Randall Flagg

There's a reason why my posts have gradually gained a frantic, stressed out edge to them over the last couple of years with the decisions that have been made. I think about this five times per day if I'm lucky to think about it that little

Thanks! I'm not surprised he escaped, and I probably have him too high overall. I just really love the elite two-way forwards. Cup winners come in all shapes and sizes, but they always seem to have one of those guys.

That's assuming EK can walk again. And with Sid, Bergeron, Barkov, Stone, Point, and Couts, I think it's pretty evident the type of player that is my favorite ?

I have no idea. NHL GMs may value upside differently than I do - Laine certainly has far more upside. They also might value intangibles more than I do - and Laine's are sketchy as hell. Some of the stuff coming out of the friedmans etc. earlier this summer were very much against the type of character the Pegulas have been looking for, though I'm not sure how much I buy it. Marek asked Friedman how he expected Winnipeg to do next season and followed this up with the question “How much of it revolves around Patrik Laine bouncing back?”.Freidman replied “Laine is a whole big discussion right because he’s the one guy who seems to want a short bridge (contract) of all these guys. He didn’t leave happy last year and we’ve talked about this, some of that was his own fault, he wasn’t as good as he could be and I think he chafed under some of the leadership there. The guys at the top of that food chain are hard driving guys. They expect you to buy into the program and I think that they felt he didn’t buy in enough and I think he felt that some of the things that they wanted were ridiculous. So you got to bridge that too.” And I readily admit to having very different (and possibly very wrong!) opinions about players that many NHL GMs would love. The most recent example is me complaining that I'd never in a million years give an asset for Jimmy Vesey

Ovi is interesting. I think he'd make my top 20...but I like Kane and Marchand more than him on the wing right now. Probably a couple others that I can't think of at the moment. Doing this by position might be fun too, maybe I'll do that later

I'm absolutely starved of hockey content and I'm sure many of you are, too. This idea popped into my head so I'm going with it. Going into this NHL season, who are your top ten NHLers? All positions apply. These are the guys who you think will have the ten best/most effective seasons. Mine will not have any goalies, because while I believe goalies have a huge impact on the game relative to any individual skater, it's too hard to pick which one will be great any given year. Gibson would be my guy though. 1.) Connor McDavid 2.) Sidney Crosby 3.) Patrice Bergeron 4.) Aleksander Barkov 5.) Mark Stone 6.) Nathan MacKinnon 7.) Brayden Point 8.) Erik Karlsson 9.) Nikita Kucherov 10.) Sean Couturier

I wouldn't get mad at the Sabres for doing that but I don't think I would. He's the head of the list of "good" hockey players that I want no part of. Similar to Kessel, JVR, Pacioretty, probably Kreider, Johansen

Bruins fans still regularly bring up Vanek's ability to look like the best player in the league against them and it's pretty funny to come across the comments.

"Laine's had some nice moments on the top line but let's not pretend it's been some kind of groundswell of production. He's simply not scoring at a rate expected of a player of his caliber. He's fighting the puck and has endured multiple and substantial slumps. What else can you do with him? He's been given an extended opportunity on the 1st line and it's not working." "1 5v5 goal in his past 29 games... this includes time with 55 & 26. need more from him, a lot more" "It is hard with Laine. Everyone can see he is talented with a shot most players could only dream of, but fact is that he drags down pretty much everyone he is playing with. He is terrible even strength due to his lack of defensive abilities, so why put him in top 6!?I can only see him fit in one top 6 combo, and that is with Hayes and Ehlers. Both are good defensively. Laine will not make them better but perhaps they will be able to get Laine in a shooting spot more often." "This year, Bryan Little is better than Laine. Little has almost as many points with less ice time. Little has way more 5v5 points. Little has more game winning goals. And Little has the same/slightly better shooting percentage as Laine. I won't even touch the +/-, but we all know that Bryan Little is a solid defensive player. Can't say that about Laine. Little even has less penalty minutes. I am not saying this to make the case that Bryan Little is some sort of superstar. He's not. Laine was and still can be a superstar in this league.Laine has taken a huge step backwards this year. I am still completely perplexed if this is mostly on Laine, or mostly on the Jets development plan/activities/assignments for him. We need to do better by this kid. He is the most important asset in Jets 2.0 history." "I thought this kid was already a bonafide superstar but this last year has been really frustrating to watch. He looks slow, and his agility is poor. The first half of his first season he was absolutely exhilarating to watch. Rushing the puck, toe drags, good possession. Now he just gets tracked down and stripped so easily.I keep praying for the old PL. I hope that he reemerges with this new attention to defensive detail. Until then he has to get a bridge? Unless he's willing to sign long term at around 6 (which I know he won't)." "To be fair, I think he has always looked slow in NHL. I wish he would focus more on that area: speed, and aggressiveness without the puck. Maybe he's doing it, but progress doesn't happen overnight. Anyway it's getting tiresome to watch him be 2 steps behind and trying to awkwardly reach for the puck. He has to get those legs going at least a bit faster. He already has the frame, and will have the strength needed, so that Ehlers-speed isn't needed to make him unstoppable I believe he will get there. This 3rd season slumping just couldn't come in at much worse time regarding his future deal. Who knows, maybe he'll go on a tear in the playoffs. Though it's very unlikely when play gets even tighter." Man, a lot of these fans cite the McCabe hit as some sort of turning point. It's referenced as "mccabe" and they all know what they mean when they say it. These quotes are from a random discussion in late March. Like dark, I would happily take a risk on Laine, but I wouldn't touch any of our assets with REAL value, and so it wouldn't happen.

To his credit, it sounds like his diet has gotten better. Big Buff will get him in line eventually.

I made an error - his food vice is candy, not fast food.

I just went to the Jets forum to read about Laine. The very top thread is titled "Why is Laine not training his skating?"

Psh they aren't gonna play hockey in 2020-2021 The good thing about that list of forwards is that it's largely composed of solid hockey players or guys we could reasonably hope to become solid hockey players in the next year or so

We said the same thing about ROR, who promptly won a Selke and Conn Smythe the immediate season after he left. In the NHL, no single player can individually turn around a franchise. Connor McDavid is a 110+ point superstar, playing with a 50 goal Draisaitl, and their team is in the dumps. Edmonton certainly gets sustainable winning hockey from them, they just don't from the dumpster fire that is the parts of their organization on the ice for the other 40 minutes of the game. It's not an excuse to move the two good pieces they have - take a step back and look at the context! If we wish to improve the Sabres, we need to do that here. The Sabres had the worst center depth in the league this year. They spent the season trotting Sobotka out against Matthews, Stamkos, Kuznetsov, Malkin etc. Their goalies were far below average in goals allowed based on the shots they saw. Their depth forwards behind Jack, Sam, and Skinner (while those three spent about a month post-streak with ludicrous production) scored a combined one goal from six players over 4 weeks of hockey. These are the dominant reasons for the Sabres' season, not the presence of Reinhart and Risto. These roster failures don't preclude having good players that can be key pieces on winning teams, just like I argued to people with their fingers in their ears last summer both before and after the ROR move. The presence of good players on a bad team is not indicative of those players' abilities, and teams that act under this philosophy do things like trade Conn Smythe winners for piles of garbage. Reinhart DOES contribute to sustainable, winning hockey, by virtue of improving the play of every teammate that plays with him and doing a million little things right to tip the ice. League average save percentage would take his positive shares in every advanced stat there is and turn them into a positive plus minus - a stat which Laine was minus 24 at despite 60% offensive zone starts and intensive sheltering from other teams' top players. And I don't think you've watched Laine skate recently. The dude eats fast food and plays fortnite 8 hours a day and it's showing in his fitness, the dude looks gassed three shifts into every game. He's a complete plodder on the ice. And he's bad at hockey, outside of shooting the puck, something he's incapable of doing in the most important part of the game (ES) unless his teammates do all the work for him. His tape is plain bad, and I'll get some to illustrate if we actually make a move for him. The Sabres don't need to submarine their ES play to improve their power play scoring. Their net special teams the past four years has been +10, +4, -2, and +4. They are bottom of the barrel at even strength hockey, something that Laine is absolutely dreadful at. Reinhart is actually good at it, and it will show on a winning team whenever we decide to put one together, and saddling him, one of three or four members of the entire organization to do any semblance of pulling their own weight the last four years, with the blame for the team-level results is like squinting at a car crash from three miles away and blaming the democrats/republicans for it. Risto and Reinhart are some of the only valuable trade pieces we have and we need to be careful with how we dole them out. Sending two of them for an ES dumpster fire would be horrifying.

Ah yes, the team that has developed approximately zero forwards in the last decade will fill that slate I'm excited

Sam had 5 more ES goals than Patrik last season and 15 more points overall, and that gap in counting stat production is way smaller than the gap between their abilities to positively impact the game at even strength in more ways than just the finish of the play. Sam had as many ES points as Patrik had total points, over half of which came on the power play

That's actually kinda scary. That's like 10 important roster spots that will immediately need to be filled with good NHL players. is that even possible

If by "upgrade" you mean 1000+ minutes of garbage ES hockey and a pile of PP goals, then sure it's an upgrade. That trade makes our team far worse at sustainable, winning hockey shift in and shift out

Or Ullmark to grow. It's still possible!

They're closer than you think they are IMO, but they've got to find the right top six forward trade.

Cementing us with a forward corps who will ensure our ceiling this season is 84 points

Jack, Jimmy, and Skins are all varying degrees of dreadful in their own zone, and Jimmy's thing (goals from in tight) is the exact function that Jeff provides the line already, to the tune of 40 goals, so Jimmy being there is a bit redundant. I'd like to find/add a player to that spot who does something different, be it on the boards or in the defensive zone. I also just don't want to watch Jimmy Vesey play for the Sabres but that's just me. Hopefully he proves me wrong!

He's really just my coping mechanism for the fact that I'm probably going to dislike our forward group as a whole once again

*raises hand