Curt

It wasn’t even a hit. It was just the high stick. It wasn’t that atrocious, it just should have been a penalty is all. Im kind of unsure of how Dahlin actually got hurt there. He finished the game didn’t he? He looked ok afterwards. A couple shifts later he smoked Burakovsky with a retaliatory high hit that maybe should have been a penalty for contact with the head. I wonder if they are just being overly cautious. Oh, and i would not have congratulated Dahlin if he had done the same thing. I dislike a lot of the stick work that goes uncalled.

I think the takeaways here should be 1) I hope we all learned something about shooting percentages, 2) I had a bit of free time, and 3) I obviously only read the parts of your posts that I want to and I fill in the blanks with emotion.

I was kind of working off your immediate reference to Eichel and Crosby, then your reference to Briere and Drury, then you stating that 47 players had shooting %s over X%, so it’s basically just higher end 1st liners. I wanted to show that it’s not just Eichel/Crosby/Briere/or even Drury level players who maintain high %s. I listed 13 centers, but if I wanted to be exhaustive, I probably could have listed close to 50 forwards. It’s not that uncommon.

The last 10 years of Sabres hockey are no kind of benchmark for anything. It only serves to show what should be easily surpassable. It simply isn’t true that a player needs to be a high end 1st liner, a Briere, or even a Drury level offensive player. Here is a list of centers only (if I’d included wingers I could have listed many many more) who have been able to maintain a high shooting % (12%+) through most of their careers. I could have found more, but I got tired. And I left out all the players who would be considered league stars. You will notice that there are many who are not even 1st liners, and in some cases not even top-6 forwards really. Monahan, Brock Nelson, Horvat, Dvorak, Gourde, Josh Norris, Nugent-Hopkins, Schenn, Jared McCann, Chandler Stephenson, Adam Henrique, Roslovic, Kadri I do this only to illustrate that if these guys can maintain a high shooting %, then there really is no reason that Thompson can’t. It would not require Thompson to develop into some all star level player.

It certainly is a divergence from his previous career averages, but I definitely see that reflected in his actual play. He isn’t just shooting in the same way and getting lucky with more of them going in this year. He is different. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he continues to shoot a well above average % most seasons going forward. Before this season, half his shots where off that stupid exaggerated toe drag move into a obvious, delayed shot that everyone could see coming. He probably scored on 3% of those.

What’s the relevance of citing Eichel and Crosby? It does not require a player of that skill level to produce a high shooting %. For all his talent, Eichel has not historically produced particularly good shooting percentages at all. There are many top 9 C’s, who are quality players but not superstar types, who routinely produce shooting percentages in the teens range, I could literally list you 10+ with minimal digging. I see absolutely no reason why Thompson could not join that group.

A difficult thing to do, yes certainly. However, it’s a thing that team management must do in order to smartly manage the salary cap. I never said don’t sign him. I was honestly interested in whether anyone had done the math. I would love to see it. I think I’m going to build out my own projections.

It will probably drop a bit, but he is an above average shooter, so I’m not surprised by an above average shooting percentage. It was 11.5 before his hat trick game. That seems sustainable for him.

Just a question. Have you actually taken the time to project out all of the upcoming new contracts for all of the Sabres young players in order get a picture of what the cap situation will be 3 years from now, or are you just kind of assuming that there will still be some room because there is so much room right now? There is no wrong answer. I haven’t done the actual work to sort it out either.

Hmm, I stand corrected. I thought I remembered that that had changed at some point. My apologies. I don’t recall a player who went unsigned by his original team, went back into the draft, and was then actually drafted.

That’s not how the system works now. Unsigned players don’t go back into the draft. They just become FAs. Hagel did not go back into the draft and go undrafted. The blackhawks just signed him after Buffalo didn’t.

Just a note that doesn’t necessarily take away from your overall point. Dahlin has had 3 partners so far this season. Jokiharju for around 400 mins. Butcher for around 200 mins. Pysyk for around 200 mins. No one else has played more than 38 mins with Dahlin, which isn’t really even enough to say that they’ve played together. Butcher is definitely a JAG at best, maybe worse than that. Pysyk is not a JAG IMO, but I could see where some may disagree. Jokiharju is not a JAG IMO.

I was only able to watch the last 12ish mins of this game. It looked like a hard fought contest from what I saw. It got a little chippy and the Sabres had plenty of pushed back. Avs are the best that the NHL has to offer. Call it progress I guess.

Yeah, if Thompson puts up a 30+ goal, 60+ point season, with decent defense, I don’t see any way to say that he can’t be a 2C on a good team. He has been a revelation.

Tuch has played the last 17 games. In the past 17 games Skinner has 11 goals, 6 assists, 17 pts.

Some playoff team is going to pay for the privilege of acquiring Eakin

0.45 x 82 is 37 points. I don’t think that a guy needs to average 37 points per full season to be considered an NHL player. 15 goal, 35 point players aren’t replacement level. At least in many cases, especially if they bring significant defensive attributes. PS- this is just a discussion, I realize that we are kind of splitting hairs here. I honestly think we are both just tying to define “top-9 forward on a good team”.

Agreed, but I thought it was a bar for “nhl player”, not a bar for good 1st round pick.

Yeah, I’m sure there is a way to make something like that work. Smith’s $5M is not $5M available for next season though because Vegas is actually like $8M or something over the cap right now if all their guys were healthy.

I would lower that ppg marker a smidge. Trivial, I know, but a guy who is a solid bottom 6 forward putting up 10-15 goals and 25-35 points consistently for several years is a guy who had made the NHL.

Yeah, he definitely has been injured. Something is affecting his release.

Kotalik was a useful player. I would take that.

Certainly, not sure that Vegas has any real dead weight contracts though. If they did they would have ditched them already. I think it would be an unlikely trade fit, but anything is possible.

I feel the same, but I believe that this ranking was published a couple weeks ago, and I don’t know when Peter’s submitted it. It could be an evaluation that is already close to a month old. It seems Wright’s play has improved some recently. If he keeps it up I wouldn’t be surprised to see Wright go back ahead of Cooley in Peter’s rankings at some point.

Trying to be tactful, lol