Randall Flagg

All it tells me is that "problems" fans talk about with respect to having a lot of good hockey players aren't really problems and there's nothing to laugh about w.r.t. the current state of the Maple Leafs franchise, much to all of our chagrin

1.) I don't 2.) Making a plan on an assumption like this does things like give your team the worst center depth behind the 1C in the league, in fact, it happened to us just last year with the same player

Any realistic replacement for Zemgus this year was either not going to be as good as him or was going to slide up and fill holes above a 4th line role, since we have a lot of bad hockey players littered all throughout the lineup. Zero reason not to keep him especially since it bugs pi

As we have seen, there are different ways of “driving the net.” You can drive the net mentally geared as a team to get the most dangerous shot possible, having four teammates in a small circle with their sticks opened up for shots, and numerous options to choose from. You can drive the net as three forwards and stop, turned around, waiting for a shot from 60 feet away to hopefully bounce somewhere nearby and that you can get a stick on it before the defender. And you can do stuff in between. It’s clear which method good teams prioritize, and which method we do. Just after finishing this video clip, I read the following quote in an article about Jack Adams winner Barry Trotz: “How do you know your team is playing well? For Barry Trotz, one of the biggest indicators his team is going to win on any given night is whether or not all five skaters on the ice are supporting each other. If you can see five skaters in the picture, on TV or up close and personal, then chances are you’re playing well. Too spread out? You get the picture. Five skaters are always in the picture in the offensive zone, so the same tactic applies to the neutral zone and the defensive zone as well.” Pause the video at a random time and chances are you’ll see the Sabres failing at this and the good teams succeeding. We’ve gotten better at puck support in transition: https://youtu.be/GedyKPm_hAU Now it’s time to improve it in the offensive zone. I’ll stress for the last time, Phil could beat me into the ground on a hockey tactics discussion, I don’t really KNOW what’s going on here, you know? But I think this diagnosis has something to it, as far as why his team failed offensively. Krueger and Jason both have their work cut out for them in terms of adding to the team's talent base and teaching them to be more proactive off the puck in the offensive zone to not only make the job easier for the puck carrier, but to give them a wide variety of options which will allow their natural hockey IQ to flourish and grow. Who knows what the on-ice aspect of this looks like so far, but Jason is 3/3 so far this offseason - Skinner retained, Phil relieved, and a solid NHL RHD added for nothing. Let's hope he knocks the rest of it out of the park and we have a roster worth being excited about for a change this fall! Random thoughts at the end: NYI were completely unimpressive, and made the Sabres look more competent than any other team I watched. Their offensive zone game was boring as hell too. They both showed how far raw effort, basic defensive chops and solid goaltending can take you, and what kind of ceiling a limited roster can put on top of that stuff. Tampa's offensive zone play was also less impressive than I thought it would be - Philly looked better. But Tampa's transition game is completely absurd, and that's how they generated most of their real scoring chances. Sending Jones out there to shut that down is probably part of what helped Columbus take them out. And Philly is ass in the other parts of the game, which is why they finished where they did. Also this literally took 2 and a half months Edit: SDS, I have no idea what's up with your site, but whenever the videos automatically embeded they wiped out a bunch of text, so I had to split it into two comments. Oh well.

October was promising. 6-4-0 at one point, it was the farthest into a season with a winning record they had been in quite some time. They played respectable hockey against several strong clubs. Then came the most entertaining stretch of hockey we've seen since the playoff push in 2010-2011, when Terry first bought the team. a TEN game win streak. TEN. They hadn't won more than three in a row in years, and ripped off TEN STRAIGHT. 17-6-2, first in the NHL at the end of November. What a jump. They just needed to be mediocre the rest of the way, and would have a shot to get in. Average? Playoff lock. No team had ever been in first place after October 31st and missed the playoffs, Buffalo was in first place as December was rolling up. In the blink of an eye, they were out of a playoff spot less than halfway through January, and fans knew the season was shot well before the trade deadline, despite the half-hearted "hope" expressed in player interviews leading up to that point. How could it have happened like this, so quickly? 17-6-2, followed by 13-20-6, followed by 3-13-2 to close the season with a whimper. There were three pretty distinct tiers of play here. The way I'd describe it playing out is as follows: Buffalo plays slightly above average hockey for about a month. Skaters are mostly performing within their career averages and expectations. Then, team play starts to deteriorate, and at the same time we win ten games in a row. There was some bad hockey in that stretch - I contend that the first period or two of hockey @Winnipeg is the worst we saw all season outside of Barclays center or the state of Colorado. And as great as the first period against Philly was, being next to Flyers fans for periods 2 and 3 was painful. But we kept winning. Why? It didn't hurt that the goalies were at/above .930 during that stretch, and the two games they struggled (Montreal, Pittsburgh) were supplemented by a barrage of goals. Unless Carter Hutton was going to finish the season a Vezina candidate, the success wasn't going to continue, because the 10 game streak was sandwiched in a stretch where we won just 3 games in regulation out of 16. During that period of time I did an exercise where I replaced the high, medium, and low danger save percentages of Hutton/Ullmark with those of Lehner and Chad from the year before, as a proxy for what they'd have done in that stretch with the new roster but the previous year's goaltending - and the team's goals-against would have been a little more than 1 goal per game worse. Since only 3 wins were in regulation, they probably would have had a dreadful string of results instead of a ten game win streak, but for the first time in a long while, goaltending went above and beyond and that didn't happen. I’ve also mentioned that I started counting a 12 consecutive game stretch in which our middle-6 (defined by non-Eichel-or-Larsson lines, as those two were doing their jobs very well) combined for a whopping one goal. This started during the streak. Between the goaltending being white hot, and Jack Eichel posting an early 100 point pace (and Skinner's goal pace being near 60 with a really high shooting percentage), it was clear that the team was going to need help if it were to stay afloat. If you like fancy stats...during those 10 games, the Sabres were last in the league at generating high danger scoring chances, and last in the league at preventing them as well. The downfall was coming and was broadcasting itself for those willing to see. At the same time, we saw some gritty ***** hockey from our boys. They deserved to be bought into, deserved to be believed in. They deserved their GM to spend assets and fortify their weak spots, give them a chance to do something meaningful for the first time in nearly a decade. An NHL team capable of winning ten games in a row in the hardest league in the world deserves that attention and respect from its own front office. As constructed, it was not going to be possible for that roster to continue to be good. There were too many holes at critical positions. As soon as the top line cooled off (and it would take a long while after the streak, and a Jack injury, to cool it off) there was nothing left to get reliable scoring from. By not doing anything, Jason effectively told them to sit down, and they sure listened. The quotes from him and the Pegulas in the months after were brutal to listen to. The next stretch of hockey was essentially a 70 point team struggling to find the spark it had early on. The forwards weren’t clicking, the defense was not fluid, and the goalies…man, the goalies really started to crack. A brilliant start in Edmonton, murdered by awful goals against. Same goes against Chicago. There were countless softies at the worst times, which is reflected in the data (the Sabres as a team had completely average and respectable defensive metrics, while when weighted for shot quality, the goalies were far worse than they should have been:) (This uses an expected goal model, which weights shots based on location/type etc. and gives a proxy for goalie performance relative to how a goalie who is exactly league average at stopping shots from all locations on the ice would perform. You obviously can't just claim that league average goalies would allow exactly 25 or whatever goals fewer, on the Sabres, but that's the broad idea, and it's clear that the Sabre fan consensus eye test is supplemented pretty well by data with regards to our goaltending this season) Anyway, his was the team (~70-75 points) that I expected to see all season, essentially. A nice move for Brandon Montour was too little too late, and the team finally folded after months of struggling. They played out the stretch in a zombie-like trance, and their record showed it. I don’t believe it would have ended the way it did if the early thirds of the season had been distributed more uniformly. If they didn’t touch the roster at all this offseason, I would expect another 70-75 point finish, unless Dahlin and Eichel each went off into Hart/Norris territory. We just would have a more consistent Skinner (he likely wouldn’t pace for 60 for half the year, but he also likely wouldn’t go one goal in ~24 game stretch later), and perhaps more consistent mediocrity from the goalies. I wouldn't foresee a rollercoaster like last season, just from a probability argument. (What are the odds that happens twice in a row?) This all added up to a rather embarrassing finish in which we squandered a treasure we may never see again – ten game win streaks are quite rare. Of the teams to ever have one (ten games exactly, others have won more), this is where Buffalo finished: We’re the yellow data point. Nice work, everyone. The front office should be embarrassed. To summarize why I think stuff went wrong, I don’t think our forward depth was close to being good enough to help prop the team up during the top line’s down periods. In fact, I think they played poor enough hockey that they made the job on line 1 more difficult. Nobody needed to worry about Sobotka and Mitts, so they focused everything they had on Jack, Jeff, and usually Sam. And for whatever reason, even with the season lost, we kept throwing Sam out there with those two time and time again, ensuring our status as a one line team. Refusal to experiment has been a common theme of the last four meaningless springs. While these guys couldn’t reliably do anything with the puck, the goalies behind them were worse than they should have been given the rubber they faced. They lost their mojo, Risto went from between the leg dangles to a broken mess, and nobody believed in themselves, which led to the dreck in March. But I shouldn’t just claim that this is all true without providing anything to back it up. Early on I worried a lot about the 2C position. He didn’t get ideal offensive situations, but for a very large stretch of the season, Sobotka was our 2C by minutes played, and was the fourth-most-used forward. I believe this was the case until we were over 60 games through the season (I think he got injured somewhere around there). This was pure madness. No part of his game showed above average defensive ability, on any level of statistics. I saw nobody make the argument that they saw it with their eyes. And offensively? He was an absolute black hole, incapable of receiving or dishing pucks to dangerous areas. If he ever did find himself with the puck in useful areas, the shot dribbled wide, or was calmly swept away. For evidence that this isn’t just hindsight speaking, I refer to the middle of this post: During this period of high Sobotka usage, he went on a 42 game goal-less streak, snapping it with a dribbler with 7 seconds left in a game we were losing 4-1. That is insane. To my eye, we had the worst center depth behind the 1C in the entire NHL. I tried to find a proxy to measure center depth quality and came up with point paces for the 2nd and 3rd most used centers on every team. It’s far from perfect, of course, but here are the results: I also redid a favorite of mine from past seasons, counting the production of every non-top-three-scoring forward of all teams: The Sabres’ forward depth as a whole was problematic and driven from the lack of viable NHL centers. The center spine was used as justification by many Sabres fans to throw 164 consecutive NHL games into the toilet, and blast our organizational depth to a degree that we have not been able to recover from yet. I don’t agree with the decision to tank, but everyone was right about needing high end centers. I would argue that in the eastern conference this has even more importance than out west. Dallas showed that you can win a playoff series with a very good 1C, stacked top line, no forward depth….provided you have a top 2 goalie in the league that year, and live in a conference where 87 points would get you into the playoffs. That’s the roster build we’re stuck with right now, and I don’t see goaltending like that coming on the horizon (nor do I see the playoff picture working out that way when two consecutive years have seen teams in the east missing with 96 points). Further, who does Dallas’s 2C have to face on a nightly basis? Carl Soderberg, Artem Anisimov, Mikko Koivu, Bryan Little, Bonino/Turris, Backlund, Horvat, Hertl, Carter, Henrique, Stepan etc. There are a few nice names in there, but that’s an easier job for Radek Faksa than the following is for Mitts or Vlad: Stamkos, Matthews, Krejci, Trocheck, Malkin, Backstrom, Duchene etc. The eastern list arguably contains the top five centers of either conference. This is our biggest problem (middle six centers, particularly 2C) because it’s a crucial area of the roster, particularly in our conference, and we were likely the worst in the league there, which cannot be said about any other aspect of the team (thankfully). For example, I hear a lot about a porous defense, but all shot-based metrics indicate that we’re about average at defending as a unit, even with a supposed high number of ugly-looking gaffes (I have no reliable way to compare this number to the amount that happen to other teams). We can stand to improve our top six and their play plenty, but I don’t think it’s very high on the list of things that need to get immediately better for us to compete. That is our middle six (led by 2C) and the goalies hopefully figuring something out with the guy that made Mrazek look amazing. While receiving no help, and then having the team fall off the planet and go through stretches like Jack’s horrendous few weeks post-injury and Skinner’s cold streak punctuated with that terrifying ankle tweak, the same analysis paints the other three Sabres forwards in a much better light: And so while I hope for a healthier season from Jack and a less bouncy season from Jeff, I’m not inclined to view either as some problem that needs massive improvement. So any top six forwards are welcome, but it’ll be in the light of putting them with Reinhart to supplement Jack and Skinner, not to replace what Jack and Skinner bring already. Another thing worth talking about in the season of Culture, Intangibles and Locker Room Character was the role that Vlad played relative to what he brought, compared to how opportunities played out for other skaters. Meritocracy and competition were said to be the rule. I found this to rarely match what Phil and Jason decided to do. There was a regular healthy scratch train early on, and its members included Evan Rodrigues, Johan Larsson, Zemgus Girgensons, and Patrik Berglund. None of the players listed approach the level of disastrous on-ice results that placed Sobotka in the bottom 5 NHL skaters based on numerous metrics in models, some advanced, others not. But he got a free pass while bringing nothing to the table (besides, apparently, “left dot faceoffs?”). I think Berglund caught onto this, based on comments he made about his usage/role that I don’t feel like digging for. And let’s not pretend Larsson/Girgensons and Sobotka are on the same planet regarding defensive play – just look at their defensive RAPM charts, which have been shown here a bunch already, if you don’t have time to re-watch the games. In this case, the charts do a great job comparing the players’ abilities. Rodrigues? A real utility 3rd liner, inexplicably included on the train while worse players than he (including Sheary, KO, and 17) remained impervious. I know Rodrigues was polarizing early on, but the guy can flat out play effective hockey at even strength, when so few other Sabres forwards are capable. I’ll give an example in the videos shortly. And even if he couldn’t, he was an excellent penalty killer – I recall two or three standing ovations from Sabres fans due to PK work, and all of them were for Evan. Then we move to prospects. Work hard and you’ll be rewarded! Be consistently good or else someone is there to take your place! Internal competition!!! This didn’t happen. Neither Mittesltadt nor Thompson should have been up all season long based on what they showed us. Both were completely overwhelmed for the duration of the season and didn’t show meaningful improvement along the way. There is real reason to fear that we simply lost/wasted development time for both. I don’t know if this was stubbornness about trade optics, or bad pro evaluation ability (this regime, with each passing day, makes me more and more worried about their ability to correctly diagnose the value of NHL skaters to winning hockey). Starting around November, a functional organization would have begun a rotation, as Casey and Tage started to wilt hard. Smith, Nylander, Olofsson, whatever other Rochester forwards were playing well, should have been given their first tastes early, as when they got them later, they each played better hockey than Mitts or Tage became known for. In fact, they should have gone the very same route they took with Pilut – bring a player up, get some legitimately good games out of him, and when it gets to be a bit much, send him back down so he doesn’t lose all of his confidence, and bring up the best performer of the previous few weeks. Wash, rinse, repeat. It worked for Lawrence, who regularly progressed all season long and stayed hungry, without any frustration. It should have been applied to our forwards as well so the guys stuck in Rochester while having objectively better seasons could have been rewarded, and the guys who needed jolts of confidence and competition could receive them. The play we got from each of these guys is nobody’s fault but our front office, and any developmental problems this may have caused rests on their shoulders, as these kids kept their mouths shut and never stopped trying their best. A supposed organization motto rang hollow and wasn’t taken seriously on any level. It looks mickey mouse now, did at the time, and players can see and feel that. Still, all I’ve really provided in this discussion so far are empty claims and a few numbers. What is it that MAKES the Sabres so bad at generating quality scoring chances? What is it that makes other teams good at it? For any analysis to be useful, it needs to be attached to something that happens on the ice, no? This is a hard question to answer. All I can tell you is that even with Jack and Jeff being elite at it, the Sabres as a team are bottom 6 according to Natural Stat Trick’s total expected goals for, and many of their bottom 9 forwards are littered at the bottom of all even strength production/predicted future production analyses. And I don’t think people who don’t care about advanced stats would disagree with any of their claims in this case – the Sabres just don’t look like the dangerous teams in the league do. Is it talent? Coaching? Both? I started to re-watch games, aiming for ones I hadn’t seen during the season first, and then ones against what I consider to be good offenses second, just to see if I can spot a difference between what we do and what they do. Note: I am not some hockey tactics expert – far from it. I’m doing my best guessing here, and even if I appear to have diagnosed a problem correctly (always debatable), I have no idea how a coach should go about implementing a fix. I’m just a dumb hockey fan trying as hard as I can to understand the sport, and thoroughly enjoying just how challenging that is. I haven’t found the best way to articulate my take on how to succeed in the NHL, but it goes something like this: At even strength, try to maximize your team’s ability to create and utilize space in the offensive zone, be good enough in transition to get there in the first place, and be good at preventing the opponent from doing these things to you. It became clear when watching these games that the Sabres were quite bad at creating (or using available) space, and often didn’t even appear to try, compared to the…stuff I saw other teams doing. And just before we dive in, a disclaimer on the footage you’ll be seeing: The hardest thing about analyzing hockey is the amount of gunk there is. By gunk, I mean several-minute-long stretches where neither team completes a meaningful pass, the puck bounces around in the neutral zone, and everything grinds to a halt on the boards. One can take game footage and show someone who’s never seen hockey before nontrivial amounts of film of both the Bergeron line and a Sobotka-Thompson-Pominville line, and convince them the lines are of roughly equal ability. This is borne out by the fact that the NHL standings have a vast swath of teams that are separated by very few wins, and how any rate stat you can look at generally varies between 53% and 47%, with very, very few teams outside this small range. The key in analysis is to seek out what makes one team 3% better than another over 3500 minutes of even strength hockey. It’s not something that will always jump out when you watch a game, unless it’s 2014 Buffalo versus 2019 Tampa (regular season heh). It’s something that you need to watch for 20 minutes, and mull over. And then watch it again, and again, for about 20 games. That’s basically what I did here.

I know my value is way off in there, just try to look at the spirit of the post! FWIW, I value Cirelli more than Trocheck and think he's going to be a better player. But I believe you're right that this is likely not how GMs would see it, that Trocheck is better now and in the same mold, and that I could be wayyyyyyy wrong, but when I have narratives I ride them hard

A 2C, any 2C, get creative Jason! Lol I'm pretty bad at accurately judging trade value, but I can try. Ristolainen, Nylander for Granlund Ristolainen for AA from Detroit Risto for Kadri Ristolainen, stuff for Trocheck Ristolainen, Mitts for Cirelli, cap dumps to make it work (tampa cap dumps would likely be productive NHLers still) The value needs to be tweaked on all of these, of course, but I just want them to identify a 2C that can be here for a while, and build something to make it happen. I know "it takes two to tango" and blah blah blah, but I have high expectations for somebody who turned our center depth (which was our only strength) into the worst in the league when ranking spines below the 1C. Teams are out there struggling with contracts and the cap, teams really like Ristolainen, something GOOD at that position, this offseason, is possible and I hope he's a go-getter. If we're not trading Ristolainen to do it, there are some freaking glorious RFAs worth emptying the vault for.

The leaps taken by Florida, NYR, and NJD so far are bothersome. Of course, assuming the rumors play out

I don't like their assets, and I have a very specific roster target in mind if I'm moving Risto, and will add to him substantially to make it happen if I have to. And LA ain't got anything close. And I'm not trading Risto in a trade where the returning player doesn't come close, and being content to fill the remaining trade value gap with freaking picks

Frederik Gauthier! Lol Toronto fans were oddly obsessed with this guy for a few years there. He's now their 4C.

player usage is at the root of why Phil's teams sucked so bad that he got fired after only two seasons. Using that usage as justification for its own existence is pretty damn circular given that all coaches involved will probably never be an NHL HC again

I hope we don't trade Risto to LA.

There are two best hockey GIFs of all time. They are this and this

I know who @SwampD's favorite player is going to be for the next decade

But True... THIS coach has got it. Listen to his interviews!! It's not like the CRUMMY coach we had LAST time. bookmarking this so I can copypaste it in two years again They each had the best game of their career against the Toronto Maple Leafs as well

I think that's why our discourse feels like a debate - I'm fine with moving Risto (not for Miller!) but am purely talking under the assumption that the current roster is what we'll see in October, and what I'd do with that. I'll adjust accordingly when moves are made. Right now the other options are Dahlin - Risto (Yuck!) Scandella - Risto (YUCK!!!) McCabe - Risto (not as yuck, but still a far lower ceiling than 24-55)

I'm quite comfortable making a lot of claims based on Nylander's minutes. For example - he should have been up over Tage at least for large stretches of time. It'd be one thing if it didn't make sense that Pilut and Risto do well together....but Risto can't move the puck, it's all Pilut's good at. Pilut can't handle physical play, while Risto can move mountains. It worked because Risto didn't even bother trying to move the puck, and Pilut wasn't the focus of an overwhelming forecheck - he made himself the outlet for Risto and got the puck out from there. When I say they LOOK amazing in addition to all of their metrics being good, this is what I mean. They look like a smoothly-functioning NHL machine back there. That's not an accident, and I don't believe it's a fluke just because we know over larger sample sizes that by themselves they're good at those things. If Risto stays here, I don't see how you could possibly want him to play with anyone else.

Lol Tage messed up a toe drag and it led to a 2 on 1 against. Ah the memories!

Olofsson baby!

I had that slightly wrong - apparently Duchene just was missing for the "optional" stuff that every other Av attended in the week or two leading up to TC, receiving jabs for it from their captain and other players, but eventually showed up to camp when it began. The whole vibe was that he was disgruntled and wanted them to get him out of there ASAP though. And would barely talk to anyone. Risto is being a good boy.

Nope. Duchene requested a trade and didn't go to Colorado's training camp after their disastrous 48 point season. Instead of panicking and trading him for peanuts, with teams knowing that he wanted out, he said "fine", kept him on the team for a few weeks into the season, until he got a really nice deal that they liked, and shipped him off after the season had already been underway. it didn't hurt Colorado at all, they went on to make the playoffs. And they got a top 4 lottery pick, a gem in Sam Girard, plus other things. With Risto not being nearly as much of a headache as Duchene was, we could do something similar and it would benefit us with the injuries we already have for October. IF we wanted to move Risto and didn't like the return today.

Lots of parting ways in Carolina - a goalie coach, likely their goalies themselves, an AHL coach, a 40 goal scoring winger

?

AHL coach, not NHL.

I wouldn't be confident if they chose Marner. I'd happily do it for Point/Aho though. And I like Tkachuk a lot, but he doesn't play center, so I'd probably stay away from 4 first rounders for him (I believe he's been mentioned here as well)