Thorny

Gotta love the people posting “yikes” and “holy overpay!” In the comments who assuredly had their responses keyed up in advance assuming Vegas would go long term, and just decided to use them anyways cause Likes

Hes just hitting the submit reply button too quick. Wait one more moment and it embeds

If the idea you came away with was that he “didn’t give a rats ass about handedness”, you came away with an incorrect takeaway. The numbers speak for themselves. I honestly cannot believe this is still going. That many on the board have taken that influential idea of yours and run with it, was something I wanted to correct, cause it’s wrong. I’m not saying the board told YOU, I’m saying the board told ME

The line must be drawn..here! This far! No further!

News to me..

Yes, Adams does give a rats ass about it

But it’s much more common to find success on your strong hand, players much more often play their strong hand, and the Sabres mostly played guys on their strong hand. I didn’t need to “come away” with anything I just read the conclusion listed in the article itself “the idea the Sabres don’t care about handedness is wrong”. what the board told me: that Adams didn’t care about handedness. That was wrong. The position wasn’t that “most can’t do it and we focus very much so on handedness but there are some exceptions”, it was “Adams doesn’t care about it”. It needs to be walked back. Adams/the team ADHERES to handedness the vast lion‘s share of the time unless it’s a notable exception. Notable because it’s almost only Dahlin doing it. Bryson is the other but much smaller amount and overall, the charts don’t lie

Tim Chevelsummersoff in Winnipeg over here Are you the actual Red?

Even Toronto Edit that Buffalo number must be the buffalo - Niagara area?

I mean he certainly bears a degree. How much is debatable. I’m not exactly sure what I think, tbh. generally I just count it, or don’t, depending on which better serves my argument in the moment. I see your point re your last sentence. For me if I’m being truly honest I think each year since the tank has gotten a little bit worse

An additional issue with 37-75-91 is its strength lies entirely in the improvement number over number. Add one misstep in there and it’s, say, 37-75-91-89 and we’re back to looking at average points, and in that case wooooooo boy. Make the playoffs.

You didn’t even account for season length when listing the point totals. Respectfully, that’s framing it in a really biased way. You used “You”, then said it was not directed at me, so assuming that’s the case, and I *can* minimize the covid year, that’s good, because that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not giving Adams credit for improving upon a season with aaaaall of the other random extenuating factors I mentioned the other day**, especially *a season he was the GM for* lol. So he put together a season so stinky stank bad that a league-relative poor 75 point season (bottom 10) was somehow (using your numbers) able to be a whopping *38 points better* than it? To your point, the year was astronomically bad. The improvement speaks way, way more so to how bad that season was than it does performance the following year. I minimize the jump from tank 2015 to the 81 points the following year, too. It doesn’t count. They went to 76 the next. Murray lost his job. Adams went to 91. THAT’S impressive. I believe the performance in the covid year to be an anomaly. It’s totally cool if you count the improvement from it in a numbers don’t lie way, that’s usually me, too, this one is just one of those random exceptions for me At the very least, I’m sure we can agree it was in essence a 54 point season, not 37 ** >

37 points to 75, considering they only played 56 games that first year, and the covid cluster that season became, isn’t all that compelling as it’s more less akin to the jump we saw from 14-15 to 15-16, going from attempting to lose to trying to win. But we stalled out after that year, and to your point, 75 to 91 is impressive So the course of action is looking on target so far. Failure to make the playoffs this year would be the first big speed bump, and doing that again the following year means failed plan.

You aren’t interested in anyone, I know. You are the guy in improv class who says “no” all the time eventually to the point where the teacher sets you aside and explains the “yes” rule of improv /s - - - As for goalie, and whether he will be “judged” on it: of course he will. Clock has already started on that. He already has a failing grade in that specific regard. “Who even is there?” need not apply when the time frame is your 4th season. At some point the expectation is just that it’s fixed. I’m not judging him based on what he does in the offseason at the position, have already mentioned that. He’ll get judged on the results of the position this coming season. If the results are sub-par, he’ll again be adjudged to have failed the position

Here’s the money shot for how Adams feels about handedness it’s a “Dahlin is a unicorn” thing, not a “we don’t care about handedness” thing. Its about Dahlin

Here’s a great, great in depth article on defensive handedness in the NHL. The most definitive research I’ve seen, and compelling evidence against the idea that “handedness doesn’t matter.” https://www.expectedbuffalo.com/do-the-buffalo-sabres-care-about-defensive-handedness-should-they-and-to-what-extent/ “Either way, the findings from last season certainly do a good job of putting the approach in context. The idea that the Sabres don’t care about handedness at all is wrong, but the extent to which they care is probably a moving target.” Highly recommend reading the whole thing. The Sabres relative to the league played D men on their off hand more than any other team but 1. The article argues that’s out of necessity - primarily it’s because of Dahlin our numbers were that high, and the number say Dahlin did *better* on his proper hand. Now, this isn’t to say players can’t and don’t succeed on their offhand, but it’s harder to do, it’s not a non factor, the amount the Sabres have been doing it IS uncommon and Adams is aware it’s harder to do and matters, as evidenced by the article, because he didn’t have his young learning players on the off hand when he could avoid it, and he had Dahlin on the left, when he could. Further information should be available when we see what hand any new D man addition goes by So: the Sabres have certainly shown a greater willingness than others to do it, but it’s absolutely not a “non factor” so I feel somewhat vindicated in talking about this when others have said its a non factor

IS THE EVERYTHING KEVYN HAS DONE THREAD UPDATED

Haha Why

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ad12ba55-c7fb-47ae-960a-1b2545e39189

Savoie still *is* the mystery box. I highly doubt he’s saying he’d deal Savoie for a pick

There just haven’t been any reasonable ways to upgrade the output from the goaltending position in any of the last 3 offseasons including this one. No team has succeeded in doing this. It’s why I’ve personally begun to scratch these years off the “failed to make the playoffs” list. Imo they don’t count towards the drought, because they were loaded scenarios with no chance of success. Ymmv but for me, the clock begins when teams smarten up and agree to take the players we DON’T mind giving up, in return for their good players.

Add Lance to the growing list of those expecting a run back in net. There just aren’t any good options! 4 years now! Who’d have thought. Ah well, what can you do.

Garners more retweets - - - Its mildly interesting both the Sabres and Bills extended their coach when they still had 2 years remaining on their current deals, no?

Thats a good question. Definitely does seem like my local Jets are opposed to ever doing a full tear down. The fans here are passionate as hell, maybe it’s a quantity thing, though? Winnipeg the city is as populated as Buffalo I think but the greater surrounding area... well, Winnipeg doesn’t have one. Small arena. Maybe regardless of passion, if even a sizeable chunk tunes out, our quantities are an issue? I do know the season ticket list here, once miles long, has evaporated. It’s gone. As I said years ago, the honeymoon period is over. Would a full rebuild further dent that? Plenty of the more passionate fans have been clamouring for a rebuild but maybe it’s just not in the cards