JoeSchmoe

We don't have last year's top scorer Mitts next year. Worse yet, Byram was a negative expected goal player on a very strong Av's team. That's very hard to do. He's still young and can improve, but if he was bad on the Av's he could end up being very bad on the Sabres. I think in a large part, the narrative about him as a player is largely dictated by his draft position. We were 23rd in the league in GF and lost a lot of firepower. Unless the Lindy factor comes through in a big way, there is no way our somewhat improved 4th line makes up the difference.

Cap stressed teams beware! These STL style offer sheets on lower tier players are going to become much more prevalent. They're giving up relatively little for known quantities. I'm guessing this was discussed elsewhere, but based on the compensation rules, if the Sabres would have tendered a $1.5M AAV offer to Malenstyn, we could have had him without having to give up the 2nd. Based on the Caps cap position, they might have pulled it off.

There's lots of individual thread worthy conversation going on in this thread. IMO it would be nice to see the STL/EDM RFA, and CHL/NCAA discussions broken out to separate discussions.

He was in the NHL already... But struggling. In a small 8 game sample size in the AHL he was over a PPG. Most importantly though, he was 6'6 and well over 200lb.

I haven't watched him play like you have... Just with the Sabres and U20s where he's been invisible anytime I've watched. If he doesn't bring elite scoring or above average size, what role do you see him playing in the NHL based on what he's done with the Amerks.

Rosen's career trajectory has been sub-NHL pace since they drafted him, and in his D+4 year that hasn't changed. Adams took a Flyer on him (pun intended) after a very good WC18 tournament. Given the Risto trade 1st round pick practically fell on his lap, he must have been thinking of using it on a high ceiling, low floor player. Unfortunately, that high ceiling is looking further and further from coming to fruition.

My wife and I slept in the Detroit airport one night after a gang fight broke out in the hallway of the hotel we were staying at... Right outside our door. They were threatening to kill each other, constantly bumping into our door. We were literally hiding behind the bed with the door locked and deadbolted. Luckily the police got there before shots were fired. When it sounded like things were cleared, we got to the front desk to check out and demand our money back. Unfortunately, it took quite a bit of convincing as they tried to claim it wasn't their fault. If I recall, I think the police had to help plead our case for us.

Maybe in the short term, but if all the listeners leave and don't come back, then you've lost your entire business. With podcasts, my WGR listening is WAY down compared to just a year or two ago. I'm sure there's many more like me. If cutbacks are coming, hopefully they show Schopp the door first. Its clear he's largely lost interest in watching sports. If it wasn't for fantasy sports, he'd probably be pushing his way into a newsroom or something by now. I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I still like Bullldog. I might not agree with everything he says, but he's still a big fan of hockey and is always happy to talk about it.

I think you're safe going in the fall, but everyone who I know that's gone recently has complained about the summer crowds. My goal is to go in March sometime, mainly for snowboarding the Dolomites, but I'd probably tack on 5 or 6 days in some lesser travelled areas close by... Like Verona, Bologna, and Modena.

Yeah, I don't listen as much as I used to because of this. How much can you talk about a team that plays like 20 games or less a year?!?! Sal Capaccio is an instant channel change. There was maybe a 5 year window after the lockout when the Sabres were good and the Bills sucked. Sabres dominated coverage then and I remember Bills fans complaining. I also remember Schopp and the Bulldog openly admitting they prefer hockey to football.

My view is the power play sucked because Granato and Ellis had just one play... Which as we know was to pass it to Tage on the half-wall for a one-timer. Teams adjusted to that by mid 22-33, but our coaching staff didn't seem to care.

First column is advanced stats. Next four columns are old fashioned stats. You can't outthink the fact that he produced better than everyone but Tage. He'd have been a good guy to have next year... Then buy him out after that. They could have kept Skinner for another year.

I'm saying the stats say he produced on the PP better than everyone on the team not named Tage. Eye test wise, he seemed to be better at the scrambly type goals than anyone else on the team. Also, I seem to recall him being pretty good at picking corners.

Skinner was 3rd on the team among forwards in 5 on 5 GF% at 55%. His lack of defense was more than made up for by his offense. Worse yet, he was 2nd on the team on pts/60 on the power play. Despite popular belief, we are worse without him... in the short term anyways.

I think they vastly improved over what they had. Jost, Robinson, and Girgensons were downright terrible. If we're good next year, being stronger in the bottom 6 is definitely going to be a reason why (that and health of the top 6). But all that said, speed is not a substitute for hockey IQ. Having a line of guys who can blast down the ice, only to skate it into corner and ultimately lose it does not lead to goals. Hockey IQ is the biggest indicator of success on the ice, but it's also the one that can't be measured. I'm just thankful all these fast guys we brought can seemingly play good defense (on paper anyways, I haven't really watched them play).

As a frequent radio listener, RJ was really good right up until the end. Sure he'd slipped a bit and didn't quite get a name right in time, but that's a completely different level than Dunleavy where sometimes you don't know a goal was scored or what team scored it.

But as I said before, if the number of secondary assists per goal is not constant, it's an inferior metric to goals themselves.

He's going to be a real humdinger!

1. No major injuries. 2. Thompson, Cozens, and Tuch play in 22-23 form. 3. Nobody else regresses, especially UPL. 4. MacLeod and Zucker come close to replacing Mitts and Skinner. 5. Ruff improves the power play. Most likely not all that happens and they're a mid to high 80 pt team.

But points don't win games. Goals do.

Is pt/60 really the best measuring tool? That expects the number of secondary assists per goal is constant amongst all teams. It might be close, but do we know this? I think GF is a better measure.

Tears his Achilles in off season training incident... Comes back in garbage time and looks real good, giving us hope for next year.

I think this is the main problem. Especially by some definitions, they're not really prospect pool players anyone. It's too bad Kulich didn't have a Quinn / Peterka like 2nd season in Rochester. It looked like he was heading in that direction after year 1. Hopefully he'll bump up this year.

A lot of this depends on what you make of the sliding definition of a prospect. I put it as someone who hasn't dressed regularly in the NHL yet. For that I don't consider Benson and Power to be prospects anymore. In my post above, I didn't consider Levi to be one either... but a case could be made to say he is. I know some people are still high on Östlund, but my research a few weeks back showed that of 8 guys who played SHL in their U20 year with a similar scoring pace as him, only 2 are top 6 NHL'ers. The 2 were William Karlsson and Joel Ericksen Ek who are both bigger. Larsson and Eller are/were both NHL players too but I'm guessing the better Swedes may be coming over here earlier nowadays. 19-20: Filip Hallender 0.52ppg U20 SHL. 18-19: Emil Bemstrom 0.74ppg U20 SHL. 18-19: Samuel Fagemo 0.60ppg U20 SHL. 16-17: Joel Eriksen Ek 0.62ppg U20 SHL. 15-16: Oskar Lindblom 0.52ppg U20 SHL. 12-13: William Karlsson 0.58ppg U20 SHL. 11-12: Johan Larsson 0.73ppg U20 SHL. 08-09: Lars Eller 0.60ppg U20 SHL.