Curt

I think the ideal for me is somewhere in between. Skinner-Sheahan-Cozens maybe? It’s nice that people said nice things about Mitt’s half season in the A, but I will not trust him to be the defensive conscience of a line until I see it in the NHL for an extended period. Lots of players are good in the AHL then come up and suck. Dumpster fire is what? A medium amount of negativity? Lol

I don’t care about the Bills at all. This means nothing to me. Yeah, sure, it depends on the contract for Hall. It always does. I just don’t understand the massive amount of negativity regarding this season which hasn’t even started.

Then what? Hall resigns. Cozens works out. Staal is old and is gone. Kevy hasn’t shown that he CAN’T draft and he hasn’t shown the ability to get FAs except signing the best FA available. I don’t know that everything is going to work out great, but it’s not all doom and gloom.

I don’t think so. He was pretty good in NCAA. Some NHL team was likely to sign him. He is probably just an AHL guy though. This is what I mean. Did you think they would go from missing playoffs to cup winner in one offseason? This is a possible playoff team.

A lot of negativity in here for a team that looks to be better than any team of the past decade-ish.

Yes for me. He has done things for his own personal benefit that are against the interests of the country. Is there a word for someone who does that?

I mean, I’ll wait for games before getting pissed about the lines. Asplund is definitely just a place holder there. I don’t have a problem with Skinner outside the top 6, but they have to find some way to make it work.

Yeah, makes sense. It’s honestly likely correct. It’s not really bad news for Buffalo though. He didn’t come here to run the PP and be the #1 offensive C.

How many games?

How do you know for sure?

I actually edited that a couple mins after I wrote it because I wasn’t fully happy with what I said and wanted to be more specific. It just got quoted before I got the edit in, lol.

Yeah, sure. Was just discussing ES offense. No desire to defend Risto’s defensive play.

Ok. You asked me to find you a returning player whose offensive production went up. I found several. You said that your research showed offensive reduction across the board. To me it looks like about half and half, in other words normal. You say Krueger was bad for the offense, but the team scored more goals per game. The numbers you presented were wrong. Your assertions were wrong. What do you want me to do?

Sure, I can crunch the numbers. Only 13 players played over 20 games for Buffalo in each of the past 2 seasons. Out of those players, several had significant increases in production under Krueger. Eichel went from ES 56 points in 77 games (0.73) to 50 in 68 (0.74). Not sure where you got your numbers for him from. Your Skinner and Reinhart numbers don’t seem to be right either. Are you looking at ES points per game? Where are you getting your numbers from? Kyle Okposo went from ES 18 points in 78 (0.23) to 18 points in 52 (0.35) 52% increase Dahlin went from 24 in 82 (0.29) to 21 in 59 (0.36) 24% increase Larsson went from 13 in 73 (0.18) to 18 in 62 (0.29). 61% increase Mitts went from 15 in 77 (0.19) to 7 in 31 (0.23). 21% increase Scandella went from 12 in 63 (0.19) to 9 in 31 (0.29). 53% increase

Man, you really pick and choose numbers that fit your argument. Switching intermittently between ES points, ES goals, total points, total goals, with basically no regard for number of games played. If you are going to say that Jack didn’t just have his best season, then I don’t have anything else to say. How about this measure for offensive improvement? The Sabres scored more goals and more ES goals last season then they have since 2012-13.

I’m going to push back a little against some of this. Okposo was better last season than in 2018-19. He looked better and he produced better at ES. If you look at his ES production it actually was his best season as a Sabre. Ristolainen produced at a career high rate at ES. Overall his points were down a little because Dahlin took a lot of his PP time. Similar to Okposo, Risto was as productive as ever at ES last season. Those two guys actually had really good seasons under Krueger. I don’t know how you can say that they got worse. Also, just as a note. Skinner had an extremely similar season in 2014-15 (in fact even worse at ES) and returned to being very productive immediately after.

Yeah, I later saw that he is $26.5M or something I debt. Not good.

Lol, this is true. One excellent tournament and everyone cut the brakes on his hype train.

I honestly don’t think it’s been just one thing for him. I think he has not made adjustments to his play style. In juniors he could just stick handle through guys. Hasn’t worked. Seems like he often just keeps trying. I also thing he hasn’t been strong enough to win battles or stop from getting muscled off the puck. He doesn’t seem strong. That would probably help everything a little bit. I also think he totally lost his confidence for a long time.

Krueger’s plan: Step 1 - Create sahweet top 6. Check! Step 2 - Put Skinner on 4th line. Check! Step 3 - ? ? ? ? ? Step 4 - Profit!!! (Stanley Cup) Im just waiting for the rest of the plan to be unveiled.

If you are taking about Mittelstadt, I’m super confused. Are you talking about Reinhart? If yes, then I’m with you. I wasn’t paying much attention to prospects then, but his skating was generally regarded as a weakness at draft time. My point was just that, in juniors it was good enough for him to get the job done, but in the NHL it wasn’t even close. Note that I said it was good enough for him to be dominant, not that his skating specifically was dominant. EDIT: sorry, I see your bolded section now.

I think you need to look at ES mins per game in this case. That’s really what we are talking about, no?

Maybe he remembered him being pretty good from 5 years previously.............

Just went back and watched some WJC highlights just for confirmation. I honestly don’t think he looked dynamic there. His skating looked good. For juniors I’m sure it was very good. But that’s probably no better than average in the NHL. I think part of it was that his fancy stick handling really created space for him against junior players, but NHL players are just a lot better at taking away that space/time. You need to really come at them with speed to beat them. I don’t have an issue with Casey’s skating, but if he got better, it would help. Compare to Reinhart for example. In juniors his skating was good enough for him to be dominant, but in the NHL he looked like he could barely skate. NHL players are really good at skating. Casey could stand to get better.

I honestly hope that he has just been very reckless and bad at managing his money, as opposed to having a real gambling problem. Good news for him is that he has something like $30M+ coming in over the next 5 years.