JoeSchmoe

You never could question his effort. He was balls out all the time. But for all his effort, he had zero ability to make plays. He's on four straight seasons at single digit assists. We can do better. Much better.

Shoot! Totally missed that. My mistake. I'll delete the post.

Isn't this a bit of a weak connection? I.E: Forton's sisters husband works with Terry, OR Forton's wife's brother works with Terry. He's kind of a legit local hockey guy, and it looks like he's paid similar dues that a non-nepotism hire would pay. Unless he's Head GM'ing, I'm not going to worry about it.

This is doubtful. See my analysis below. First i compare him to Peterka... and he's significantly behind him points wise in SHL vs AHL. Peterka is a legit 2nd liner. In the 2nd analysis I compared U20 players in the SHL that had similar productions to him. Of the players that succeeded in the NHL, they are all significantly bigger than Östlund.

As one of RJ's biggest fans, I knew no one could replace him, and I was ready for that. The problem is, as many have said he CANNOT call the game on the radio... THE LISTENER SIMPLY HAS NO IDEA WHATS GOING ON. My kids play travel sports out of town and I'm on the road all winter, so I listen to a lot of Sabres radio. I seem to recall Duff doing a game and thought he was pretty good. Much better than Dunleavy. I actually like Dunleavy as a personality so I think it would be good if him and Duff changed roles.

The biggest surprise if Krebs gets traded will be if he goes as a solo piece. As a solo piece, what else does he get you besides draft picks? I think everyone is in agreement we don't need draft picks. To get an NHL ready contributor back for Krebs, we'll need to package him up with either picks or additional prospects. At that point, it'll be a toss up whether it was Krebs that made the deal, or whatever else we packaged him with.

I agree with all this, including your analysis of my analysis. But based on the limited amount of roster spots for players of his cohort, I'm hoping 1 out of the 31 GMs in the league saw what GA saw at the WJ's and will give us an NHL ready player for him. Especially given I like our odds on Kulich and Savoie more.

Ok... I've got nothing going on on a Friday night. Here goes. I'm going back year by year in Elite Prospects to find SHL players that are U20 with points in the range of 0.6ppg. I have to manually filter out the U18s and U19s that are also listed, since their way further back on their improvement curves. 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. There's not a lot of NHL'ers that played SHL as U20s. Of the ones that made it on my list above (Ek, Karlsson, Eller) they're all bigger than Östlund.

I base what I think about prospects by comparing them to other recent players. 2 years after his draft, Östlund had 23 points in 38 games in the SHL. Peterka, who looks to be a bonafide 2nd liner, had 68 points in 70 games. That's a pretty big spread. Does the quality of the SHL vs AHL bridge the 0.61 vs 0.97 ppg gap? Maybe someone with more time on their hands can evaluate where an undersized 0.61ppg SHL forward typically ends up career wise. Guaranteed, there are outliers who have succeeded, but where does the typical player of Ostlunds ilk end up?

Realistically, Östlund and Rosen will never have much impact in the NHL. I know this, I'd expect NHL GM's to know them as well. Savoie and Kulich are more likely to break into the league on a more meaningful basis, and may be able to get you back an NHL ready player on a cap-stressed team. I'd be shopping them hard.

If it was coaching, this is a pet peeve of mine. You'll score more goals 1 on 1 or 2 on 2 than you will if you establish the zone and let everyone back 5 on 5. If you have a trailer to make it 2 on 1 or 3 on 2 by all means hold up, but that's rarely the case, so you end up getting low% 5 on 5 play instead of the chaos and playmaking you can get with smaller matchups.

22-23 he was blowing by people all the time. I think it was the best part of his game... He had speed and power. This year he'd always pull up and wait for help. I think this is the biggest reason for his regression. Not sure if it was coaching, confidence, injury, or what.

I feel like he's played really well every time we've faced him on Seattle.

Not looking for specific names or anything, but what does Joki and a prospect (preferably Östlund or Rosen) get us up front? Can we get a legit good middle 6 forward? Could adding a pick get us a legit good 3C?

What's Bryson going to cost? He was visibly better this season and has the advanced stats to prove it. I like him in the 6/7 slot for next season. Arguably RJ is good for this, but I think he might benefit with more ROC time.

There goes my enthusiasm! Thanks!

Improving our bottom 6 is the low hanging fruit that we can most easily cover through through FA. If we upped our spending there and spread it around across 3 or 4 players that are better than Robinson, Jost, Girgensons, etc we can really improve vs previous years. Our top 6 still needs improvement too. Let's do that by trading picks and prospects.

Maybe it went bad. I've had that happen to me before. One time I emailed the brewery and got 2 free cases.

That's true. I think what Taro said is right too. Players get better with more strength and experience as well as learning more tactics. Kind of like how most MLB hitters don't even get into the league until well into their 20s. It just takes time to learn the skill. I just wouldn't sell the farm to get better at this. Much wiser use of cap to focus on scoring rather than face-offs.

I feel like he did in the early days, but then stopped. The same story goes for his concept of practicing hard. The first year or two, you heard about him pushing the 💩 out of them in practice. Last year, the story was the opposite.

Average guy wins 50% of draws. ROR wins 55%. Game is on the line. The takeaway is only ROR cares in that situation and he'll win nearly every time because he's that much better than the average guy who somehow manages to win 50 out of 100 draws, as opposed to ROR's 55 out of 100. I feel like this is the same kind of logic that keeps casinos in business.

So it's a key faceoff with Crosby vs ROR. Do they both win 100% of the time? I agree you put your best guy in there to get your extra couple % odds at winning. You just don't give up a roster spot for a face-off specialist a la Paul Gaustad for a 1st round pick.

Everything you're saying is predicated upon thinking there's a unicorn that gets you 100% face-off winning percentage at key times in a game. ROR's career average is 55.7%. Sending him out there in crunch time gives you a 5.7% better chance of winning the puck vs the league average guy. You'll take that chance every time, but realistically it's not that much. EDIT- at key times, the other team is probably going to send out their top guy too. So if their guy is a career 53% guy, you'll win about 3 more faceoffs out of a 100 with ROR.

Beer is like pizza. Even the low quality stuff is still good. I'll drink any beer and enjoy it, whether it be cheap-swill North America macro, high hop craft beer, Euro pilsner... It's all good. That said, a grapefruit radler is the Hawaiian Pizza of beer. Again, I'll still drink it, but it would be much better without the grapefruit, just as the pizza would be better off without the pineapple.