JoeSchmoe

Chris Osgood would be my bet.

He coached that way in 05 to 07. His mantra was you coach to the strength of team you're given. At the time he knew he could outskate and outscore the opposition across all 4 lines so he turned them loose. This was a noted departure from the late 90s defense first teams.

No

I did. As a Canadian Sabres fan, I couldn't have liked it better.

Östlund was listed as 163lb going into the draft. Also, Bergeron is considerably bigger than what you list. If you can recall him playing with Crosby in 2005 he was by no means small.

For a while there I thought his trade value vs chance of panning out ratio was the best out of the bunch... Especially early on. That window had appeared to close at the beginning of the season, but may be opening up again.

When you have more little guys than you do roster spots for them, the most effective outcome is that you should trade some of them for pieces you need. That's not weird, that's just good GM'ing. The only weird part is that we picked so many undersized forward in the first place.

It's not mid-first round solid. You may recall I did an analysis of players with similar stats in the SHL going back 10 years, and it showed the chances of him turning out were not good (too lazy to find it).

What's weird? I didn't like that they picked another small forward when we had tons of them and no room for them all. Moreover, they've kept him around all this time even though there seemingly is no room for him unless he takes a GIANT leap. Not only that, but his numbers going into the draft were not close to NHL top 6 potential (small forwards typically don't make good 3rd or 4th liners). Meanwhile, there were players available with similar stats but had the size to play deeper in the lineup.

Just world Juniors. I was more going of stats, size, etc.

I've been Östlund's biggest critic... Didn't like the pick and haven't liked that he hasn't been dealt. Here's hoping he makes me look bad.

What analytics are you looking at? We have 3 guys in +ve expected goal %. Two are easy to guess and the 3rd one is Benson. Tuch, Zucker, and the guy who did pretty well playing D for Finland are just below the 50% marker. The rest all suck.

Dahlin-Byram = good Dahlin-Bryson = good Dahlin-Power = good Dahlin-Samuelson = good Byram-anyone besides Dahlin = not so good

This is the Dahlin effect. He was one of our worst guys statistically prior to playing with him. The worst thing we can do is hand him another Power contract because he's playing with one of the league's best defensemen.

He hasn't been great. He just looks good now because he's playing with Dahlin. Everybody takes a MAJOR bump when they play with Dahlin and we've got the Samuelson long-term deadweight contract to prove it. Edit: Here's the expected goal stats.

Sometimes invisible sicky bugs get all up into your body and make you feel all poopy... even for grown ups. That's why we don't put our hands in our mouths and always wash before eating.

Extremely small sample size, but during Wednesday's game 37 year old Sidney Crosby was the best player on the ice. McDavid might have jaw dropping speed that prime Crosby never had, but IMO that's it. Crosby's hockey IQ and compete level is orders better than McDavid. In fact, I'd go so far to say McDavid has just above average IQ at best... He just makes up for it with athletism. Crosby has all-time level IQ. When everybody on the ice is so good that you can't win on athletism alone (McDavid/MacKinnon), 87's intangibles lock him in as the #1 player in the world since Lemieux.

It's too bad we'll never see Czechoslovakia again.

I wouldn't doubt the Canadian players feel a greater sense of nationalism due to the stature hockey has in their culture vs the US. But... I'd be VERY surprised if Donald Trump's tariff threats are a factor at all to most if not all of them.

Everyone that plays with Dahlin looks like a superstar. We cannot let him go the way of Eichel or Reinhart because as we saw during the losing streak, he's by far the MVP of the team.

I played at a low level, but I have a good friend that played higher levels where goonery was much more prevalent than today's NHL. He was a middleweight and fought only when necessary. He'll tell you that even the biggest goons didn't stop him from doing what he was going to do. Back to yesterday... if a 5 minute major that was likely to cost his team the game and the fine / suspension doesn't deter him... having to tie up in a lousy circa 2025 NHL fight certainly won't.

It's idiotic to think the prospect of having to fight would deter a dirty hit. Even if we had prime Bob Probert on the ice what's the difference? You can turtle or back away.

Sabres. If they can beat Columbus on Tuesday, and then win the next two after that, they'll only be another three wins in a row from being back in the hunt.

Too bad it's such a pea shooter of a shot.