GASabresIUFAN

That’s correct, not in college and not in the pros. Until he learns to actually use his size to his advantage in the D zone and that includes clearing the front of the net, knocking people off the puck etc, he is a waste. He is being paid top $ to be effective at both ends of the ice and really only does half the job. To justify his compensation for just his O output, he needs to be a 70 pts player and his O skills aren’t good enough for that either.

Don’t ever challenge worse. @dudacek needs to put odds on each of those 10 things happening. For example - The defense had 2 40 pts players and one 70 pt player so the odds of that happening again for pretty good. While the odds of us having good goaltending are much much lower. He wrote they can’t be worse. While that may be true, given how lousy UPL has been as a pro except one season and how exceeding mediocre Lyons has been in his career especially on poor defensive teams like the Sabres, I’d say the odds of substantive improvement are about 10%. The reason it’s not zero is because we have seen moments of good goaltending from all 3, just not enough and not consistently

I honestly don’t care. Paying 8-9 mill for 7-8 years for a 29 year old 35 g 70 pt player soon to decline is stupid. This is KO 2.0 waiting to happen. Whether we sign him or we don’t also doesn’t matter. This is a hopelessly flawed team with terrible management and a poorly constructed roster with a GM who hands out bad contracts like candy. What’s one more bad contract? The Sabres will spend next season over $40 mill on bad contracts to Norris, Greenway, Samuelson, UPL, Power, and Byram plus the contract corpse of Jeff Skinner. Hard to win when you are spending nearly 50% of your internal cap on players who have zero chance of performing to their contract amount. I like Tuch, but he isn’t a $9 mill now and certainly won’t be 2-3 years from now.

I don't know, there is a very thin line right now between love and hate for the Sabres in the very disgruntled fanbase. 14 straight years of missing the playoffs coupled with GMKA's utter incompetence has left a very unhappy and bitter fanbase.

Actually Adams is going to give Tuch a huge extension so that he can leave his successor another terrible long-term contract to work withafter he gets fired after this coming season when the team fails to make the playoffs for the 15th straight year.

Maybe the lesson is don’t put talented skill players with crap 4th line players and expect them to produce.

I don’t know if the contract will work out, but it’s stupid to give out big$ contracts to guys with 53 games on experience and only 26 pts in those 53 games. When did Adams take over as Chicago’s GM?

Tuch has an uphill battle to make the team while Thompson has a reasonable chance. 4 forwards have already been selected - Eichel, Matthews and the Tkachuk brothers. I think there are another 4 locks for the roster in Jack Hughes, Conner, Robertson and Boldy. That leaves 5 slots. Guys like Keller, Guentzel, Thompson, Caufield, Debrincat, Cooley, Larkin, Tuch and Knies competing for those slots. I think Guentzel and Thomspon lead for slots 9 & 10.

What you don’t think Kesselring and Timmins will solve all our D problem? What type of fan are u?

The only addition by subtraction I want right now is Adams and the entire coaching staff to get fired.

How is leading the NHL in 1st period goals garbage time? Front running is valid, but garbage time would be leading the league in 3rd period scoring and still have a losing record. The Sabres scored 92, 84 & 86 by period. Those are fairly consistent numbers. They dominated the 1st with a differential of +24 (68 goals allowed). Where they failed is when the game's intensity picked up in the 2nd period, the defense and goaltending collapsed. They allowed an NHL worst 214 goals in the 2nd and 3rd period (107 each period).

This is a fair and accurate post. Hard to win if you can't stop the other team. (ask the Bills in the 4th qtr of the playoffs) Adams has had years to address the goaltending. The last game Ullmark played for the Sabres was 4/13/21. The next season, Adams gave us UPL with Anderson, Tokarski, Dell, Subban and Houser. He followed that up with UPL plus Anderson, Comrie and a late season visit from Levi. Next came UPL with Comrie and Levi followed by last season's S..t show of UPL, Reimer and Levi. Is it any wonder this team can't crawl out of the cellar. This coming season we are getting UPL with Lyons and Levi. Does anyone really expect a different result in year 5 running back the same failed strategy in goal that has failed for 4 straight seasons?

"....but he didn't want to be here"

No idea. It didn’t make sense then and doesn’t make sense now. Giving long term deals after one good season hasn’t exactly worked out for the Sabres; namely Cozens, Samuelsson, UPL to name 3 more. Given Power’s terrible defense, I’m still waiting for his good year.

Does that come at much too high a cost? Is the D too focused on creating offense that they consistently breakdown defensively? Would ten less goals by the D, lead to 20 less goals against by eliminating a significant amount of high danger chances against?

You are talking about goal differential. That is certainly a worthwhile discussion and worthy of it's own thread, but we are talking about how the Sabres replace the lost output.

If y’all want to discuss (bash?) our goaltending, please put in another thread. Thanks.

That goes to the question of whether the 5 on 5 scoring is sustainable. The blurb is missing some context. The article says they scored 90 mid range goals. Ok, but how is that defined. They also said the forwards scored 7 long range goals. That leaves 168 goals un-accounted for. Assuming some are long range D goals, that leaves about 160-165 goals scoring close in. How does that rank in the NHL? Top 5, Top 10? How do all these stats compare with teams like Florida or Edm? Assuming we scored 160+ close in, my guess is going to the net might not be as big as an issue as we thought. We also have a roster full of talented shooters like Thompson, Norris and others so maybe the mid range shooting is ideal. I honestly don’t know and wish the article gave better context.

He has made plenty of changes, just not good ones. Most of the players acquired have been depth players with limited utility and the changes have not yet to create a winning roster. The team has regressed the last two years. As I’ve said before, Adams has traded away the 5 most productive forwards drafted and developed by the Sabres since the tank (Eichel, Reinhart, Mitts, Cozens and JJP). He also let the best goaltender drafted by the Sabres walk. Change for change sake is not a good thing. Deck chairs on the Titanic. Sample moves - the parade of bad D - Lyubuskin, Clifton, E Johnson, Pysyk, Butcher, Irwin and Hagg. Parade of bad goalies since Ullmark left; Comrie, UPL, Reimer, Anderson, Tokarski, Dell and Subban.

He might get more opportunities, but he is unlikely to shoot 20%+ again. Last season he scored 20 goals on only 97 shots. The year before he scored 12 on 106 shots. What we saw last season was a career 12% shooter get significant puck luck. If he shoots at his prior career % (12%), he’s going to need to take 167 shots (or a 70% increase in shots) to match last year’s goal total. That’s is unlikely to happen. Even if you average in last season’s shooting % to give him a 14% career average, he is still going to need to increase his shots and goal total by nearly 50% to match last year’s output. I agree the offense isn’t the biggest issue the Sabres face, but it’s good to discuss where the Sabres management thinks it’s scoring is coming from.

Those are topics for different conversations.

Krebs’ best opportunity could come if Kulich falters at center and gets moved to wing or sent down.

The Sabres scored 265 goals last season. The Sabres traded or let go of JJP (27 goals), Cozens (11 goals), Clifton, Joki, Lafferty, Kubel, and JBD and lost 48 goals in the process. The Sabres also added forwards Norris (1 goal in 3 Sabres games, but 21 overall in 56 games), Doan (7 goals in 51 games) and Danforth (9 goals in 61 games) and D Kesselring (7 goals) and Timmins (3 goals). Net of these changes the Sabres are down 2 goals on paper including Norris' 20 goals with Ottawa. Based on my projections I see the Sabres at 254 goals next season. Looking at next year's roster, I see Zucker (21 goals) and McLeod (20 goals) as regression candidates. Zucker do to age and McLeod do to an abnormally high shooting %. There is hope. Benson (10 goals) and Kulich (15 goals) are youngsters who hopefully blossom with more ice time and bigger roles on the team. The key to overcoming the deficit beside Kulich and Benson improving is rebounds in healthy and production from injured players like Norris (21 goals in 56 games), Quinn (15 goals in 74 games) and Greenway (3 goals in 34 games). The last X factor is Doan. Is he a 4th line energy forward and 7-10 goals is all we can expect, or can he seize a 3rd line role and give us 15 goals?

1. https://www.nhl.com/news/topic/32-in-32/buffalo-sabres-nhl-edge-stats-for-2025-26-season-32-in-32 2. https://www.nhl.com/news/topic/32-in-32/buffalo-sabres-inside-look-for-2025-26-season-32-in-32 3. https://www.nhl.com/news/topic/32-in-32/buffalo-sabres-three-questions-for-2025-26-season-32-in-32 4. https://www.nhl.com/news/topic/32-in-32/buffalo-sabres-fantasy-projections-for-2025-26-season-32-in-32 5. https://www.nhl.com/news/topic/32-in-32/buffalo-sabres-top-prospects-for-2025-26-season-32-in-32 The most interesting stat in the Edge article (Article 1) is the Mid and long range goals scored by the Sabres last season. The Sabres were among the league leaders in mid and long range goals last season. Is that sustainable or subject to a reversal of fortune? I'd like to have seen some advanced metrics on our crap goaltending. In article 3, they got 2 of the 3 questions right (but not in the right order). McLeod building on last season is not even on the radar of a major issue other than a regression will make it even harder to replace JJP scoring. The top issue facing the Sabres is can the "revamped" defense improve defensively. The No 2 issue is UPL and goaltending and the 3rd issue is replacing JJP's scoring.

You mean other than the 6 D 6'0 or taller all weighing 195 to 220 lbs with two of the top 3 6'4 or taller? (and the entire top 4 6'1 or taller and all 200 to 220 lbs. All of these D registered 82 or more hits with Kulikov at 114 and Mikkola at 137. They also all block shots.