sabresparaavida

Something else to note on the playoff front: 100 points was good for the last playoff spot in the east. However, there were a lot of bad teams, and Sabres, NJ, Ottawa, and Columbus all improved to a degree (on paper). These improvements should make it harder on the existing playoff teams, and probably will push the playoff line down to 95-96 points.

Note the may have, I did not say got worse. It may have gotten better, but in 2018-2019, both Hutton and Ullmark were better than Anderson In 2021-2022. Sure, Comrie could break out and we Could end up in a much better place, but it’s also possible that he tanks.

Some differences between then and now (comparing to the 2018-19 season: Sabres have 4 players (Tage, Mitts, Cozens, Krebs) which would have been better options at 2C compared to back then. Going by TOI/g to determine the depth chart, every single forward position outside of the 1st line has gotten significantly better. Oloffson was 4th in TOI/g of our forwards in 2018-2019, and he has improved significantly since his rookie year. 5th was Erod, 6th was Sheary. Those players would be on our 4th line at best now. On Defense, arguably every player has improved. Dahlin>>>>Risto, Samuelson >Montour, lybushkin>Bogo, 19yo Power>? 18yo Dahlin. Goaltending may have gotten worse, but this is a much much deeper team, and the “young core” of then was pretty much just the first line and 2 guys on defense. Now, the “young core” (core likely is the wrong word) is the majority of the team.

Rags just signed Trochek, I don’t think they can afford Kadri, and already filled their 2C hole.

I have a Sabres group chat with a couple friends, and one said his brother saw Kane in a flight from Buffalo to Chicago about a week ago 🤷‍♂️

They made it.

The coaching staff likely knows a hell of a lot better than us, whether the improvement we saw was due to a change in position or just getting better at hockey.

Whelp, now we know that Portillo won’t sign, Levi definitely just scared him off. /s

I think the only way we add a forward is if it’s a JVR type deal, where we take on cap for assets.

While he did play a lot in his 8 games with the Sabres, I don’t know if he’s ready for 82 games of first pairing minutes. I think Samuelson-Dahlin is the more likely route, with Power-Joki? as the second pairing. And if Power plays at a high level, I think having Power and Dahlin on different pairs would give us one of them on the ice for 48 minutes which would help to tilt the ice our way.

If I’m giving Philly back their 2nd, I’d want philly’s first. I would happily accept JVR+Florida first though.

Getting Samuelson in the second is very good value. Anything outside the first is a crap shoot, and getting a top 4 D outside of the first makes it a win.

I like it, hope it doesn’t rule out going after another middle 6er though.

19-20 looks like a damn good year. 74 points in 55 games is the equivalent to 110 points over 82 games.

Lofberg gets the easy victory.

If he’s not too expensive, sure. He’d be a great partner for Power, but 1 year on his contract makes it so I don’t want to give up a whole lot.

I’m gonna go with an A, after having a few days to digest and think about it. A couple days ago, this might have been an A-. I loved the Savoie pick, he was the guy I wanted most at 9 (unless Jiriceck or Nemec somehow fell), and I was quite happy when he fell into our laps and KA snatched him up. Östlund I wasn’t as high on, but after reading up on him, I’m quite happy with the pick. Kulich was great value at 28. I wasn’t very happy with the Leinonen pick, but I’ve gotten higher on it as time has gone on. KA has added 2 goalie prospects to the Sabres, one was Levi before he dominated the NCAA last year, and the other Leinonen. If they truly had a first round grade on him, I will trust their judgement a lot more than mine. Neuchev and Lindgren were great value picks in the 3rd and 4th. I think we got 6 guys with legit NHL potential, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we had 4 or so future Sabres from this draft, which would make it a highly successful one.

If goalies take 6 years, then it’s more important that we draft them sooner rather than later. IF Levi works out as we hope, we won’t have much issues with our tenders but that’s no guarantee. But if he doesn’t, without other goalies in the system we would be in a world of hurt. You may have seen Warren in 3 years, but if we waited till next year to draft a goalie, we wouldn’t see them in 7 years, whereas if we draft a similar caliber defender next year, we only wait 4.

That was more of a joke than anything else 😂 Though to be honest, 1 more year of futility would be worth it IF we got Bedard. There’s no guarantee to win the lottery though, so it’s not something I’d want to go through.

He could very easily be put on LTIR. Putting a player on LTIR DOES NOT affect the cap space of the team or the cap hit of a contract. It instead creates cap relief, where a team can go over the cap. Having Bishop on LTIR would result in no change to the total cap hit of the team, it would just create cap relief space in the event that the team went over the cap. Here’s a link explaining how LTIR works https://puckpedia.com/salary-cap/LTIR

Sounds a lot like Asplund. With our centers all being young, and with JJP and Quinn looking to make the leap to the NHL, another defensively sound forward that can chip in offensively would help balance our lineup a good deal.

So what your saying is in this scenario, unless Chicago is able to get what they think Kane is worth they won’t trade him? I don’t think that makes a whole lotta sense. IMO they are tanking, and are currently trying to accumulate young assets. If they don’t trade Kane they get nothing for him. I would think they will take what they can get for Kane, similar to how we took what we could for Hall. It wouldn’t surprise me if it took until the trade deadline for him to be traded though.

I may be wrong, but I believe he could still be LTIRed if we were not at the cap- I think we would need to be at the cap to get the cap relief associated with him being on LTIR.

It’s not Hockey, but supposedly Terry really wanted Pat Mahomes. Im happy with Allen, but there’s no denying Mahomes ended up being a good thing.

Dach wasn’t playing as his center, correct? And if he was playing center between Debrincat and Kane, his production was horrible considering he would have been between 2 ppg players.