard of until we said his name at the draft, was in that Cole Caufield highlight clip. When we climb out of this, there will be entire years of step-backs that didn't need to happen, that everyone will pretend were critical steps along the way. These include typical GM errors you'd expect from even the best, and many things on top of that. It's the fact that as a fanbase we've been calling out these mistakes as they happen, in real time, for years along the way, that makes it so frustrating. It's this fact that makes the call to just please be reasonably digestible to watch most of the season, please rejoin the rest of the NHL, please get out of last place in wins since the tank ended four years ago, more anguished each passing year. And the reaction to patience, prospects, and The Right Way stronger and more sarcastic as they tick by. There is no right way that doesn't involve the NHL team winning tonight, and last night too. Much less losing, and losing much more than everyone else.

Breaking down by position... Centers 1.) Connor McDavid 2.) Sidney Crosby 3.) Patrice Bergeron 4.) Aleksander Barkov 5.) Nathan MacKinnon 6.) Brayden Point 7.) Sean Couturier 8.) Mark Scheifele (need a bounceback season from him) 9.) John Tavares 10.) Steven Stamkos Honorable mentions: Auston Matthews, Sebastian Aho, Tyler Seguin, Jonathan Toews, Jack Eichel, Ryan O'Reilly, Dylan Larkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Elias Pettersson, Hertl, maybe more! Left Wingers 1.) Tulsi Gabbard 2.) Marianne Williamson 1.) Brad Marchand 2.) Johnny Hockey 3.) Artemi Panarin 4.) Taylor Hall 5.) Alex Ovechkin 6.) Filip Forsberg 7.) Matt Tkachuk 8.) Jonathan Huberdeau 9.) Jake Guentzel 10.) Leon Draisaitl Right Wingers 1.) Mark Stone 2.) Nikita Kucherov 3.) Patrick Kane 4.) Mitch Marner 5.) Claude Giroux 6.) David Pastrnak 7.) Vladimir Tarasenko 8.) Brendan Gallagher 9.) Mikko Rantanen 10.) Timo Meier Defensemen 1.) Erik Karlsson 2.) Victor Hedman 3.) Seth Jones 4.) Morgan Rielly 5.) Charlie McAvoy 6.) Mark Giordano 7.) Thomas Chabot 8.) Colton Parayko (probably too high but I love this guy) 9.) Brent Burns 10.) David Savard or John Carlson

You don't understand, the prospects are different this time!! Just you wait until they're up here 3 years from now!

It'd be one thing if we were just starting, but 4 years are in the trash, this coming one has a low ceiling at this point, and year six might not even happen.

Ovechkin's best stretch of hockey was 2007-2010, and this was a clear tier or two above what he's hummed at the last few seasons. The team the Caps had to build around him to finally win it was ridiculously good, better than any Sabre team I've ever seen (started watching with the 2005-06 Sabres). We're not saying Eichel's going to die at 27, but it will be easier to win games with 24 year old Jack than with 32 year old Jack. Building a championship team is hard always - it's harder the older your stars get, and most of the young star champ teams I've seen recently (Hawks and Pens, namely) were already well underway at the juncture we're sitting. We haven't sniffed playoffs yet. To fit in a Kings timeline, a team that had their 1C in 2006-07 and their 1D start two seasons later, we'd basically have to win the cup next season or the one after (their gap is off of Jack/Dahlin's which throws the comparison off a bit). Everyone already thinks the Kings are old and fried, and Doughty and Kopitar have each already logged a garbage season or two. Coupled with Jack's three straight injury-plagued seasons (I know he missed 5 games, but whatever happened against Boston in December, that negatively affected his game for weeks), well, it illustrates why a GM should never assume years of rope.

Not saying they're right to do so, but the Avs are basically ready for Rosen, Makar, Timmins and Byram(not this year) to jump in, and I don't know that they're interested in another NHL player. In particular, Makar was excellent in the playoffs, and At least one of Rosen or Timmins is likely ready. Not sure their handedness, but with Girard, EJ, and Zadorov, and vets like Cole, they're pretty full and content I think, even if there will be rough patches early.

IMO a cardinal sin of GMing is assuming you have years ahead of you to play with your franchise toys. Especially when they're 23 already (for 99% of this coming season) and haven't sniffed playoffs, and the roster doesn't look primed to change that this season.

I like adding big pieces to Risto because it opens up more possibilities, and some of them, like Tkachuk, are very intriguing