GASabresIUFAN

I added a poll question.

Did you see the projection above of 5 years at 5.162? The last 3 seasons he's had 64, 65 and 51 points. He isn't taking less than 5 per season. His age and not as stellar play last season may limit the term to 4 years, but he isn't coming here on a 2 year deal.

Possible 3C candidates: Internal - Krebs, Savoie & Kulich Trade Targets Cirelli, 27, C - No NTC - 7 years left at 6.25 Karlsson, 31, C - NTC - 3 years left at 5.9 Roy, 27, C - No NTC - 3 years left at 3 Bennett, 28, C- NO NTC - 1 year left at 4 UFAs (Projected Contracts) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JPtGk5m_S9VuR5e7T8lb_BlilXRwJPF0V2ddQzjjpvc/edit#gid=0 Monahan, 29, C/LW/RW - 4 years at 5.298 Stephenson, 30, C/LW - 5 years at 5.612 Roslovic, 27, C/RW - 3 years at 3.074 Domi, 29, C/RW - 2 years at 3.575 Wennberg, 29, C - 4 years at 3.856 Duchene, 33, C/RW - 3 years at 4.809

Bennett is a fine choice for the 3C role and he has been solid in that role for the last 3 years in Fla. He has no trade protection and has been very good in the last 2 playoff runs for the Panthers. To re-sign Reinhart, Bennett he could easily be traded. How much is 1 year worth to Adams and the Sabres? Would Fla trade him inside the division?

Yep, G-d forbid we have forwards who can create offense.

Long-term the answer to our 3C is pretty easy. Eventually, one of Savoie, Kulich, Östlund or Wahlberg will win the job and we’ll go from there, but I don’t believe any are ready now. Savoie and Kulich are the closest, but I don’t think the Sabres can afford to take the risk to try one of them next season. Savoie is the one forward in the system who could force his way onto the roster in camp next season. Krebs is the other internal candidate. I believe he should be traded, but given he’ll be cheap to retain and has been effective in a 4th line role, my guess is he’ll be re-signed. I worry he is this year’s Asplund. Ruling out the internal candidates, what should we be looking for in terms of skill set, cost (cap), cost to acquire, and term? As to skill set, ideally the player should have a strong 2 way game. I like someone with good PK ability and who can win a draw. 45-50 points would also be nice. From a skill set standpoint, getting Cirelli would be ideal. Only issues are the 7 years left on his deal and that a NTC kicks in after next season. His 6.25 cap is workable this season and could be worked around long-term if the kids come in wins jobs. I think other strong UFA candidates, like Stephenson and Monahan, will want 4-5 year deals. Term: Does Adams go a for core type player and commit to them long-term blocking his prospects in the process or does he try to find a player for a year or 2 to hold the job until a kid is ready. I’d love to see him go for it and get a Cirelli, but I suspect he’ll remain cautious and try to find someone who will sign for 3 years or less or acquire someone with limited term remaining. LV has a couple of other centers, Karlsson and Roy, who may be available. Both have 3 years left, Karlsson at 5.9 and Roy at 3. I’d take either, but Karlsson has an NTC and LV, if they let their UFAs walk, don’t have much of a cap crunch right now. I’d love to have Karlsson, especially because he can play up the lineup as well. Roslovic is an interesting UFA. Not great in the FO dot, but he is a guy that I think still has untapped potential and who should be a 45 pt player again in the right circumstances. I also think he could take a shorter deal in right circumstances to get another bite at the UFA apple in 2-3 years. Max Domi is another interesting idea. If we could get Roy, Cirelli, or Karlsson, how much would it cost to acquire one of them?

We need to change this roster. We can’t continue to bring back failed or failing players. Krebs, Bryson and Jokiharju all need to go. Bryson isn’t physical, he doesn’t add offense and is mediocre in the D zone. There is no reason to keep him even as a depth D with Ryan Johnson available and Novikov rapidly improving. Find a cheap vet for $1 who can play actual defense and go from there. Having Joki in our top 4 is also a mistake, even if accepts his Q offer. Trade him and find someone else. He is just a better version of Bryson. He isn’t overly physical, doesn’t add much O and is exceedingly mediocre in the D zone. His metrics with most of the other D also aren’t very good. Again we can do better. Krebs is miscast as a 4C and isn’t good enough to be a 3C. Why bring him back even if he’s cheap? He’s Jost 2.0. I’d rather have Lazar back. KA can do better than these 3 and should.

Outside of his great year, Jeannot is Girgensons 2.0. I’d give a 4th for him at most. His last 2 seasons are 18 pts and 14 pts.

Johnson is still waivers exempt. He can easily start next season in Rochester. Bryson's Q offer is 1.9 million. Are you really investing that much is a 7/8 D? With Johnson able to be recalled and Novikov developing nicely, I don't think keeping Bryson is worth it. KA probably re-signs him anyway for 2 years at 1.5 per season.

I never said bottom 3. I said we have 5 D under contract and we'll add 2-3 more. However, the guys have a ton to prove. You would think an organization that committed to defense spending wise would see results on the ice. Sadly we don't. Joki needs to go. His is a 3rd line D and we have plenty of those. We need to allocate money elsewhere. From an equity standpoint, the forwards should cost about 59% of the cap, D 32% and G 9% on the roster of 13F, 7D and 2G if you allocate cap based on % of players on the roster. Also is goes back to results. If you are spending over average on the D you need results to justify the expenditure. Also, if you way over spend on any one position you end up like Toronto. They spent over 70% of their cap last year on forwards and had a great offense. However, the lack of investment in defense and goaltending cost them in the end. Part of this equation if management needs to pay the right players. Investing $4 million a year in Joki, who should be a 3rd pairing D is a mistake.

With 5 D under contract for next season, the Sabres have the most expensive Defense in the NHL at over $31 million. Add 2-3 more players and you maybe talking a defense of $36 mill+. That's over 40% of the cap limit for a defense that was in the bottom 1/3 of the NHL last season. The construction of this team is a friggin mess. TB has the 2nd most invested in their D group, but they have proven stars like Hedman, Cernak and Sergachev and won Stanley Cups. What's our excuse?

Don't forget we dumped Borgen before giving him a chance. Mule can't stay healthy etc... That doesn't change the need to add them to our team. My guess is we have one of the highest D payrolls in the NHL, but still have a below average defense. Maybe we are spending our money on the wrong players.

Are we even sure he's a top 4 D in Buffalo?

So you’re saying he is proactive, just incompetent. The difference between pursuing Chychrun vs the Byram trade is apple to oranges. Getting Chychrun would have been an upgrade to the team without sacrificing any current NHL talent. The Mitts for Byram deal added a redundant talent on defense while creating a huge hole in our forward group. You’ll see the anger and angst grow when Colorado makes Mitts’ their No.2 center next fall and KA installs Krebs as our 3C out of camp. When this happens it will further illustrate that Adams traded Mitts because he couldn’t afford to keep him because of the internal cap and therefore couldn’t afford to replace Mitts either, leaving only Krebs.

I think we can infer that they don't (didn't?) give it adequate consideration when you look at the xGF on the D pairings. Joki and Power was the most common D pairing last season (most TOI together - almost 500 minutes) and their xGF was 41.95% with HDC for of 65 to 119 against. Those are terrible numbers. They also didn't ride any pairs consistently, even when they worked. Power/Dahlin, for example, had an xGF of 54.76% and were +8 on HDC, but only played 254 minutes together.

I don’t think they listen to Ventura at all; not on trades, on line pairings; not on D pairings. The only exception maybe draft picks. There is very good chance that Adams re-signs Joki and Bryson and concentrates on spending on forwards. Johnson then starts in the minors. The pairings would be (somewhat based on xGF from last season) Dahlin Jokiharju - xGF% 56.22 Power Samuelson - xGF% 56.36 Byram Clifton - xGF% 71.05 (limited sample size) Bryson

I sort of sidetracked the offseason game plan thread with a defensive discussion. That discussion deserves it's own thread. Right now the Sabres D group consists of Dahlin, Power, Byram, Clifton, Samuelsson and prospect Johnson who are all under contract. Jokiharju, Clague and Bryson are RFAs. Q offers for each are as follows: Jokiharju (2.6), Bryson (1.9) and Clague (.775) With 6 players under contract, there isn't much that KA has to do this off-season. I was honestly surprised to learn when looking at Power's xGF earlier today how well most of the guys looked when playing with him. (Thanks @thewookie1) Maybe there is more there than I suspected with just the eye test. While I mentioned him as a possible trade piece, I do agree with @LGR4GM that odds favor all of Byram, Dahlin and Power in the lineup in the fall. If that's the case, which of the other 5 guys (Clifton, Johnson, Samuelsson, Jokiharju and/or Bryson) do you want back, what would the pairings look like and what other moves would you make to improve a D group that as among the worst in the NHL last season in giving up HDCS and HDSA? I worry that bringing back the same group would be a mistake. This group needs at least one more good D first player, maybe two. I'd like to see Dahlin, Power and Byram anchor their own pairing and try to spread the ice time more evenly. I also want to see Byram on the PP. I think he will bring more aggression to the PP, which it desperately needs.

I was just looking at the numbers as well and @thewookie1 was correct. They weren't bad together. \ Looking at the stats, everyone was decent to good with Dahlin, except Clifton. Clifton/Dahlin xGF (38.33%)/ XGF over 50% = Power/ Dahlin (54.76%), Joki/Dahlin (56.22), Mule/Dahlin (50.15), Clifton/Power (51.24), Mule/Power (56.36) Byram's best partner was Dahlin at 47.37%. From these numbers it looks like Power and Dahlin, while good together should anchor their own lines and Jokiharju needs to be traded. I'm also still not seeing how to put the pieces together.

Late last season Byram and Power were paired as well, so there should be some analytics on Byram/Power and Power/Dahlin.

No we didn't fail last year because Dahlin pinched too much. We failed because we didn't have a good system and we didn't have enough good defensemen and still don't. That's not the discussion. The discussion is making the best pairings from the D we do have and I don't think matching any of Dahlin, Power or Byram together is a viable plan. @thewookie1 said Power and Dahlin were good together last year when paired. I don't think the analytics support that contention, but you are the analytics guru on the board, so please let us know. The pieces would fall together much better if that were true.

I didn’t mention specific pairings and Ruff did use them as his shutdown pair periodically, but I remember Lydman with Teppo and Tallinder with Soupy primarily. McKee played with Kalinin and Fitz subbed in where needed. @thewookie1 I don’t think the analytics support your contention.

I was going to start another thread on the defense but it basically has to do with structure. When you have an O first player like Power, Dahlin and Byram they tend to get caught up ice when they act in support of the offense in the O Zone. This isn’t a criticism, it’s a by product of their job. To make sure that the team doesn’t suffer to many odd man rushes the other way, teams tend to match such O blueliners with a more D aware player. The simplest example is the 05/06 Sabres that paired O first D, Teppo, Soupy and Kalinin with D first player McKee, Tallinder and Lydman. IMHO, putting any 2 of the Big 3 D together is a recipe for odd man rush disaster or forcing one of the players to become something he’s not. Ideally each one should anchor his own line, but we don’t have good enough D first players to pair with them, except Mule and he’s hurt all the time.

It would be extremely out of character for him and against his stated goal of not adding a long-term contract. It's why when I mentioned him earlier I kind of dismissed him as a trade target. That doesn't mean I'm against the acquisition, I just find it highly unlikely given KA's track record. You and I would look a Cirelli and say perfect, we have a long-term solution at 3C and someone who could play up if we have an injury. KA looks and thinks he's not one of my core players and therefore I'm not committing to him for 7 years. I do disagree that trading Mitts was out of character for KA. In fact it was perfectly in character. Keeping Mitts was not in his budget so he traded him for whatever he could get. It didn't matter that he didn't have an adequate plan B at 3C (also in character) and it didn't matter that the player acquired didn't bring a skill set we needed (also in character). It's just another example of KA not having a clue how to build a successful team. Another example of poor asset management. KA could sell the deal in the press as he acquired a much needed top 4 D. Unfortunately Power/Bryam or Dahlin/Bryam or Dahlin/Power aren't viable D pairings. Maybe Ruff could get it to work, but I'm not holding me breath. What makes it even worse is that Byram is going to need a new deal after next season. He basically traded Mitts for one season of an alleged top 4 D unless he gives Byram the long-term extension he couldn't afford to give Mitts. Honestly I have lost all faith that KA can pull this plane out of it's tail spin. I was bullish on the Clifton and Johnson signings. I hoped Clifton could play up and Johnson would bring some much needed leadership and maturity to the D group. I was wrong on both counts and so was Adams. I then looked at the cap situation Adams has put us in, his keeping Benson in the NHL last season, his awful pro level acquisitions, his long-term mismanagement of the goaltending, his lack of any defensive stalwarts on his defense, and his failure to properly support the team in season the last two years, and I have come to the sad conclusion that he is in so far over his head he doesn't even know where to begin to fix his roster. His keeping of terrible coaches like Ellis and Wilford are just further examples. I do hope that my assessment of Adams is wrong. I really like to know how anyone has any faith or hope left that Adams can fix this team.

We'll never know for sure, but I doubt Lindy would have brought back Ellis or Wilford if he had a choice. Wilford's D group was among the worst in the NHL last season defensively and Ellis was worse. Hard to imagine Lindy saying he'd want either guy. During his last stint as the Sabres coach, he had guys like Mike Ramsey and James Patrick coaching his defense. He also has had NHL forward vets like Travis Green, Sergei Brylin, Don Lever and Curt Fraser on his staffs. I doubt he believes Ellis or Wilford are in that class. I don't think he minds having Appert around. Chris Taylor was on his staff in NJ.

I was looking through the list of NHL UFAs and guess what, Tyson Jost is the 6th highest paid UFA center. Monahan signed with Montreal last season for the same $2 mill we paid Jost. G-d Adams sucks. I did find a player with one year left on his deal who could be a good fit and that's Mikeal Granlund if SJS is willing to part with him. He is 32 and has one year left at $5 mill and had 60 pts last year.