Randall Flagg

I can't click any of those yet. I think it was a bad offseason until he added another top 6 body on Thursday. Now, it appears he accomplished a goal, but I won't like it or hate it until I see it play. At least he did stuff to a last place team, eh? I understand your broader point, but applying it to the practices is a little strange. It's not as if they stayed after for verbal berating. I know you've followed Samson with an incredibly close eye, so you must remember the muffin shot of October 2015, and how it transformed by the time he scored that hat trick in Winnipeg (watch the first goal he scored again), and what Samson focused on in the ROR practices. Even the suggestion that the kids were 'onto something' with respect to not showing up to skill-building exercises reeks of building justifications post-trade out of thin air like Buffalo fans are so fond of doing.

Cody Ceci is like Risto - his team assumes that because he CAN play the minutes he does, he's GOOD at them, when on-ice results for years indicate it's not the case. FTR, Risto is better and has more upside than Ceci. But both would do a lot better if viewed by their coaches differently.

Damn, Nick Shore is still a UFA? No reason not to grab him for cheap if he'd like to come. Put more padding between the Griffiths of the world and our lineup.

I think they'll have the same net impact - 20+ ES goals, hanging onto the puck too long (Kane learned to curb this, we'll see if Jeff does), increase in speed, a bit of a liability defensively (Kane less so based on what I've read), and we'll probably get sick of him being on the ice the same time as Jack. People who liked Kane's physical game will like Jeff a little less, people who love skating wizards and stick-handling will like Jeff a little more. They both will comprise 75% of all Sabres breakaways.

When together last year, PP1 was just as good as when we were 1st in the PP the year before. I hope Dahlin can take ROR''s spots and do those things just as well. I try to keep that unit the same in that sense, so Eichel on the half-wall Risto at the point in the umbrella Dahlin opposite Jack, a little higher up KO in the usual right-half-wall spot Sam in front and down low And then unit 2 should be a lot better than recent years: Defenseman on the point (I really don't know who it should be) E-Rod left half-wall Casey right half-wall Skinner in the Briere spot by the net not sure who gets the last spot

Now that the offseason dust is settling, even though I don't agree with some of Botterill's decisions, I can't fault him for the things I was getting ready to without another move a few weeks ago. He made huge changes to a last place team. He has a team that is firmly his own, and we can really start to judge him on his own team-building ability, which is the most fun and important part of a GM's tenure. The volume of moves has hit a point where, I still want him to upgrade Bogosian, but expecting like 5 trades for meaningful NHL pieces in one offseason becomes unreasonable for any GM. The team used a big part of a strength to address a big weakness, and used filler and its own forward prospect (trade for Jeff, Casey) to attempt to fill that hole. The moves all make sense grouped together even though this is very much a collection of pieces whose chemistry is unknown. A New Jersey season feels a lot more possible today than it did yesterday. Also, one positive of the removal of ROR is that there's not one player I would trust those same minutes with, and so we might get the defend-by-committee/volume and "funnel as many offensive-upside minutes to Casey Jack and Jeff that you can" usage that I've wanted forever.

Yep - this year, and the potential and expectation to win during it, has tangible value, especially to Jack, Sam, Dahlin, and Casey. If Skinner walks for nothing, and he won't, he'll either sign or we'll trade him, it was still worth it for that reason.

I've watched Tage Thompson play about 6 full games scattered throughout last year at this point, and without exponential growth to his game, he simply will not play on the first line yet. Phil might try it, but it won't work just yet, he's not ready. Unless he's taken a massive step, but it'd be a bit silly to assume he has without seeing him on the ice first. Obviously you let him compete for spots, but I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed in him if he had to start in Rochester - Blues fans uniformly agree that he should have been in the AHL last season.

I can legitimately make a forward group with 12 players better than Pominville. I am happy.

I don't think I could more staunchly oppose a top line than I do that one haha I see why you picked it though as the next two fall in seamlessly. No idea, I mean on the ice there.

The Canes fans on hfboards are brilliant, so I hope you guys get to see some of their zaniness. When the board introduced liked posts and a ranking for the most-liked posters, they had a concerted, months long effort to get their posters to the top 10 or whatever, and then switched their avatars to spell out a word when you read the ranking list, and waited for people to notice. I don't remember what they said, but it was a hysterical thing to happen. Skinner is gonna be polarizing, and is a one-man-show, which is why I don't think he'll end up next to Jack even though you gotta try it out. This will likely play out closer to the general Kane scenario here than we'd expect, hopefully with more team success this time.

Shooting his career average last season would have given him 30 goals, FWIW. pi brought up +/-, right? Let's check that out - it's a large enough number you have to look at it. His team's +/- was bad, but he has a disproportionate amount of (-) for his time. ie, pi's TRPM would still be negative. The team's save percentage was .897, which is bad. Jeff's expected goals stats are as follows: xGF:56 xGA:45 xGF%:55.5% compared to his actual GF:42 GA: 60 GF%: 41% His on-ice shooting percentage wasn't terrible at over 8%, but his PDO was 94.5%. The tank-Sabres team was 4% better than this. This means that Jeff's goalie's save percentage while he was on the ice was about .870. Backing up for folks who don't know, GF/GA are just how many goals your team scores and allows at 5v5. For Jeff, that number is bad. But both underperform what is expected, shown by the xGF stats. This stat is calculated by taking into account where the shots on goal come from while you're on the ice, and weighing them by league average save percentage/shooting percentage from those spots. So if Jeff hopped on the ice and created the events he does with league average players at every other position for both teams, he would have had a positive plus-minus, and would have even been better than suggested likely, because his shot is far above league average. But his team's notoriously bad goaltending gave up 20 more goals than it would have if it was league average, adjusted for shot quality. And he was a little unlucky shooting after being pretty lucky the season before. So, his +/- tanked. This is not an argument that he is good at defense, he's not, but he's also a wing who doesn't have a lot of d-zone responsibilities. So for now, I would say that we don't need to worry much about that +/- in front of those goalies. His number suppression might also be because of playing with Derek Ryan all season, he appears to be his main center. I was wrong about Staal the year before too - he was with Victor Rask all season. This guy is probably going to lurve Jack Eichel. I know some people don't like these, but they're neat at least: He plays LW, so there's not much change from his side defensively. OMG WE HAVE A PLAYER ON THE GOOD SIDE OF THESE CHARTS FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER Carolina is a well-structured team, and he creates events without dragging very many people down at all, and tends to slightly improve their shot ratios, according to that chart. Pardon my rambling

As far as how focused a fan is in general on the Sabres now versus the Sabres in the future, it's tough to be upset on any part of the spectrum, from Crusader to We've. We've is happy because the Sabres improved their team for this season and it only cost nameless futures and a prospect every team has several of. Crusader-people are happy because if it doesn't work out, there's no reason we won't get an equivalent package in futures back at the deadline. Skinner isn't going to be anyone's favorite player, but the ROR trade took a bite out of -Top six-caliber players who can find and make a variety of hockey passes, plays, shots- to fill the bottom six garbage problem. Berglund and Sobotka upgrade Zemgus and Nolan but make the team worse at finding and executing passes and shots - the only passes they complete are the safe, low-ceiling ones presented right in front of them, and this team needed to do something to address the fact that it's still in another league from the good NHL teams with respect to creating hockey plays, and this trade attempts to address that with a player who can skate, pass, and shoot, all three better than average, all three to create things from nothing. Jeff will play like Derek Roy but if Roy was a winger who was hoped to be top 4-5 in scoring on the team, not the 1C. I am going to enjoy watching him skate. I watch Canes games just to watch him skate. You obviously have to try playing him with Jack first. It could be electric. It could be bad, as he does like to have the puck, a lot. If he doesn't settle in with Jack, you can give a huge boost to your shelter line with Casey and Erod/Okposo. 65% ozone starts, minimize competition, they'll have a blast. I still like Sheary-Eichel-Reinhart for top offensive line. Overall, this makes it way easier for the team to improve if not everything goes right (none of the kids in Roch break through + Eich is still at 75-77 point pace + Mitts is only good for 30 points instead of 60 etc) Housley's nickname has to be Philhouse now, no? Jack is Bart in every way Nelson is Nelson HA HA We can do big things with this.

We definitely were talking to Carolina about Skinner. This certainly wasn't the most surprising move, though nobody had any idea it was coming today

I had to chime in given my staunch Skinner defense here in the past. He's got the best edges of any NHL player not named McDavid or maybe Cam Fowler. He brings us what Kane did - goal scoring production with an incomplete game, though it's incomplete in different ways. The team is not in a position to be selling all its prospects for veteran players, but it's in a position where it absolutely HAD to sell SOME futures for this immediate season. Skinner scored 37 goals playing with Jordan Staal two years ago. Not sure what happened last year. He's had 4-5 straight years of good health since the concussion issues. He also shares the name of my all-time favorite television character. Can't wait to see him cashing in on Eich's dishes (of steamed hams). Sick trade, Jason. I'm more likely to start making lineups now, I had a feeling something was going to fall.

No, I got you. This is as clear evidence as we could get without the Sabres doing a direct faceoff competition. Against identical samples, Jack did far better than Casey. 80% to 47%. If Casey's sample is too small for this comparison, it's certainly too small for you to claim he's better than Jack like you did. Either way, the argument is finished and your initial point invalid.

Friend, if you think I'm arguing that Eichel is good at faceoffs, you need to read what I'm saying a little more carefully. You said this: " "Casey Mittelstadt is better at faceoffs than Jack Eichel. Hopefully that trend continues." I disagreed with this sentence exactly, and I did not make claims of Jack being great. He'd torch Mittelstadt by virtue of having taken harder faceoffs than Casey ever has for 3 years. It's not a "Jack is better than Casey" thing. It's a "it takes every player years to figure this out, and Casey doesn't have that" thing. It's as simple as that. If you want proof, here you go: I just went through Natural Stat Trick and found every center Casey took faceoffs against for his 47.2% faceoff percentage. I could only access Jack's faceoff wins in the offensive zone against those players, but that still gave me a sample size of 126 faceoffs. Jack won 101 of them, or 80%. He almost doubled Casey's win percentage against those players. He'd destroy Casey in faceoffs 1v1, end of story. Mic drop

Can you show me this? I believe you, I'm just curious. Jack has been taking faceoffs against Sidney Crosby and Patrice Bergeron and the like for three seasons now. I don't think faceoffs are something you're inherently good at - find me three rookie centers that took 500 faceoffs and won more than 50%. Even Sid, one of the best in the game, was trash at them to start his career. They're skills you don't develop until you've done a thousand of them at the NHL level. Casey hasn't, Jack is getting there. Jack would torch Casey in faceoffs at least for a year or two. As far as down the line, you might end up being right, because then Casey will have had the years of practice it takes literally every player to get good at faceoffs at an NHL level. Phil stapled Pominville's corpse to our superstar center for 50 games despite the obvious anchor he was on the line's ES play, I'm not sure I'd trust this if I were you.

I've literally never heard that said or seen it written about Casey even once in my life. The direct comparison was bizarre given what I outlined a couple posts ago. I'd bet a lot of money that 1v1 Jack would be better at faceoffs than Casey. Our center depth is nothing short of a disaster until Mittelstadt is a capable NHL center AND some prospects hit. Given how every center prospect we've had in the last five decades (note for literalists: this is an exaggeration) besides Eichel has completely floundered at C, I'm stunned at the confidence with which you state this. It's Eichel, unknown, and then garbage. And before we say Casey is ready now, he played 1.5 periods of official center this period even though the tweeted lineups had him as the "center." In the 1.5 periods he played the full center position his line got scored on and I believe they did not record a single shot attempt for, because they didn't possess the puck in the offensive zone, so Phil swapped him and Rodrigues again. He still took a few faceoffs after that but played LW in game.

I completely disagree with your guys' takes of people's problem with Nylander. His numbers by themselves are underwhelming, but we fully understand that he should have gone back to juniors and was set back because of it. None of those comparables have had a single work-ethic issue raised, where it's been talked about by coaches for the last two years with Alex, and observed by fans who payed to watch him dozens and dozens of times more than we ever have. And it hasn't been fixed - he was healthy scratched for his team's playoff games because of it the most recent hockey sample size we have for him. If you don't have the most important aspect for getting from his level to the next level, and the skill/base stats underneath it are as trash as Nylander's are, why should any fan have any faith? Why not have more faith in Cliff Pu, who is known for being a non-stop high-energy motor on the ice who will MAKE the coaches play him with his play? It really isn't about the numbers at all with Alex, other than the numbers don't SAVE him from a flaw that he hasn't come close to overcoming yet.

His rookie year he probably split his time on either side.: I believe he only scored one goal from there, versus Detroit in late December/early January. I remember we all hated it and called for Jack to be the trigger man. I don't see an obvious situation where my opinion would differ right now. Jack being on the left and ROR's handedness and positioning were the two main focal points of our power play, with Risto pivoting between them. Blues fans basically said that Tage was out of his element on their PP, so I wouldn't count on him playing ours until next year or the year after. when he does, I think the obvious position would be the TJ Oshie spot - The Eichel-right-circle is where I want Eichel as a dual passing-shooting threat where Thompson is a pure shooter. I'm putting together one of those crappy videos I do of Berglund and Sobotka right now, and you're right that his coverage in the d-zone is what a winger does, but in the games I've watched so far he does take most of the faceoffs. In fact, it appears that they leave him at wing in the NZ, but when he starts in the other two zones they move him because the faceoff is more important, which is interesting. But as far as actual play in the defensive zone from the center position, you just need to hope that you have a guy who is competent at it and put him next to Berglund, IMO. From what we know now I'd have to give it to Zemgus, whose underlying numbers are fine when he has capable linemates, and who only gets hated after stretches with Nolan/Pominville/Larsson etc. From this same context, I believe it would be a mistake to put him next to Jack, but I'll elaborate on that at a more appropriate time. Yep, that's misleading because the Centers Jack faced the most are, in order: Crosby 53% Couturier 52.8% Trocheck 54.1% Plekanec 53.3% Jenner 55.5% Tavares 52.9% Hayes 50.5% Seguin 54.9% Bergeron 57.3% Which is not excuse-making for Jack, he needs to get better at those, but that's a tough list. Casey had: Bozak Vatrano Fisher Conacher White Nielsen Mamin? Haley Sissons Bozak is pretty good, but I"m almost positive Erod was center for the whole Toronto game. Same situation with Fisher. The rest of the guys don't strike me as faceoff wizards in the same sense as what Jack built his stats against.

You force Phil to do a more extreme version of what he should have done when ROR was here - split it up among several players. Berglund and Sobotka can both take draws. Berglund is a low-event player which suggests he should get d-zone draws. What I mean by that is, when he's on the ice, both his team and the opposing team take fewer shots than they do otherwise. You don't want this happening in the offensive zone, but you absolutely want it happening in the defensive zone. Offensively, just hope Jack gets better at them. I never wanted ROR on the PK anyway, but I'm not sure who is good at that, that's not something I know much about My take on the power play switch is that we should let Dahlin and Mittelstadt compete on that side of the ice. If Dahlin wins it, you do a more traditional 2-point-men power play setup, with everyone else exactly the same (unless Okposo sucks, then Mitts can just have that spot). If Mittelstadt wins it, continue the same umbrella thing they did with ROR. This should be Berglund's 3rd line and whatever 4th line we cobble together, unless that's a line of kids. But it's going to be Jack - as outlined elsewhere, the player he played the most against last year is Sidney Crosby, and everyone behind Crosby on the list was a top line player for their team. Other teams like the matchup because they view Jack as not-great defensively, and Phil appears to be fine with letting Jack learn against the best. That depends what you call the second line, but if you're referring to offensive line #2, it'll be Casey/ERrod with Okposo, cuz Sam is riding with Jack. But I could see a Berglund line 3 getting more minutes at least at ES.

I hope our sparkling, shiny, brand new, changed defense corps of Scandella Risto Dahlin Boglsian McCabe Beaulieu Nelson And then, after BOgosian's second period injury, Scandella Risto Dahlin McCabe Beaulieu Nelson is everything we hoped for, as a stunning difference in the make up of our defense group last year, and looks nothing like what we saw playing last year on balance, as you can clearly see how different and changed it is with all of Botterill's shrewd and nuanced additions And yayyy Guhle who also played last year so different whoop 30th place here we come

Hunwick is not a d-corps change. He is a bad contract being taken on. I'm reading, rightnow, on two forums and twitter posts from every Sabre pundit there is, the idea that Hunwick is garbage and was taken to sweeten Sheary and can be buried in Rochester, sat, or bought out. It is not obtuse to not count this as making a defensive change. It is emphatically not obtuse that I AM THE ONE NOT CHANGING COURSE in the thought process of adding Hunwick just based on time passing. I'm saying the same thing everyone and I said all along, but now that's wrong and bad and dumb. Pilut, according to their own words, and everything I've seen speculated, won't even be playing here to start the year. I hope he does, but this is not the "change" I'm talking about when I'm talking about "we need to make roster CHANGES to the defense on the worst team in the league, moreseo than just drafting Dahlin" which is a sentiment I have not wavered on and had universal support two months ago. If my outlining of the Bogosian and Guhle situation did nothing to change your take on what I mean by it, then I give up because I cannot express myself well enough. I do not command my words well enough to articulate any better than I did.