Thorny

His 2 way play absolutely kicked in in 2019-20. I don’t really know what to say. All the stats, advanced or otherwise, are there. He definitively improved defensively. He was significantly better than Tage was defensively last year. I could get into anecdotal stuff and pull up the various statements on this board lauding Jack for that defensive work in 2019 but why bother. I can’t make you admit he was good defensively that year if you don’t want to Jack was a +5 that year on a team with a -22 goal differential lol

And finally, if we needed any more compelling, objective proof: As Jack was scoring 78 points, the *next closest on the team* was Sam Reinhart at 50 lol. 50. Tage had *4* players closer to him than that 28 point gap. His linemates had 12 less, and 15 less, respectably. COMBINED the gap isn’t as great as the 28 between Eichel and Reinhart It’s not a comparison. Eichel’s season was SIGNIFICANTLY better. One day people will actually admit how poorly we did by this kid. As if he hasn’t already been proven definitively right.

Jack had 78 points in 68 games before the WORLD STOPPED due to Covid. The season itself doesn’t get erased because it’s convenient for a narrative. Jack finished 10th in scoring league wide (his 2nd top 10 finish as a Sabre.) Tage finished 15th. It doesn’t matter if you score a kabillion jillion points, what matters is how many you are getting relative to your peers: scoring trends go up and down. Jack in fact scored more relative to the league than Tage did, he had the better season. And that’s JUST points! Jack finished 8th in MVP voting league wide: Tage finished 15th. How quickly we forget that the defensive improvement and fantastic 2-way play everyone finally admits Jack has actually started way back in 2019. Cause it did.

No, in a buffalo uniform

That’s incorrect. Jack finished higher in scoring and by way of the MVP vote 19-20 happened, regardless of whether we remember it or not lol

I’m not so sure

That’s good to hear.

Saw that. Issue more so is that we’d need to go 9-2-1 after that to keep pace 16-6-2 to finish above last year’s total

Difference between right and easy. You aren’t literally preventing anything by using the term but you are surrendering yourself to the idea that your verbiage is merely a symptom of the greater lack of awareness in society at large

Why would it? If they make the playoffs, absolutely

20 years? Jack was better

And Petterson is a year younger and was basically berthed into a league as a point per game player. When you consider you are paying for the whole player and not what’s so far much more of an outlier season where Tage is concern, it’s not hard to see the value gap between the two players Tage has a really swell contract tho so while I’d deal him for EP, it’s not close to defcon 1. He’s a good player to have, too

Ya, if your reaction is “oh id definitely do that”, it’s too light ..and there’s the reaction you’ll see accompany what the realistic trade would be

Very possible, but 92 made it last year. It could be the same this year

But what if you fly?

A good old fashioned hockey trade would be very fun we are hypothetically in a position where we could easily put together one of the best packages. Maybe we wouldn’t be offering the best NHLer but we have the luxury of being able to severely bump up our package due to our plethora of prospects, fighting to make an already young team we can be the ones to overpay and still win the war, easily

The math is bad but it becomes “realistically overcomable bad”, rather than us needing a historic pace bad, reasonably quickly if, to your point, we get an extravagant mathematical result over a small (therefore: doable) sample size beforehand. I understand it doesn’t all happen in this order but if we win our next 2 games, (one vs T-Bay) and the 2 we have in hand on Tampa, and Tampa mixes in a loss today (so, 5 results breaking our way), Tampa’s pace would actually be, after the two losses I spoke of, 69 points through 62 games and therefore 91 over 82. Washington the next best is only pacing for 90-91 currently, so Tampa losing their next 2 and the pace shifting to 91 is actually rather reasonably possible. If we march our current 3 gamer to a 7 game win streak, and are at 66 in 62 after, to get to 92 points we only need about a 107 point pace the remaining 20 games working in our favour there is that 20 games isn’t super extravagant and that sort of pace, while good, was something 9 teams in the nhl did last year over 82 games It’s strictly possible

Moneypuck has us at ~ 3 percent, the above is a good illustration as to why (but imo when you break down what you need it seems at least a little less scary) if we win today (50:50), Tampa loses (50:50), we beat Tampa (50:50), then win our two games in hand (50:50, 50:50) we will be a mere 3 points back from Tampa. Odds of that happening just in a ballpark sense is 1/2 x 5. So about 1/32 or ~ 3%. Seems tough, but it’s not unheard of to have 5 results break your way in a row

I mean.. I have the 6th most posts in the history of this great website and the 5 folks ahead of me arrived a decade earlier. I think it’s fair to say I’ve remained on brand as a talkazoid. It’s what it is.

Ya, our odds fell to 3.8 % yesterday from 4.6

No one laughed at you. I told you it would correspond with a dip in offense and lo and behold, it’s exactly what happened it’s always fun to argue from points of view like yours because you can always be right because you never have a stated scenario in advance that you need to see to be satisfied. You’ve never once argued the team wasn’t doing everything properly: your stance is merely just that things are going well because you can’t prove there’s not worse. No matter what the team does you’ll move the goal posts and say, “what could have even been done differently?” I call my shots in perpetuity. I do not care if you don’t agree with my takes: they have an internal logical consistency. I have stated time and time again the metrics by which I am evaluating the team, called out in advance, so my arguments can be fairly applied. I said was measuring by way of results this year, that decisions were going to be evaluated by way of their role in helping us make, or miss, the playoffs. If that wasn’t your goal, fine. If you think the rebuild is going at a reasonable pace: that’s fine. Moreover: if you don’t actually care about the results of the team and just want full buy in from the fanbase and a full building: have at it, root for that. I have explained my stances and what goes into evaluating and they have remained consistent. I said a year ago Adams would need to be credited if we made the playoffs this year. He would be due the credit had that happened. I’ve stated he’ll get credit for providing good goaltending for next year if there’s good goaltending for next year. It’s honestly pretty simple. And if we make the playoffs next year, I’ll credit him by continuing to follow this team. If not, and he stays on: don’t worry, you’ll have one less person around here talking about wanting a winning team.

Thanks for picking up the slack here, if I’ve explained the stance once I’ve explained it a hundred times Yes, if Adams goal at this point still wasn’t to provide good goaltending for this actual full season, ie he still wasn’t measuring in results in year 4, I can definitely agree we aren’t on the same page Also, I’m talking goals relative to a league wide comparison: this really has nothing to do with your framing of the “eager, impatient” fan. Taking this long to make the playoffs is an exceptionally long time *relative to the other teams*. It’s Adams goals not aligning with the league, not the fan’s. These *aren’t* short term goals: that’s the key. Adams has been GM a long time.

I suppose i should say he gets credit for not dealing him for a draft pick, if that’s a sort of thing you credit. But you have a point

Other teams were supplied with good goaltending for their seasons this year. This was Adams 4th season. You could, at best, argue the three headed monster, with two poorly performing goalies, that yielded a good starting goalie output half way through, was the best KA could have done based on the players and scenario he found himself in at the beginning of this season; but *he created the scenario* wherein we entered into a season where playoffs were the base minimum expectation with 3 developing unproven goalies, and no other more reliable option to lean on. Im glad he stuck with UPL. I’ll be glad to say Adams provided the team with good goaltending next season when that so transpires. But there’s no rush. If we are measuring Adams’ endeavours by way of the achievement of the goal we all said was necessary, and I honestly don’t see how we can’t, we need to evaluate whether adequate goaltending was provided FOR THIS SEASON and the answer is a definitive “no.” I am glad we developed a goaltender. But that’s not the same question as whether or not the goaltending was managed well for this season. Unless you believe that development yet again trumps the results in the now. That’s the central question