Randall Flagg

It warms my cynical, jaded heart that Pominville is doing so well this season.

Skinner has a cute smile.

Great shot by Kyle, and shift after the goal. Mitts has been great too. Nice Jack and Jason!! Dahlin, woah. That was cool. Keep up this excellent play boys! Nice pass and takeaway from Sam. Yessss! Jack, Jeff, Jason are magic. Kyle and Evan play well together. They trust each other and know where the other is going on the forecheck. Juuuust caught up to the live feed.

Jesus Christ.

What a start for Pettersson - 15 points in his first 9 games, after a 5 point performance last night. Something something 40% shooting percentage, but the kid is special. And the Coyotes won again to move to 7-5 after their terrible start. 5 straight wins

The only name I've been able to come up with is Tierney, but we need Ottawa to start sucking to be interested in selling him off, and even then he does have another year which would make them less likely I feel. But he wouldn't cost a huge amount should he be made available, and he plays good hockey. Not the best 2C, but if Casey eventually develops enough to supplant him, he's better than many 3Cs out there. And he's had a tremendous start to the year, so maybe he is a 2C. But yeah, not likely. I'm always looking at Tampa, who just signed Gourde to a 5 mil cap hit. I have no idea how they keep all those guys under the cap, but somebody HAS to pop free soon. Especially with Point's deal coming up, and him being their 2nd best forward for the last good while now. Tyler Johnson makes the most sense for them to move on from IMO. They'll need to address their D, and Stralman/Girardi/Coburn are like 10 mil off the books but they need to fill those spots with people. Namestnikov is underperforming in NY, and they're "rebuilding." Coyle is meh in Minny right now but they're doing okay so I doubt they're interested i moving him. I dunno. I want these guys to have the best chance to win games. I think we could make a move that doesn't screw up the long-term approach, but helps things now with Casey and the team as a whole.

I'm gonna be pretty grumpy if they lose this one. I'll try not to post if that happens - exam on monday to prepare for anyway. Go Sabres! Whoop those Sens! I like afternoon games, but only one every couple weekends. It feels like the Sabres don't like them very much.

The first player to come up should be CJ Smith - apparently Nylander is having effort issues again and everything I read about Smith says he works his butt off and is really just good at everything at the AHL level. That won't screw up any major prospect's development plan and should add a positive in the Sabres lineup when injuries really hit.

First, the good news: The depth on this team plays better hockey as a whole than the depth last season. Now, I define depth a little differently this year - last year we had the structure of two top six lines that were decent offensively, but lines 3 and 4 were an utter disaster. Unfortunately, this year, it's been clear that if Jack, Jeff, and Jason aren't involved in the scoring, we aren't scoring. The better hockey hasn't translated to actual depth production. I projected every team's scoring from their forwards that aren't top 3 on their team in goals (sure, this makes some weird "depth players" on some teams with guys who pass the puck a lot), but the point is that we'll get a decent picture of organizational goal scoring depth, as goals are what wins hockey games. Sad face: Outside of our team's goal scorers, we can't score goals. Again. For the millionth year in a row. Hopefully the sample size is small enough that things change, but nothing about their game to me screams that our bottom 3 lines are just waiting to bust out. Good news - our better-playing-than-last-year depth HAS climbed out of last place in total POINTS projected to 82 games, as Rodrigues, Kyle have 4 assists, Sam with 5. They are FOURTH worst in projected points, if last in projected goals. The discrepancy likely comes from our defensemen chipping in offensively, so that is one problem solved from last year. We need to get these guys going though. And yes, I do know cleaner ways to make better plots, but it's so quick to use the online chart site that let me make this one. And no, I don't have the time to plot projected points.

I'd keep Jack and Skinner together until the ridiculous scoring rates come back to earth, and then this would be totally cool to shift to.

Sheary's stretch of bad is getting annoying. A lot of guys I thought would be good are bad and a lot of guys I wrote off are at least passable if not good

Yes, culminating in Pilut winning the SHL defenseman of the year and Olofsson leading the league in goals last season.

Jack's an early contract of the kind that, coupled with what the cap is doing, will look scary/ridiculous as time approaches the present from the left, but make sense as time approaches the present from the right. Like, I think Nylander is about to get a similarly eye-popping deal wherever he ends up. And then every kid after that. I wouldn't be surprised that within 3 years, the production from Jack and these other guys versus the percentage of the cap they take up is completely normal to any other NHL era. I don't think he'll be Sid, Malkin, or McDavid, but there's no reason he's not better than Anze Kopitar, who hoisted two cups for a well-built-around-him franchise. Who is about to enter his second full-season-disappearing-act in the last three years, as well. You can need what you need from Jack, but my attention has shifted to needing my GMs to actually do f*cking something above average to make the team relevant for a change, rather than needing Jack to score his THIRD point of the night for the team to get their third goal. With Jack the exact player he is right now (I think he's having a very nice season and i expect it to get better) you can win a cup in this league. Our FO has been just stupid enough that I worry they won't get close.

Encouraging things: Okposo's role this whole entire season has been one that minimizes potential damage to the team and himself. He's still in a "regathering" phase and isn't being pressured to do what Pominville is being successful at right now with Jack, and isn't on the ice in situations where his shortcomings will sting us if they crop up. Pominville in general. Keep those legs as long as you can buddy. Jeff Skinner. Jack's sitting at 51% corsi right now for the first time after a meaningful amount of games in his career. With every caveat about corsi in the world, it's still a thing that all the good players do, so it's nice to see Jack do that. Not sure he would be without Skinner, and it's fun to see Skinner having that effect on a guy like Jack Eichel instead of a guy like Joakim Nordstrom. Didn't see McCabe last night but he's back and was good before he missed the games. Dahlin isn't Orr, but no 18 year old defenseman has looked quite like this in a long time. Not sure he's having a better season than Ekblad, certainly not offensively, but he's a better player than Ekblad, who just gave the puck to Campbell all the time, where Dahlin drives the breakouts while he's on the ice. Every single bad thing he does is because he isn't strong enough or gets surprised by the strength and speed of depth NHL players (they're all strong and fast here). Those things will not stay the same for very long at all.

In 2022? We said the same thing in 2008 and we haven't sat pretty since before I went through puberty

Not to debate a broader point about what you and the franchise needs from Jack after losing a season (and depth for years) for him, but loads of those guys will come off their October adrenaline. A lot of them are worse than Jack. A lot of them would have fewer points than Jack on the first line of this team. It's disappointing about Jack (and not his fault) that he isn't worth losing a season for (no player is) but for as long as this team looks remotely like it does he's going to be at the very bottom of (or not on) the problem list. It's been established for 3 seasons now, too, that when everyone else gets tired during the long middle months of the season is when Jack's freaky strength kicks in and he starts to climb these charts. He's done it every single year. Humming along at an 88 point pace before that even starts isn't a bad thing, and I'll start looking closer at that stuff when we pass the halfway point. I know that probably does nothing for you, but that's how this poster sees it anyway. Also, I know your secret. (You're the only person on this board whose enjoyment of Jack approaches mine - I think Thorny could be in the conversation too though, and maybe True, but True can't stand him helping a player score such as Jeff Skinner)

They look better to me. One center swap from the ones that won 3 games and were changed for zero reason Hopefully just maintenance for Bogosian?

These takes are probably weird and unpopular and I'm not sure I agree with them, and they're not very organized, but I'll throw them out there: I would bet Sam will turn it on for the second half of the season once again. I think it's important that your key players don't wait half a season to start playing, but even if that's what Sam is, I want to keep him, and just understand that I need to find better players for him to play with and thus make him not one of the three "guys" on offense. In this light, a bridge deal is good,and quite frankly, we won't need to worry about him taking up a huge chunk of our cap. I think moving him is a bad thing, I think his value to the team in the second half is worth more than what we'd get for him (what, a flawed young defenseman like the ten we have already? A forward with similar problems? May as well keep Sam). I also think that, while Sam has had some clunkers in Nevada and over the last 2 or 3, he's an order of magnitude better than he was in the first two months last year. I also think that we can look closely at the two situations and start to piece together what's up. Our worst skaters last year were probably Moulson, Griffith, and Pouliot, though Pouliot could score every eight games with a ridiculous solo effort. Sam spent what, a month? Centering various combinations of those guys and it was a disaster, because Sam can't be the guy on his line. But he played with ROR the rest of the way, who, despite the perpetually depression-driven furrowed-eyebrows, is a better player than those guys, and Sam lit it up. Right now, if I were to rank all Sabres forwards in terms of effectiveness, Thompson is the only thing keeping Sobotka from last. And Sam is helping - without Sam, Sobotka's metrics (and eye test for me) are an unmitigated disaster (and he was drawing 4th in ice time at ES on the whole team anyway because yay Phil). With his time with Sam included, they're just bad. So he's doing the thing we talked about him doing in the offseason, making his teammates better. But he won't drive anything himself, so if you have him make a lost cause better, you're really not doing much to help your team out. Last year, after a couple months we realized this and the rest of the way he and ROR were busy tilting the ice in ghastly roles. Our issue this year is that he hasn't played well with Jack, Jack and Jeff are humming together, and we have no other established good hockey players in the forward group to stick Sam with to elevate each other, so I'm honestly not confident in a similar level of offense being reached. Which is reason 30 why a move for a better 2C is something I'd sign off on. Not only would they start scoring, Samson would start scoring. It's how he works. It's not what you want at 2OA, or close to what the Bruins or Lightning got much later in that draft, because tanking is utter garbage (sorry not sorry, and check out 2nd rounder Aho from 2015's tank year who I've spent 3 seasons salivating over) but moving forward he'll be fine and a piece you may as well keep for when you feel like keeping/adding talent after you've tackled the paranormal problems on your team. (This is 100% cheekiness, not serious)

Here's a stat: After Housley has messed with lines that stayed intact for more than one win in a row this season, the Sabres are 0-3-2.

And the other thing that bugs me about ERod is that, when you compare a player to their expectations, who on this team has done more to exceed them than Evan? The guy was never supposed to stick for more than a game or two in terrible injury situations and is our most efficient ES scorer in sh*t roles with dreg linemates. And the organization rewards busting his a$$ to exceed all expectations, skating harder every shift on average than his teammates combined, with sitting for about 5 guys doing objectively worse for no discernible reason (besides needing to screw with Tage's head for some reason)

And compare the Larsson/Zemgus we're seeing this year (possession monsters, if not finishing) to the guys last year. This is what nuanced and focused roles can do to a player. We had a spark that we dismantled for no reason, and the two lines still going are the ones that maintained those roles and we didn't touch. Phil has to show he can find these things and not just stumble in and out of them. It really can give and take away wins from the team.

And I don't mean to sound like I'm saying people shouldn't get on Jack and expect more from Jack. That's what the forum is for eh. I just believe our biggest problem is what's behind Jack in the center lineup, some of what's on their wings, and about 5 of the D positions. Maybe 4 when McCabe is clicking. Like, I think we could take current Jack as 1C, and have a good, not even great, just good, GM take exactly that and make a team that wins playoff series, and that there's really no excuse not to do it fairly soon with the pieces and currency we have.

Also, since I didn't and will not watch the game: The Sabres took like all of the shot attempts in this game. The fourth line from the win streak was at 90 CF%. The first line still intact from the win streak was at was at 65-70%. The two that were jumbled up in an ill-advised manner, as described before, hovered around 50, some players above, some players below, except for that particularly troublesome Sobotka line (Sobotka was at 37%.) Housley thinks Sobotka is a driver even though every single game without Sam the stats and eye test said he was our worst forward. Housley thinks ERod is a spare piece despite all visual and statistical evidence suggesting he stirs the drink. Phil doesn't understand why things work when they do and why they don't when they don't.

The only parts of this game I saw were in the 4 minute youtube highlight video. During the test I proctored, I checked the score when it was 3-0 in the third. I sighed. Refreshed it 5 minutes later, 3-2. Knowing how we've been going the last 2, I expected, and saw, both goals to be scored by Jack's group. I'm not here to say that Jack didn't screw up at the end, or that he had a good game, because I didn't see it. I will say that I've read the same thing I read here after his two point night (yet another where the depth scoring is nonexistent) on every other forum in the league after THEIR guy scores 2 points in a 4-2 loss and doesn't tie it at the end, whether that guy be Giroux, Getzlaf, McD, Kopitar, whoever. The only point I'm making here, is that the current plot of the Buffalo Sabres is that we can win games when Jack, Jeff, and Pominville are all pacing for 164 points during the wins. But to have a consistently good NHL team, you can't rely on that to get all your goals. It's a shame we wasted a game where that continued and DIDN'T get the win, because at some point Jack will have a game with no assists, Jeff and Jason with no goals. Where is everyone else? I mean, they're there, doing about what you'd have expected them to do when looking at the roster in August. Our team isn't there yet, especially behind Jack, and so we're going to have fun stretches where they actually do something, but we're also going to have bad stretches where they don't, because all parts of the roster aren't where they someday will be (Jack included.) It just sucks to lose 3 in a row right after winning 3. Back below De Luca .500 we go. Hope we can get it back Saturday. And whatever that it's the sens - we are going to lose to them again this year, and we're also going to beat Tampa. It's the NHL. Let's see a better effort on Saturday boys. You'd think our magical new locker room would have taken care of that

He'll get there. Jack's a December-January boy.