Thorny

I’m more than familiar with your well-documented stances on it and the implications of what you meant by “not building a team around him.” Your first comment you came swinging in with was “Eichel never won nothin”, now you step back from it and do the “yeesh”/under attack thing. No dice lol

But if he doesn’t make the playoffs next year, it’s going slower than you thought, right?

And he’s their best player. Leads a first place team in goals, points, points per game, and, at a career best +20, leads that category as well. Also easily leads in even strength points, and has taken only 4 PIMs all year funny how he’s perfectly capable of being the best player on a really good playoff team with a proper surrounding build you guys are really just gonna continue on with this instead of letting it go and taking the L. Let it go. Eichel is perfectly capable. It just wasn’t capable of working HERE, anymore Hate him. But he’s not an unwinnable cancer, never was, and he wasn’t the reason we didn’t win

Looks like Quinn Hughes mixed with Carey Price

I’ve been waiting for Dahlin to get his 50th assist for a month

Exactly

@Xzy89cwhat don’t you like about my post and the others?

There is no chance we could ever build up enough deterrent to prevent that type of play multiple times throughout an 82 game grind. It’s not THAT shot that functionality ended his norris push. No more than it truly being a straw that breaks the camels back the meaning of that saying isn’t about the strength of a twig it’s about the cumulative effect of all those twigs to Dahlin’s back over 82 that all “go to guys” face and until we have MORE go to guys Dahlin will face a disproportionate amount

This lends some caution to the idea it’s purely a KA thing, no? Like, it wasn’t just “free cap space!”, the actual tangible dollars mattered?

A tangible goal is Dahlin not going 8 games without points. We generally win when he contributes points and doesn’t when he does not. Not running him into the ground minutes wise should greatly aid, and that means defensive additions and assuredly not rookies.

Nah, we need a system that priorities our strengths and players good enough to offset the weaknesses relative to the weaknesses of other teams The Boston comment is wild. They are, assuredly, significantly more talented, “apt” (whatever word you wanna use) than Buffalo. It’s not even close. All around ability is also ability. Goaltending is also part of the roster. You basically said outright that there’s no difference in talent, and that the difference between a 21st place team and the greatest regular season of all time is system. That’s wild.

Biggest straw man going in Sabresland right now, here, Twitter, or otherwise “Even prime hasek” the absolute gall to suggest the best goalie of all time wouldn’t improve (substantially) on guys putting up “nearly average” numbers. It’s honestly hilarious, the amount I’ve seen people tweet: “look, our goalies are almost average, what about the rest?” WHY is goalies the only thing we’d be ok with being “almost average.” My word in heaven. It’s like, “could hasek replicate his numbers EXACTLY with a poor D? No? HAH! I guess we don’t need improvement in goal at all!” It just makes zero sense. An utterly terrible straw man. it’s like “good being the enemy of great” as Creed. Worse than even the band.

^ It is admittedly a weird thing re perception Talking labelling here, when you get labelled a good “defensive Defenceman“, that means you have to be TWO things: 1) good on defence 2) poor on offence but just because samuelsson is a good defensive Defenceman, just because defending is HIS speciality, it doesn’t mean it’s better than Dahlin’s. Dahlin isn’t an “offensive Defenceman” complete with all the accompanying connotations. He’s just a great Defenceman

A few reliable, stay at home types, but real NHLers, that coach would be unafraid to ice unlike Bryson and co would go along way to preserving our minute eaters on D. A goalie add would go a long way towards addressing the D acumen of the F purely through the highly scientific principle: “no harm, no foul” - - - Add in a sprinkle of defensive growth, but still setting the forwards loose on O and providing a fail safe in net probably represents a more feasible correction strategy than finding more defensive, and good scoring, forwards.

Interestingly, we have 4 players at +10, leading the team. 3 of them are defensemen. Considering that’s half the top 6, and the half much harder to find, there’s a non negligible chance it’ll be easier to fix the D of our D than the D of our F

I suppose starting 5-6 rookies would be an explicit message to the fans, in and of itself

It’s true, I’ve been mentioning how Dahlin’s numbers have taken a big hit due to lack of D depth catching up to him - it’s not as extreme with Thompson but it’s still taking a toll at this time. At once what looked like a certainty, Tage will need to score 13 points in his last 13 to reach the 100 point mark. Currently in 10th in league scoring, still good for a tie with Jack’s placement on said list in 19-20

Hughes, Hamilton leap Dahlin in D scoring race. Dahlin currently tied for 5th with Fox. With Makar charging and closing in, 2 points back in 10 less games played, mostly at this point I guess I just hope Dahlin stays ahead of Heiskanen, for 7th? Haha, tracking it at that point has probably lost it’s luster

So here we go, wanted to follow up on this. Our goal differential seemed to go and reconcile itself, as I was alluding to: it now sits 20th league wide while our points % sits 20th, as well. So it’s more less reflective of the overall group’s play, at both ends. With obvious allowances for G being the biggest negative factor, but one factor among several nonetheless

Whoops, thought you’d know I was kidding

Good one. Agree with all this - I like the point about face offs. They don’t really matter that much, that’s exactly what I’d say if someone asked me, cause that’s what the data reveals in large sizes. But as it seems to happen so frequently, in a non hyperbolic sense- the Sabres love to sit around the historical outliers and exceed them. Playoff drought? Face offs we are DEAD LAST. Ok, UNCLE! you got me, they matter for Buffalo! sabres the truthful, frequent embodiment of paradise lost Better to reign in hell, indeed

The correlation between Dahlin scoring and the team winning is equally prevalent, over a larger sample size, and more compelling due to Samuelsson’s case having much more correlation v causation wiggle room. The Sabres played their best game, and their best defensive game, without Samuelsson, for the record. To me the data and (especially?) eye test supports the idea it’s difficult to lose ANY good player right now considering our lack of impact player depth, and that Samuelsson is a good player. He’s good. He’s not *particularly* good - he’s, arguably, particularly valuable, due to our lack of depth on D. But he’s not even the best defensive D on the team. By the numbers and (especially?) the eye test, that’s easily Dahlin (least until last few weeks). Is Samuelsson our second best in that area? Power? One of the two

You didn’t vote till NOW? way to go out on a limb, dude..

There’s some good merit here now that I think about it, KA has a good track record for additions, but I feel like the good ones looked good pretty quickly - it’s not unreasonable to be disappointed in what we’ve seen from Greenway in that KA set his own high precedent with Jost