Thorny

I was just thinking today, after taking a bit of a break.. I can’t believe we didn’t do anything this offseason with management, or with coaching, or really even with the roster (you know what I mean, seriously. I get it, Doan. Ya.) No other point here. Just wanted to say it again. I just feel it’s important- cause it’s not just something we say: they truly are absurd.

Jays.

A lot of it stems from the fact ownership and management have different aims in priority than the fan base. It’s a little less, “I’m a hockey wizard!” - Terry Pegula, than people think and a little more “Come in on budget, and don’t build a roster so bad that playoffs look like an impossibility.” their whole thing is plausible deniability.

Yup. I’m sorry, do the sabres think they’ve earned the right to approach their offseason like the teams that *haven’t* been a dumpster fire for half my life? are you kidding me? Their specific situation needs addressing: they are an anomaly and need an anomalific approach to rise from the ashes I have now maintained this viewpoint for…6 seasons the solution to saving the team needs to be proportionally extreme to the tact that put us in the hole. Otherwise they essentially cannibalize any progress they make by timing their own players out. They have to get off the treadmill

I think we did ok relative to the teams around us, but absolutely putrid relative to what should be expected of a team that’s missed 14 straight

Tage isn’t bad defensively tho. A superstar is great offence and merely ok D. I think people forget that sometimes Great offence and great D is prime Crosby

Next up on the tee: Lafferty Daniel…and Gilmore, Happy

I do think Kesselring is going to be really good. I’d predict it to follow a predictable pattern like almost eveything Adams does. His list of (positive) impact moves is sorely lacking, and he tends to be so one-track-minded he can only do one thing. But the “one thing”, see: McLeod, Zucker, etc, usually does seem to turn out pretty well

Link?

Bump up in role could indeed work.

Hey where the heck is @Marvin

I rest my case i’ll let your fantastic posts re: what Benson contributed last year as my evidence for why this is unlikely and a poor way to contract a team with an eye on securing winning

For the sake of argument let’s say Benson’s offence drops off precisely zero when compared to JJ’s. Goals, assists, all of it. Benson steps in and *is* JJ at F, with the same old good D he provided last year who did we add that is the new Benson? Or rather, provides what Benson did last year? We can’t use him twice in the calc: remember, Benson is Peterka’s offence now. We didn’t lose Benson’s D, either. But we need to replace Bensons O now

Which new player that we added at F is as good of a rush creator, and which F that we added is as good as he is at playmaking, whatever level you’ve determined that to be? Is Peterka’s playmaking regimen replacement level? Is his playmaking “not as good as the numbers might suggest”, or is it “replacement level and thus negligible to the success of the team”. this is the discrepancy I see

No I am saying it outright - I don’t think anyone in line to replace him will be as good of a playmaker. Certainly the forward additions we made won’t be I’m not interested in delving into our “we can expect improvement” stock when considering the loss of Peterka. When we are a 79 point team - we need all of that we can get allotted to simply the improvement we *already needed* That’s *had we kept* Peterka It’s not only frivolous because it’s counting on a maybe, it’s frivolous because we are assigning “internal improvement” to so many places we’ve forgotten we are only about to win fraud bingo

These are great numbers But I was referring to front runners though in the sense that we tended to win by a lot, and lose by less. Ie a lot of the goals came in games we didn’t technically need them whether struggling in tighter games is a negative stat has always been an interesting point of discussion. The way we’ve seen the offense move around year over year combined with the overall result lands my bias firmly at “area of concern”.

Yes, Tage will still score some. But I would wager my house that Peterka’s assists being completely removed knocks down at least a few of the goal columns of other players It is only Peterka’s goals being removed in our calculations. None of his teammates are having his goals taken away. You don’t need to remove one for every assist, but we are removing zero Equally erroneous It goes both ways - Peterka’s goals were indeed aided by the assists he was the benefactor of, too: but I don’t see a reason to suspect Peterka’s offence was any more empty-calorie than than the majority of our forwards

I’ll always leave the nitty gritty to the smarter folk like you all I am presenting to the board is the idea that I believe what JJ contributed on the playmaking front deserves some consideration rather than nothing at all: and I do not see it being considered when it’s routinely oversimplified to “goals.” There is certainly also a playmaking and offence facilitating production gap between Peterka and Doan that also needs to be accounted for i do not believe the apt consideration would be “replacement level” re: JJ’s playmaking.

Tom is right that the fans uphold the true nature of the crest far more substantially than any executive. I always say it: we were here long before them, and we will be here long after they’ve gone on to their next money making opportunity. The frustration with the sabres is that they’re no more striking juxtaposition in sports between how throughly a franchise and its fans need and deserve winning relative to the lack of effort on the part of ownership and management

Can’t help but think it looks much better with Tage at C

Absolutely. We are always trying to attach meaning to the moves Adams makes because we are full of more intelligent people who care more about the team and actual success it’s all a contruct. We know for a fact there was no plan to trade JJ until he asked for it and they were happy to oblige. The plan so far as it exists doesn’t prioritize the same aims we do I can’t believe this still needs to be said. The vision of how the deal could work is ours, not the team

Dude it’s August 5th we always have it down to a single variable by now

We’ve averaged 78 points the duration of Adams tenure those are the points the league uses to measure teams relative to eachother, as opposed to the numbers we select that paint the team in a good light. If advanced stats tantamount to offsetting the good ones, to the tune of a balance sitting around 26th place aren’t being shown to you, rest assured they are still there - - - WARNING *deep snark ahead. Proceed with caution and be quick with a chuckle* you need to be cognizant of framing. For example: remember, we are only replacing Peterka’s goals. His other offensive attributes aren’t something we need to worry about. You can’t forget that if he tabulates a significant amount of secondary assists, we can write off his high assist totals that lead the forward group in *totality* - that’s the key to the framing. you have to work the little tricks - we should be and do shape ourselves by the principles being used to construct the team. You know, that plausibly deniability they institute every year to explain why they just couldn’t find a way to spend. You take a point of logic, a reasonable thing that DOES have basis in fact like “we need to deal with the Byram situation”, but extrapolate that to, “and that’s why we couldn’t make other moves of note or find a way to spend to the cap.” JJ has a high secondary assist total - that’s the good initial fact here, but don’t forget to warp it to “we only need to replace his goals” it’s the little cuts on the margins. The EEE. You need to work the efficiency into your actual arguments if you want to make sense of their vision - once you ignore a whole bunch of seemingly small things like that, but do it ROUTINELY like they always do (hope for best etc) it’s quite easy to see how they all add up together to a missed playoffs - - - TLDR (but still snarky, it’s been at least a week I’m sorry) *plausible deniability* Remember. It’s not about building a playoff team. It’s about crafting a team and arguments to ensure why, and explain why, it wasn’t and isn’t strictly *impossible* to do so. ”prove the team Adams built COULDN’T make the playoffs. Go on, prove to me things can’t all go right.” It doesn’t escape me that this is the mindset more less expected of fans if we are being honest. I think the reason it grinds my gears so thoroughly when I read it is because it’s not supposed to line up in a near complete circle Venn diagram when compared with the logic of the organization!!

I’ve also seen statistics outlining the fact the sabres have been significant front runners. A lot of their goals are garbage time, in essence the 23rd place the Sabre finished in goals 2 years ago is for me as accurate as their placement last year, then add in the fact we lost Peterka

Very salient tbh. You can find a stat for any opinion you want to have. This thread is evidence enough. I very nearly just dropped a poop emoji in the name of balancing things out - that seems most fair and the closest I could get to accurately displaying how ridiculously one sided the vision gets - but I’ll settle for this