JoeSchmoe

I tried googling her to get the full story here. Am I missing something? In my eye it would be hard to beat Dutch speedskater gold medalist Jutta Leerdam, but I may be missing some criteria. Edit: correction... It was Irene Schouten that won gold, not Jutta.

Any word yet on the plan for Levi? It would be a true shame to have pulled him out of school to have him sit out the Games in the press box. Yes, the Olympics can be a once in a lifetime thing, but so is his shot at the Hobey Baker, and at least he's participating in the latter.

W.C. Fields — 'If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull💩.'

That's a baffle with bull💩 job... I think we can both agree that there are plenty of normal sized kids with numbers as good or better than that. The team got enamoured with him based on his extremely small sample size at the U18's. In about the same sample size Girgs was almost a ppg to start the season, and has been nowhere near that.

Its more like I'm annoyed with all you guys defending the bad pick for the fleecing we pulled on Philly. If he turns out to be good, I'll be happy to be wrong. To date, he's looked more like a late rounder, than a 13th overall.

I think the bottom line is it's likely that he isn't that good, and the size thing is a red herring. All of his stats when playing at the junior level have been underwhelming, except for the U18's. Cole Caufield was/is small but has put up huge points at all levels.

I opened the thread hoping for good news on the new tier 2 Swedish team.

The point is I don't want to hear about TOI....it's not tweet or post worthy. If the kid starts scoring good... But let's not celebrate TOI like he did something special.

Woohoo!!!! 13:59 TOI in the Tier 2 Swedish league! Start the parade, the cup is coming to Buffalo!!!!!

Is this just a "who's out there" list, or have there been meaningful conversations going on between the team and these players. If it's the latter... Cool. If not, meh.

Interestingly, our 6th round pick William Von Barnekow is 1.20ppg vs Rosen's 1.13ppg in the Swedish U20 this year.

The Leksands website lists him at 67kg and 178cm. Some people are just naturally slight and don't put weight on effectively. Again, when picking 13th, pick the scorer thats small or pick the strong power forward that isn't quite an elite scorer. Don't compromise on both.

My guess is this is the case. I don't read into scouting as deeply as some of you guys, but my anecdotal experience is that when teams reach for players based on strong play at the U20s, they generally fall back to their more expected projections of their other leagues... Not the small sample of the tournaments.

The kid was a not an elite scorer playing against other kids. If he was, the comment about him growing into his body would have merit. This is a sub-elite scorer that may or may not grow. They should have taken a hard pass at him.

9pts in 8 games is 39th in ppg. In his draft year he was 1ppg in 12 games. Players like that in the CHL are a dime a dozen. Olivier Nadeau didn't go until the 4th round and he had 45pts in 34g in the Q! And he's listed at 6'2" 198lb!

Lost in this feel good thread is that he was 39th in ppg in the Swedish U20 League. His 8 games was a small sample size, but considering his draft position, this is pretty bad. I'll say it again....when drafting a 13th overall you're not going to get the full package. Sometimes you have to compromise on size, and sometimes you have to compromise on scoring. With Rosen, they compromised on both... And now we're left with a likely non-NHL player for the gift of the Flyers poor trade for Risto.

I think if he is as dominant in the Olympics as he has been on every other level (Jr A, W20, NCAA), he'll get an honest look in camp. If he does well in camp, he's in. No guarantees, but that's his path.

He could be. Let's see how he does in the Olympics first... We'll know more after that.

Realistically, what's the plan here? Rochester plays tomorrow and so do we. What about Cinci?

Bjork... Why is that guy still in the NHL?! Same with Eakin and Hayden. In fact why was Hayden ever in the NHL?! He has zero redeeming qualities. At least Bjork is fast and can fool you into thinking there's potential there. Hayden is just a whole lot of nothing. The Sabres are currently a -31 in goal differential. Had we dressed Power, Peterka, Quinn, and Krebs (assuming we had him) instead of clowns like these guys (throw Butcher in the mix) and had slightly above NHL replacement level goaltending, would we get to even on goal differential which would be borderline playoff level? How about next year?

It's 100% talent right now. Our guys aren't winning enough puck battles. And worse yet, when they do, they lack the quick thinking and vision to cleanly get the puck out of the zone. When D zone play is done right, you may not even notice it because it's just simple, no flash hockey. Butcher is normally the worst of the bunch, but Hagg and Pysyk (who's normally our top guy defensively) were really fighting it last night. My son plays U15 AAA D. The coaches and scouts love him because they notice the simple D zone stuff that I don't. I'm constantly on him to up his offense, but apparently those in the know aren't worried about offense if you can play an elite defensive zone game.

Hayden, Eakin, and Bjork played an average of about 12 and a half minutes. You can't win with such low talent like that playing those kind of minutes. They said Bjork just recently broke a streak where he went 7 games without a shot.

Is anyone else a little suspicious of Tokarski's lengthy return from COVID? Could they be dragging this out for any other reasons? As of Dec 28 he said he was working through a few things with the symptoms... But there hasn't been much since. Was he caught with phoney vax papers? Another nagging injury they're hiding? Anything else? I'm not saying it's not legit, but I'm not putting anything past these guys running the team. You think we'd at least get some kind of update since December. http://www.buffalohockeybeat.com/sabres-dustin-tokarski-has-lingering-issues-coming-off-covid-19/

Part of me wants to see them let him continue on that trajectory until the end of the season, only to drive the value of his pending RFA contract down. He's got all summer to rest.

Not to mention competent goaltending. Hopefully UPL and/or Levi come through for us sooner than later.