Thorny

Love it - we’ll either be good, or if we aren’t we couldn’t have done anything about it anyway. One day this will be every thread. Plan is the plan and what happens is the plan and there’s no sense debating anything cause we know the plan Yes. There are no options. Anything to the contrary is simply, as you say, whining. I think that’s the board’s big trick of the last year- convincing everyone that if you question one iota of anything you are simply, again, to use your words, crying promo was on my ass for pointing out a single solitary negative play in a *prospects game*. Even then, any comment that wasn’t simply shining had to be pointed out, and squashed for fear of breaking trend. Not everyone will agree, but I do honestly feel the temperament of the board is one that suggests a “buy in, or get out” attitude. Even as a (I guess I’m a vet, now?) long time poster, I’m finding it’s becoming a grating squeeze where there’s pressure at the seams to fall in line. That’s the vibe

So Quinn fell. Knew that one was a reach 😉

Wait, dudacek is just going to “like” this and not give the usual, appropriate correction, presumably because a he’s not a Sabre anymore? Reinhart is a 1 RW, by the stats, full stop. I’d sure love a 67 point 3rd line wing Finished 10th in points last year for right wingers league wide. sOliD 2/3 rWeR

I do see what I’d term “glaring” questions because once again: the questions are obvious. Every aspect of the team last season that wasn’t up to snuff (goalies, etc) were issues we had been pointing out the entire offseason previous to it. This offseason appears much the same: if we fail this coming year, it’ll be for the reasons we can already see, areas that have gone noticeably unaddressed, where we are sitting here saying, “ok, let’s see if the results bear out the decision to stand pat.”

It’s a fair point

So would you consider it an abject failure on Adams’ part if VO lines up in our starting 12 to start the season? Because you are making an awfully good case for why we shouldn’t be rostering him if we care about our success at evens this season Also why would we consider Mittelstadt Quinn’s replacement? Didn’t he already get more minutes?

Dead Reckoning was so damn good It’s the best film in the franchise, for me

Well why would any GM acquire a goalie they thought was inferior for the role to someone they had? I took it more to be, we aren’t going to get a guy if he’s not ENOUGH better, which is where the wiggle room comes in. Like how we’ve been supposedly close on a few things but not quite there

Why does it make me feel we are going to run 11-7 till Quinn is back? Is that the plan? Considering all the D, too? The 3rd scoring line invariably seems to amount to a spare parts line if we are seeking to maximize the top 6 + checking line Skinner - Thompson - Tuch Mittelstadt - Cozens - Peterka Girgensons - Krebs - Okposo Greenway/Jost swap into line periodically on a rotational basis during games? VO scratch? Samuelsson - Dahlin Power - Clifton Lyubushkin - Jokiharju Johnson or Stillman dressed as 7, subbing in to keep things fresh, other scratched? 3 goalies, one scratched makes 23

Wouldn’t surprise me if Adams felt the/a depth F could be added more in the neighbourhood of training camp, considering the required/desired aptitude of said addition, and their likely confidence in the matter after reasonably successful signings like Jost. on his checklist he undoubtedly has top 4 d add and depth d add checked off. And while I definitely think he’s open to/been open to a goalie add, I feel like the answer as to whether Adams might overpay by value somewhat to achieve “his man” is probably a resounding “no”- thought that might shift given state of roster/expectations. If the goalie box goes unchecked, I think Adams is more than content to pride himself on holding to his hard line evaluations and is confident what we have in house is not so inferior to what’s available so as to make any kind of (what he’d determine to be an) overpay worth it

Does it leave much room for discussion if any disagreement with something the GM has done is deemed as the poster being “mad”? If the idea is KA has laid out what he’s going to do, so any disagreement is pointless, I’d wager that’s a pretty big block on healthy debate

The more interesting issue I see is that the name “Murray” can be feasibly slid in there by Lance because of the fact the names he’s competing with, aside from Olofsson, have about as much NHL experience as he does. Forwards honestly seem a bit thin. Like butter, scraped over too much bread

@Ducky

Our very obviously questionable goaltending and the input data being over the course of a few seasons is my guess Mostly the model does a good job of representing our question marks. Never entered my mind it represented any likely ceiling, it’s simply a matter of the team still being in “prove it” mode where the stats and precedent is concerned. As mentioned I think it inputs a running total from a few years so one good year of stats isn’t going to swing it in totality. And it can’t expect improvement in net, how could it? It has nothing established to bet on. We can totally have faith in Levi and still understand why the model doesn’t favour him. He’s played 7 games, he’s a question mark to any reasonable data set

There’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time a long time

Model is operating pretty intuitively human here, honestly. It’s simply looking at at the fact our starting GT has all of 7 games at the NHL level and saying “hmm”. It’s not pointing out any potential downfalls and risks of essentially running back the same roster that we haven’t already mentioned

Keep on rocking me baby 🎵

Kind agree with this of late I could probably replace every one of my posts with the standard “Benson, Kulich, Savoie, Rosen, Johnson, Quinn, Östlund..” listing and I’d be contributing to the established conversation in a more meaningful, seamless way. Most any other posting is our SS version of a Block, I find, to use KA’s coined jargon

The 13th man is an unproven rookie We could use more F depth, Quinn injury saw to that

I like how Skinner is a deft playmaker now all of a sudden and VO a one trick pony who can only shoot lol. Skinner over the 3 full seasons previous to last year averaged 24 assists per 82 games. Olofsson over those 3 same seasons averaged 32 assists per 82. Maybe it more a function of who Skinner is lining up with relative to VO. If all it takes is a single season of increased assist totals to cement yourself as a deft playmaker, I’ll play devils advocate and side in the VO camp here because, considering he’s been *outproducing Skinner’s assist totals since he came into the NHL*, I would say he at least as likely, probably more likely a candidate to have that season that shifts opinions. Given the opportunity of course

I suppose the silver lining is if he gets back to “decent“, his raw counting stats probably look skewable to someone even a little bit better than that, in terms of trade value

Players don’t carry their teams to Cup titles Dude, honestly, it’s not worth it. I wrote my parody “Rosen is off limits” response before I read the thread, and by this time right now when writing this post I’ve realized said Rosen post probably plays closer to seriousness in this thread than parody The bottom line is that it’s difficult for folks to trade anything of the future for anyone, EVEN McDavid, because the perception held is said future is already *guaranteed* by doing nothing It’s almost the Monty Hall problem, psyche wise

Sign me up. What do we think it’ll take? I’m definitely open to it but we can’t go mortgaging the future to make it happen. For instance, Rosen remains an Untouchable for me in said deal. The Sabres aren’t trying to win the cup this season, remember - and I don’t want to Murray out, here Gretzky is the perfect example of why it’s pretty dumb to expect *any* one guy to substantially elevate or “carry” a team on their own - it’s just not really how hockey works

As noted, Skinner was still drawing penalties at a high rate when he wasn’t finding his way onto the scoresheet - a strong indicator in his favour that is absent with VO