Curt

Ever watch Letterkenny? If you don’t like the comedy style, you’re just not going to like it. I love it.

What about Jirecek’s skating concerns you? Or where have you seen it reported as a concern? Don’t believe I’ve see it reported anywhere as a concern. I’ve always seen people report that his skating is good.

Not sure he is actually getting paid though. He owns the team.

To me “core” is the guys who committed to for the long haul and will be important pieces moving forward. Skinner is going to be here scoring goals in the top 6 for the foreseeable future. That’s enough for me to call him core. But annyyhooo....... Gauthier. I would love to take him at 9. In things I’ve seen recently, league sources are apparently telling people that many teams are very high on Gauthier. He keeps getting mocked higher and higher. Who knows what will happen but seems he could go as high as 5ish. Savoie is someone who seems to be dropping. I would be ok with him at 9 too. Also, don’t be surprised if a LHD goes in the top 8 too, Mateychuk, Mintyukov, and Korchinski could all go in the top 15. Again, who knows.

Skinner has a full no movement clause, which he wanted specifically because he wanted to play close to home. He is untradable for all practical purposes.

I guess it depends on your point of view. From my perspective and definition of Core, the financials play into it. Sabres are committed to Skinner on a long term, nearly unmovable contract. He is an important, locked piece. Core, in my opinion. Core piece doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as best player. For example, when I look back over the Sabres’ past 6 years, Kyle Okposo is definitely a core piece of that era. At the same time, I’m not sure if he was one of the 5 best players at any point over those 6 years.

Can someone else please post an actual redraft list in here so that we can discuss it? Geez.

He is a top line forward who they are committed to for $9M for the next 5 years, with a full NMC. He might not be someone who you would want as a core piece, but he has been committed to as such. If his play slips years down the line, I guess he could be bought out, but I don’t think that is Adams’ go to plan. Buyouts are costly too. Unfortunately it’s looking more and more likely that Gauthier will be off the board before Sabres pick.

Yeah, Eichel could be too low. I had a hard time slotting him. For me, Kaprizov is #2, no doubt! He is such an offensive dynamo. My criteria was, who would I want starting from next season onward? Not taking contract into account.

My dudes. This is not a thread specifically about the 2015 Buffalo Sabres. This is supposed to be a 2015 redraft thread. It’s where you use hindsight to rerank the players into the order you would draft them today. If you don’t want to do that, then I don’t know why you are posting in here.

Here is my top 12 because I thought these 12 separate themselves. 1 -McDavid 2 -Kaprizov 3 -Rantanen 4 -Marner 5 -Aho 6 -Barzal 7 -Connor 8 -Werenski 9 -Eichel 10 -Hintz 11 -Meier 12 -Chabot Am I hating on Eichel? It’s really just the surgery recovery. If he’d shown he was back to his ppg+ ways, he would be in the 3-5 range. I’m super confident about 1-2. Barzal’s spot is tough to justify based on production, but on another team, away from Trotz, I think he would be a lot more productive. We’ll see. This was an amazing draft.

I would say that Adams is already locked in with a couple core players. Skinner because he has no choice and Tuch because he wants him to be. That’s it so far. With what they showed this past season, I think Thompson and Dahlin are pretty likely to join the group. Then there is the group of hopefuls. Power, Samuelsson, Cozens, and Quinn. (Peterka?) Then there is a bushel of maybes.

It is an interesting conversation regarding the concept of core. From an organizational/financial point of view, no one is really core unless you are giving them a contract that’s extremely hard to move, like a $8M+ 6+ year deal, or you are giving them a NMC. From a more on ice point of view, I think it’s the guys who set the tone for the identity of the team, as a mix of talent, style of play, and mental makeup/culture. combining the financial and on ice aspects, it’s probably no more than 6-7 guys. I don’t think the cap will generally allow for long term commitment to more good players than that. With regards to the Sabres, I don’t think we know who the core is yet.

I think you are right about those LH defensemen. It’s a real possibility that one of them goes top 8. I also think that Gauthier is extremely likely to go top 8. I do understand what you are saying about Kasper. But he does look to be the best likely NHL Center who will be there at 9 (Lambert? Ugh). I think Kasper is higher on NHL team draft boards than he has generally been on public mocks/rankings. Pronman recently mocked him at 8 and said he didn’t have any of his league contacts give feedback about that being too high. I don’t know how much that means, but I just get the impression that he will go pretty high. I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if Savoie is still there at 9. Really I was just giving Perrault a few other options to consider.

Cutter Gauthier (he’ll probably be taken in the top 8), Frank Nazar, Marco Kasper, Liam Ohgren, and maybe Filip Mesar are some other forwards to consider at #9.

I’m not down on this group at all, but we don’t even really know what we have yet. Of the 8 players you listed as the young core, 6 of them have only played a handful of NHL games and/or have not proven themselves to be top-6 or top-4 players. I’m pretty confident that some of them will be, but it’s a very unproven group. In my mind, you should make those consolidation trades and/or sign that big FA when you know what holes you have to fill and are ready to make a push of sorts. I don’t think we really know yet. Although, like everyone else, I do think we know we need a goalie. The bolded simply doesn’t resonate with me and I feel that’s a potentially damaging mindset. I’m not against getting better, but it needs to be done with the timeline of this young core in mind. I’m not very willing to burn any assets for short term gain that could compromise the long term. This team will really be good when the young core of Dahlin, Power, Samuelsson, Thompson, Cozens, Mitts, Krebs, Quinn, Peterka are pretty much all near their peaks. I’m not willing to mortgage 2025-30 in exchange for 2023. Like I said in my previous post. It depends on the specific deal.

My answer would be, when the young core is ready to compete. Not that I’m fully against making a trade to acquire an under 25 key NHL player. Depends on the deal. No GM could have come away from Briere & Drury walking unscathed, but the drafting in that period really was terrible. I don’t think that is debatable. There really was a big lull in the prospect pipeline.

This is true. It’s a lot more relevant on the PP. A more structured type of situation. I was thinking more about chances given up in the general flow of ES play.

Yes, I understand the concept that a better offensive player is more likely to score than a worse offensive player. It’s less likely to result in a goal against, but it doesn’t mean that the process was any better. Do you think that high danger scoring chances should only be recorded as such if the player who go the chance is “good”? Because that’s kind of what Boudreau is saying. This whole idea that an NHL team (coaching staff) is going to be more ok with a defensive breakdown if the player who got the chance is a 4th liner, or if your 3rd pair was out on the ice when it happened just doesn’t make sense to me. Coaches are going to try to correct/address a defensive breakdown that they witnessed regardless of who the opposition was or which player on your own team made the mistake. It’s process versus result. There was a breakdown in the process and it’s mostly just lucky that it wasn’t a good player who got the chance. Yeah, they will be glad that it was Lomberg instead of Barkov but should address the underlying issue that led to the chance in the same way. Boudreau as a coach should see the value in analyzing high danger chances that his team is giving up, even if the player who the scoring chance wasn’t very good. I’m sure he does, but it’s not reflected in that particular quote. I don’t think it’s controversial. I think Boudreau runs his mouth a lot and some of the things that come out don’t make 100% sense.

Your reasoning doesn’t really pass the sniff test for me. Do you really think that if Eichel, O’Reilly, and Girgensons were out on the ice, and Eichel or O’Reilly made a pass to Girgensons for a great scoring chance, the defense would think that they did a good job there and got the result they wanted from that shift? Do you think that in video review after that Vegas game the coaching staff was showing the team highlights of all Carrier’s high danger scoring chances and congratulating them on the good defense there because they purposely let Carrier take those chances instead of some other guy? That’s not really how hockey works. It’s not like basketball where pretty much every time down the floor the opposition is getting a shot off, and you can try to funnel the shots to a less dangerous player. I don’t think NHL teams play defense like that. The goal is to not allow shots on net at all or at least not high quality shots on net. I don’t think any NHL team is trying to funnel the puck to the least dangerous forward and being ok with that guy taking high danger chances every time down the ice. In the particular case that Boudreau was talking about, I don’t think that Tampa was purposely letting Lomberg get high danger chances I because they were desperate to keep the puck away from Luostarinen, Accari, or Hornqvist.

That didn’t really make sense to me though. Looking at high danger chances should be to analyze how your team did on defense and where the breakdowns occurred. If a guy snuck back door and got a point blank high danger chance, does it matter whether it was Zemgus Girgensons or Jeff Skinner? I get that Skinner is more likely to score, but if it was Girgensons, does that mean that the defensive breakdown was any less of a problem? No, you were just lucky it wasn’t Skinner instead.

I think that’s the profile. Hopefully he can get to that level. Almost all guys who end up playing 100-200 NHL games are guys that you don’t even know of. They are guys who are AAAA players who get parts of 3-4 seasons in the NHL, or guys who play a couple seasons as a 4th liner on some crappy bottom 5 NHL team.

When looking at trades into the top 5, the cost will vary a lot from year to year. It’s going to depend on the top-5 players in that particular draft and how good they are perceived to be. I think that any chart is a lot less useful when you are looking at trading up into the top 5.

https://www.broadstreethockey.com/2013/4/25/4262594/nhl-draft-pick-value-trading-up This is a bit old, but it’s based on what NHL GMs have actually paid to trade up/down in the past. It should give a rough idea. If anyone out there has something more recent, I’d be interested.

Hmm that’s interesting. On one hand, that’s definitely a lot for a bottom 6 C, on the other hand it is the profile that Buffalo needs. I think that some of this will depend on their plans for Cozens. It seems to me that they expect Cozens to fill that role of middle 6 shutdown C and are grooming him for it. If that holds true, I have a hard time seeing them invest the money and term in someone like Paul. They may be looking for more of a 10-12 min per night, 4th line energy C, for a lot cheaper.