Curt

Agree. I don’t even know what he is telling Skinner, let alone whether it’s a good idea. And I’m not excusing Krueger. If the team fails, it’s on him. And if Skinner has another 14 goal season, that could be on Krueger too.

To echo @Thorny, yeah, they really should give it a thought. He is old but has been a consistently good producer in a bottom 6 role.

That’s actually really interesting. I would not have guessed.

If I were to ask sarcastically. It could be a dishonest question if I already had my mind made up.

On the Skinner vs Krueger, battle for the soul of the organization. Krueger is universally praised as a person. His ability to managed situations, people, and organizations is highly decorated. I have faith that if he says Skinner needs to do this/that, then that the truth. He isn’t just being a stubborn jerk. Skinner needs to do his best for the team, not the other way around. There needs to be accountability. That’s what a team is. That’s good culture. That being said, I’m not saying that Krueger is 100% right. I have less faith in him as a hockey tactician than as a person.

Is he actually any good? Honest question.

Surprising that they gave him a job. 1) His recent PR issues 2) Why not put someone on tv who people actually like?

Just a note. I recall a fair amount of friction between Ovi and Trotz when he first took over. There were growing pains and a lot of questions about if Trotz was the right guy with that Caps team. Trotz was about to get fired before they win the Cup.

I’ve got to agree with Tom on this. Casey’s skating is certainly not dynamic. I’m not even sure that I would call it above average. At best maybe. It’s fine. It could get better.

Pretty sure some hockey players wait a year or two to start their NCAA scholarships if there are concerns about being able to get on the ice.

He just turned 18 in August. He is committed there for the 21-22 season. He’s young, that may have just been the plan from the start.

It’s not a good contract. If he gets back on track and plays like a top-6 guy, it can be “just” a not good contract, instead of becoming a crippling one.

Yeah, I don’t know about those..........

Can’t even do that, unless he waives his NMC. He has to be protected.

Yeah, in a similar way to how +/- stinks. It tells you a little bit, but only a fraction of the whole story.

It depends on what “advanced” stats you are talking about. The most commonly used possession metrics are also just measurements of things that actually happened. Shots for/against in this case. It kind of removes the goalie performance from +/-.

You have Jokiharju as a better offensive player than any of Risto, Montour, and Miller? I think Montour is best at getting the puck into offensive zone and Risto is the best actually playing in the offensive zone.

We’ve know since free agency who they had on the roster. Its not very good, especially with Girgensons out, although I’m not so confident as you that Eakin is going to play like a borderline NHLer. But mostly, yes, those bottom 6 veterans are not very good. I’ve said it many times. The offensive upside of the bottom 6 is heavily dependent upon whether any of the young guys can come in and provide a spark. Cozens, Mitts, Routsalainen I don’t have a good feeling for what that second bottom 6 line will be Skinner-someone-someone. Seems like the players have been shifting a lot day-to-day.

Cozens is at RW with Eakin today, but Okposo is taking the day off from practice. I would expect that if he was practicing today, Okposo would in that spot, as he has been every other day.

Shouldn’t it be Reider-Eakin-Okposo? Hasn't than been a line basically every day of training camp? With Girgs instead of Reider before he got hurt.

Honestly, no. Not really. I don’t think so. If the goal is to predict what the opening night lineup will be, I think just looking at the practice lines every day is a much better indicator of where these guys stand with the coaches. The game was important in the sense that the players need to play. Shake off any rust, get used to game speed. There is no preseason. They need this for practice. Also, didn’t say that the game was meaningless. It’s more that the game is one day out of an entire training camp, and the things that we saw from a player from our view may not have even been the same things that the coaching staff was looking for from that player.

I’m not saying that it means nothing at all, but it’s a training camp intrasquad game. It’s one game, a large portion of the players are not going 100% and half the guys on the ice are non-NHLers. It’s just not that representative of how these guys will be in an actual NHL game. So I think that anyone who is making meaningful changes to how they view players, based upon watching this, is doing it wrong.

I know these games are the first Sabres hockey that we have seen in 10 months, so they feel like they must be super important and mean a lot, but I would caution against giving too much weight to a training camp intrasquad scrimmage.

I think you are reading way too much into it. They can’t send down Ullmark. He would never make it through waivers. Some other team would grab him. Plus, Ullmark has been the team’s best goalie two years running, why would his job be at risk?

Is this where the party is?