mjd1001

As with many things in this world....taking one extreme point of view might be dangerous or wrong with statistics. The charts show this so it must be true! What I se with my own eyes shows this so it must be true! Not so much. The real truth is likely a blend of many things.....a little of the eye test...a little of an outside point of view....a little of advanced stats...and a little of basic stats.

there are faults in +/- for sure, but it is not totally useless in my mind. Sure, a good number of the pluses and minuses may be noise, but just as many of them (if not more) might not be. The way I look at it...it should not be used as a 'tell all' stat, but it can show you some trends...especially if you look at it in context to other things with it.

Your point is the tricky part for fans..... 1.) We can't feel confident they will get a good return...but the people making the decision of course will think they are. No one in the position to trade him is going to say "I'm really terrible at my job so any decision I make is a bad one" Fans might think that, but the people making each decision are going to think they are making a great deal. 2.) Turn the above point on its head....having a deal on the table and NOT making the deal......can't you say if you have bad decision makers....they are equally as likely to turn down a great deal for him because they are bad at their job....as they would be for not getting enough? Having a bad GM/management team could just as easily be not trading him when a good offer presents itself because they are not good enough to realize it. The way bad management can work is the teams that do not make moves when they should...teams to sit on their hands too much. As fans we often don't know about that, however, because we DO know the trades that were made and can evaluate them...but we hardly EVER know the trades that were not made so we cannot evaluate them. The Sabres might be bad because of the deals or signings they Did NOT pull the trigger on..as the ones they have. 3.) If Jack asks out....well...its likely we as fans will either NOT know that...or if we do we won't know it until well after it happens. Meaning the pivotal item in whether the Sabres need to trade him or not is something that management..and others 'in the room' will know for a time that fans will not know.

Ok, I know people don't want to hear what I am going to say as a possibility, but I'm going to throw this out there.... The Sabres aren't 'tanking' intentionally, not at all, but at the same point they aren't going all out to win. They are 'trying' to win, but there are things they could be doing but they aren't, and it is a decision by the coaching staff, GM, and ownership. By not going all out I mean....they are doing the thing with Skinner they way they are (if they were going all out, they would have him playing all the time.) Long term, Skinner is not going to be a 40 goal scorer for the rest of his contract no matter how much you play him...you are stuck with that contract likely...so force him at all costs to learn a 2-way game now....so at least he is USABLE in the 2nd half of his contract instead of being totally useless as a player who doesn't score anymore and puts no effort into any other part of his game. They might be not playing some of the young guys as much as they could...letting the 'develop' instead. They are trying to build what THEY think is a winning culture at the cost of letting players use their full ability. They are trying to force Dahlin to play a different style of game (teaching it to him) instead of letting him just be him. Why might they be doing that? They think it'll be better for the team in the long run....and with a short season...and the division they are in....they might say that no matter what they did this year the playoffs were a long shot and if they made it in...it would be hard to advance. So, despite what the fans want...this is the perfect year to take that 1 step back that allows you to take 2 steps forward in the future....ensuring another top 10 pick also. Ok, I'm not saying it is happening, I'm just thinking...it is a possibility. Ralph seems like he could be/is a long term thinker....and a brand new GM would be in the same mindset. With the success of the Bills, Pegula could be at least slightly more patient on the Sabres side of things because his attention is more on the success of the Bills.

I'm not married to either side of the topic. If Jack is hurt and when he gets over his injury, he turns back into what he was last year (or better), do whatever you can to keep him. On the other hand, if you have a legit offer for him that is really something good, I'll listen and maybe do it. I know that I'm not taking either side of things, but that is the way I see it....you 'never say never' and consider all things put in front of you. "it depends...."

So, we call all feel good about this team, see a competitive game, and a few wins if, IF, they just play the Devils every night.

Would you believe right now...there are 5 teams in the league with a lower shooting percentage than the Sabres? I would have through they would be last..or at best 2nd to last.

I'm surprised by this. To me the best indication we have of how a coach views a player is by how much ice time he rewards them with. Right now, Montour has the most average even strength ice time on the entire team, and when you include PP and PK, he is third, behind only Dahlin and Risto.

I'm a tad bit nervous the last couple days. Obviously, I am no expert, and everyone I hear (news networks, online sources) seem to be filled with more optimism than ever that cases are down.....and they probably know more than I do (well, they DO), But..... For fun I track the case count on the John Hopkins web site....For weeks now the cases have been down each and every week. But this week not only are they not going down, they seem to have a few days where they are up a bit. I don't compare day-to-day, as reporting issues impact those numbers (day of week, weekend, etc), but what I do is compared this week Monday to last week Monday. This week Sat to last week Sat...etc..... The last couple of days, we have stopped showing a drop in the number of cases comparing a day in the current week to last week, and using todays numbers (Cases for Tuesday the 23rd compared to Tuesday the 16th), the cases for the 23rd are actually higher than for the 16th. Now maybe its a blip in the daya for a few days....or maybe it will correct itself an resume the downward trend in a day or two...but at least for a few days...the rate of drop in cases has come to a stop.

Ok, for the old-timers on this board (my age or older).... I remember as a little kid, years before Jim Kelly, Joe Ferguson was QB of the Bills. As his career went on, the Bills gave allowed him to throw more and he actually became an above average passer in the NFL....but when things went bad....he didn't take it well, his head went down and he just got so down it impacted his game. Obviously, Eichel is a bigger part of this team and has more talent than Ferguson had for the Bills....but the similarities on how they handle the bad times are very similar.

So again, it was the Devils...lets see how this goes against some other (Better) teams, but...1.) Dahlin had Risto levels of ice time and may have had his best game this year. Keep giving it to him (although a LOT of it was on the PP). 2.)Ulmark isn't a great goalie overall, but if the team in front of him is good, he should be good enough to get you to the playoffs. 3.) I just want the Sabres to get more PPs and see the feed Olofsson for one timers. That is the most enjoyable part of watching this team.

Ok, this was the devils, so its not like the Sabres were facing down 30 goals scorers line after line, but still, the depleted D-core played pretty well. I'd like to see that game plan on the back end going forward.....have the guys back there keep it simple, don't do anyting special but make no mistakes....and let Dahlin just hog up the ice time and he is the ONE guy back there that you let loose.

Feel REALLY bad for Ulmark. Best game by a Sabres Goalie this year, he deserved the shutout.

Better than solid. Perfect game? No, but if he can repeat this performance on a regular basis...they have the makings of a franchise D-man. A couple minutes left and he already has over 23 minutes of ice time also.

Exactly. The current Sabres have a small handful of goals like that, it just seems like they don't even want to try to play that way now.

And that style of play...I'm not being critical in that I think hes a lesser player for it. Its just personally, when I heard about how fast he was...I had visions in my head of how McKinnon or McDavid play...or back in the day the neutral-zone to goal rushes in a blink of an eye that you would see from Peter Bondra or Pavel Bure, even Danny Briere. I was hoping we would get more of that from jack...personally I like to watch the 'all gas/no brakes' style of play much more than the 'art and precision' of the well executed offensive zone game. More often than other 'fast' players...Jack seems to use is speed to just get over the blue line...and then chooses to slow things down once in the zone.

In the end, I think a big thing that will determine this is something as fans we have little knowledge of....what do the players think, what is their attitude toward the team and how badly do they want to put the effort into pushing for a playoff spot that may not come? Do they like playing for this team? In this city? for this coach? The attitude of the player and their outlook....may determine almost as much as their on-ice performance just how hard this team should push to get the most points on a season even if/when they are out of the playoffs, vs how much you should think of moves with next year in mind.

One thing I said about Jack, and it applies for most of his career...he is one of the slowest fast guys I have seen. I understand it might be the way he chooses to play...but we hear about how fast he is...in the fastest skater competition he is usually just a fraction behind the leaders/winners....but he doesn't show it all that much. McDavid, McKinnon....other guys known for their speed...when I watch them play it seems like 2,3, maybe 4 times per game they take the puck and just decide they are going to use their top-end speed and blow by people, and they are often successful. That doesn't happen much with Eichel.

So where do we stand right now as far as making the playoffs? It looks like to finish 4th, you are going to have to get close to 60% of your total available points. That will make it in some divisions, but in others maybe not. But it is what you want to aim for in order to get that 4th spot. That would mean ending the season with 67-68 points. The Sabres have 12 points in 15 games so far. To get to 68 points, they need to get 56 points in their remaining 41 games. Or 1.37 points per game....Or 68.3% of available points from here to the end of the season. Only 6 teams as of right now are playing at a better pace than that. I'm not saying it is impossible...but the Sabres have to play and earn points like a top 6 team for the rest of the season..with a very condensed schedule, and probably missing their 2 top defensemen for the forseeable future.

I agree, that was my vote as well. Didn't like it from the start, and it has been around through so many bad years and really nothing good with this team, it should be changed soon. Maybe you don't make the change until this team starts winning though...

From a strictly basic statistical model, the odds of any one team, who has a 50% chance each year to make the playoffs....missing it for 10 straight years is about 1 in 1024 odds....yet it looks like the Sabres are going to do that.

If the sabres miss the playoffs this year (likely), it will be 10 full seasons and 10 missed playoffs for Pegula as owner) The franchise has only missed the playoffs 11 other times in the teams history Before Pegula, dating back to 1970.

What is really sad is....a few years ago the Sabres were looking like the team that could possibly do this. With all those draft picks, the cap space. I mean, they weren't on the verge of doing it, but they were in position...they had things lined up for the potential. Not only did they not, but it has gone horribly, horribly wrong. No big run here, they can't even sniff the last spot in the playoffs.

I realize it won't happen anytime soon, but you can take that one step further...a SMALLER rink than the current NHL one would make the game even more exciting.

If you are moving Jack, I'll even take slightly less if you can get the other team to take Skinner also. Long term, his contract is going to be a problem for this team for YEARS. He is under contract for 7 more years (including this year) at $9mil per year, and what kind of player will be at 33, 34, and 35 years of age when he has been playing the way he is lately at 27 and 28?