GASabresIUFAN

https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/sources-nhl-suspends-players-acquitted-in-2018-sexual-assault-trial-until-dec-1/ They weren't proven innocent. They were acquitted of the charges. These are different things. An acquittal means that the prosecutor in the eyes of the judge or jury (depending on the type of case) failed to prove their case against "beyond a reasonable doubt." It's the same criminal standard in the both the US and Canada. This doesn't mean they are "innocent." It just means that there wasn't enough evidence to convict them. Think the OJ case. Does anyone really believe OJ didn't kill Nicole or Ron Goldman? The standard in a civil case is significantly less. I don't think we'll ever actually know the full details of what happened. What we can say is that were acquitted. We can also say that the original investigation in 2019 concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge the players, but was this investigation tainted by Hockey Canada? We can also say that the NHL did their own investigation and found that the players didn't act criminally, but their actions failed to meet the NHL's moral integrity standard. I think this is a nearly impossible situation. Do we forgive and give these men a second chance? I think each NHL team must decide for themselves. They need to carefully look at the role each player played in the event and I think they need to look at who the players are today. I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of teams take a chance on a couple of these guys. I don't think McLeod will be one of them.

This is a very interesting signing. This guy has played great in the NHL on occasion but also terrible. What does this say about their faith in Levi, Lyon and UPL? Not sure. Last season UPL played 55, Georgiev 49 and Lyons 30. Should be an interesting camp battle.

I remember the posts about Risto's great off-season workouts. Did it help his game? No! Unless Power spent the off-season working with a positioning coach, I doubt simply getting stronger will make him a better in zone defender.

2 of which only want to play offense. By the way, I don’t want him to be Risto 2.0. I don’t need him running around hitting everyone, all I want is for him to be better defensively and incorporate some physicality into his game. I don’t think that is to much to ask.

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.