sabresparaavida

out of curiosity, what holes would you like filled, and who are the players you’d like to explore trading for?

I don’t think Adams is completely set against trading his prospects, it just has to do more with timing. The Sabres have a good shot at the playoffs next season, and I believe Kevyn Adams expects this team to make it. I also believe, as I’m sure Kevyn Adams does, that this team has a very slim chance at the cup, and the chances would still be very slim this year almost regardless who this team brings in. The team has nearly no playoff experience. We also haven’t seen consistent good defensive play, which spells for big trouble come playoff time. If we had the splashiest offseason, it might move us from a 2%chance to a 3% chance of winning the cup. Unless there are good, cost controlled assets with some term available, sending out prospects right now doesn’t make a ton of sense. This could change if we breakout like New Jersey did last year, and maybe it makes sense for some moves mid-season, but right now, the long term plan still looks like the better priority.

I think this year the Atlantic will be a sort of evening out. Every team in the bottom half should be better to some degree, mostly from development and in some cases the offseason adds. The top half (aside from Florida, who squeaked into the playoffs last year) got worse between age and departures. The Bruins forwards as a whole got older and slower, and their center spine is now the worst in the division, but they still have a high end defense and good goalies. They likely end up somewhere 3-5 in the division The lighting got older and were really wearing down last year. They didn’t really add much this offseason and are trending downwards, they could still snag a playoff spot, or they might end up 9th or 10th in the conference. The leafs got slightly worse than where they were at the end of the year last year IMO, but still should have a strong regular season team. Their defense got slightly worse, and their backup goaltending situation is questionable at best. We’ll see what moves go down to get them cap compliant, but I don’t expect those to have a big impact. They are likely to be the best regular season team, but should have less easy games (though also less games against better teams). Florida had some pretty big improvements this offseason (at least for their regular season ability). I think their defense got significantly better, and they are probably the most likely to contend with the leafs for the top of the division. The Sabres should be better from development and improved defense depth. The goaltending is questionable, and the forward depth is concerning. They likely contend with the Lightning, red wings and Bruins for 3-6. The redwings should be somewhat better. They have some young pieces that should develop (I expect Seider to bounce back), and Debrincat is a pretty big add for a team that wasn’t far behind the Sabres. The Senators likely improve with a healthy Josh Norris and some development, but they are still a ways away from making it to the playoffs in this division. The Canadiens should be better, again from development, but nowhere near a wildcard spot.

While their forward group is nowhere near frightening anymore, their defense and goaltending are still high end, and they still have good coaching/a strong defensive system. I’d expect a team somewhere similar to the Kraken last season.

Might have missed it, but Aho signed an 8 year $78 million contract extension with the canes today.

One more thing to note: last year, of the Sabres 13 forwards that played the most games, only Peterka, Jost, and Girgensons had less TOI/G. (Krebs and Quinn were tied) In terms of playing time, Quinn was around our 9th forward in a given game. It’s not completely unrealistic that one of these players gets similar minutes, even if they will not used be the same situationally (less Ozone starts, no PP time, maybe more PK time)

While none of those players are remotely likely to take Quinn’s spot in the lineup, they will be the ones competing for his roster spot. It’ll most likely be everybody 5/6 forward and below shifting up a spot, with these players competing for the 12th or 13th forward spot.

I would think long and hard about it and likely say no, but that has more to do with the Sabres situation than his value as a player. For the same reason I have not been a proponent of adding Pesce, I don’t think we can afford to add a 6M+ defenseman for more than 2 years. Doing so puts us in a space where we will not be able to afford Levi (if he becomes a legit starter, if not, the goalie we bring in to be one). And we also have Dahlin and Power for LHD that will eat up a lot of O zone time which would make Dunn less effective. I think right now Dahlin is better, but Dunn is currently better than Power, though I expect that to change within a few years. Dunn was 10th among defenseman in points, and has had great analytics for nearly his whole career. He led the Kraken in ice time and still had Corsi and Fenwicks over 54%. (Helped some by the Ozone starts). He is now the 25th highest paid defenseman, which seems quite reasonable.

At the time Lindholm signed, his career high was 34 points. Weegar’s best was 44 points. Obviously there is more to value than just point production, but with the cap going up, I think that deal is pretty damn fair.

Dunn led his team in ice time, was a team leading +28, and was second on his team in both total points and even strength points with 64(49). That is solid top pairing production, and seems like a reasonable deal at 7.35 per.

Would you trade JJP or Quinn for 1 meh asset? Although he hasn’t been living up to the 1OA draft expectations, Lafreniere is the same age as Quinn and JJP and had more points than either last year with 16 goals, 39 points. People seem to be between 2 extremes in this thread, where he’s worth 2 firsts or basically nothing. I think it’s somewhere between, probably a first and a small add. (think Kirby Dach trade)

One large part of the big picture that you’re missing is the rest of Chicago’s pool. Without Bedrard, I think Chicago would still have a better than average prospect pool (maybe top10?). They have Reichel, who posted 15 points in 23 NHL games last year, Korchinski (7OA last year), Frank Nazar (13th last year) Sam Rinzel (25th last year), Oliver Moore (19th this year and fastest in the draft), and 3 second rounders this year. There is a lot of talent in the pool, their defensive pool is stronger than ours, and they have a solid goalie prospect in Drew Commesso.

I have very low confidence that Kisakov will ever get NHL time, at least as a Sabre. I view him as below Benson, Savoie, Kulich, Rosen, Östlund, Neuchev, Poltapov, and Wahlberg. I would happily give up Kisakov for Lafreniere who is still only 21 and put up 16 goals and 39 points last year. With Quinn down, I would be open to a move, but not more than a second+one of Neuchev/Poltapov/Kisakov.

No. Would cost too much, and has one year left, and then would cost too much.

Bryson: 59 games Stillman: 18 games Clague: 33 games Fitzgerald: 23 games Pilut: 17 games Davies: 1 game All of the above are still in the system (save Fitzgerald). When this many games are played by bad defenders, of course the defense and the PK won’t be good, which will make the goaltending worse. Stillman is probably the best of the bunch, and is now our 8D. Bryson was 6D most of the season and is now our 9/10. We should see significant improvement in each of your problem areas this coming season.

Another reason why their contracts were not comparable: Debrincat had a 9 Million qualifying offer. That gave him a lot more leverage than Tage had at the time time of his signing.

While it is certainly possible that Kevyn Adams is not done, it seems like the majority of the roster is set. I’m curious to hear what people think the Sabres lineup to start the season this year, based on who we have now. There’s been some discussion in other threads, and I thought it deserved its own. Before the Quinn injury, I was thinking our top 6 would look like it did much of the year last year, with Mitts being 3C filling in for injury wherever needed in the top 6. The bottom 6 filled out with some combination of Girgs/Okposo/Krebs/Greenway/Jost, with Oloffson riding the pine or traded off. Now I think it’s a little more complicated with the Quinn injury, and I can see 3 potential routes they could choose to go with the forward group. The first would be to just try and keep nearly the same lineup, just bumping up a winger to replace Quinn, and inserting one of Oloffson/Rousek/surprise rookie into the lineup. Something like: Skinner-TNT-Tuch JJP-Cozens-Greenway/Oloffson Greenway/Oloffson/Rousek-Mitts-Jost Girgs-Krebs-Okposo Unless JJP takes a big step (which he very well could), this puts a ton of pressure on Cozens however, so it would make some sense to try to strengthen the second line some by moving Mitts up, and shifting around the bottom 6 a bit. Skinner-TNT-Tuch Mitts-Cozens-JJP Greenway-Krebs-Rousek/rookie/Oloffson Girgs-Jost-Okposo The third idea for the forward group, which I’m really curious to see tried with a healthy Tage Thompson, is trying to build 2 legitamite first lines. At the end of last season, Mitts filled in for Tage between Tuch and Skinner. The line did not miss a beat and Mitts was a ppg player from the all star break on. If we kept Mitts with Tuch and Skinner we might be able to have a first line while still having 2 PPG players in Cozens and Tage to put with a promising young player, JJP, who won best forward in the recent world championships (his production there was nearly identical to Cozens before he broke out last year). The top 6 would get pretty even playing time, with either line getting more depending on the night. Something like: Skinner-Mitts-Tuch JJP-Cozens-Thompson Greenway-Krebs-Rousek Girgs-Jost-Okposo I definitely would like to see another forward add though, likely on a 1 year, someone who can fit comfortably in the bottom six, as I’m not sure any of Kulich/Savoie/Benson/Rosen are ready for NHL action, and we are a little shallow on depth. While i’m not sure about which way the forward group will go, I think the D group is even more interesting. I think Granato will try to get out 6 best D on the ice most nights, though we may see Erik Johnson be sat some nights to keep him fresh. The issue lies that our top 3 D are all left handed and our 4-7 D are all right handed. Granato doesn’t seem to care too much about handedness, so we could end up keeping Samuelson-Dahlin together. In this case, the defense would probably look something like: samuelson-Dahlin Power-Clifton Jokiharju-Johnson stillman-Lybushkin While this could work, I do think we will run into some issues on the third pair fairly often as I think whoever plays on their off hand will likely struggle. We could see Stillman get onto the third pair, but I’m not really a fan of that. I think because of this problem, we may see an approach that tries to balance out the defense for most of the game, and then concentrate the skill when needed (3rd period, end of periods, etc). This could look like Dahlin-Clifton Power-Johnson Samuelson-Jokiharju and then, whenever the bench needs to be shortened, dropping to: Samuelson-Dahlin Power-Clifton The goal would be for Dahlin to get 23+ mins a night, Power and Samuelson 21+, Clifton 20+, and Erik Johnson for 18 or less. This could work fairly well, but it may be tough to keep chemistry switching up the pairs like that. For goalie, Levi looks like the starter, with UPL and Comrie competing for backup. I expect we will keep only 2 goalies, as I think we will carry 8D and 13F. So what do y’all think the lines and pairs will look like?

To be fair, he does have 2 40 goal seasons under his belt, and had 32 during the covid season (which paces for 50). Yes Tage Thompson looks to be a better deal, but that had more to do with timing which Detroit couldn’t really have done much about. Tage Thompson was signed after a 68 point season, his first anywhere near there. Debrincat has a proven track record of being that productive or even more so, so of course he gets some more money. If anything, his contract should be compared more to Skinners, as they are more comparable signings at the times of their deals.

Well Dahlin gets about a 4 million raise. power gets about a 7 million dollar raise. I’d guess mitts somewhere around 5 million, but if he repeats the end of last season, it could be more. Krebs may get a modest 2.5 if he is similarly productive next season. Then Pesce will take around 7 million most likely, maybe a little more or a little less. Hellebuyck reportedly wants 9.5 million. If we do all those deals, that brings us to 83 million dollars with 16 players on the roster. Some of the empty spots will be filled by players with ELCs and be cheaper, but even filling out the roster with ELCs would put us over the cap in the 2024-2025 season. Maybe we make do with 21 players on the roster, 5 being rookies/players for less than 1 mil. After that, we’d be relying on the salary cap to raise enough to resign Quinn, JJP and Levi the following season. This doesn’t really seem like it will work. We might be able to handle trading for one big player and signing for term, but we can’t really do 2.

This is a wild overstatement. Gibson’s best season in the past 4 years was .904, which is pretty damn close to .899. Certainly not “by far” his worst, when the 3 seasons prior he had been really close.

While that obviously would be pretty cool, I think there’s more to it than that. With the additions of Pesce and Helle, that does make us a solid team, and potentially one that could compete for the division. However, Pesce and Hellebuyck are on 1 year contracts, and there are other things that we might be discussing in a year, such as: Did we waste significant assets for a one year shot at the cup when we weren’t ready yet? Or in the case we do resign them: How do we afford to pay Quinn/JJP next year? Adding Pesce and Helle would make us better next year, but even with them, we are not a top cup contender. Sure, it’s possible to win, but highly unlikely. The last time a team went from missing the playoffs to winning the cup in 1 year was 1994. Spending significant assets on them is not a smart decision when they will be gone after a year when they don’t put us over the top, or will cost too much against the cap and hurt the team in the future.

How many prospects with real NHL aspirations go to the ECHL though? Other than goalies in emergency situations, how many players in the NHL can you name that player in the ECHL?

I’ve also been thinking we see something along these lines, and I think it would work fairly well. Based on how Granato adjusted in crunch time later in the season, and how our 1-3 D are LHD and our 4-7 D are all RHD, it makes sense that we try to balance out the defense so that all pairs are pretty solid for most of the game, and then bring out our best possible 2 pairs when it matters most. Doubt we run 7D though.

This might be reading into a comment too much, but I’d think he wouldn’t have said adding depth if they were still trying to add a top four defenseman.

Gibson is the 4th most expensive goalie in the league (5th after Sorokin’s new contract kicks in). He hasn’t had an above average season in 4 years. He’s had a negative goals saved above average expected for 4 years. For comparison, Carter Hutton had a better save percentage in his first year with the Sabres, than Gibson has had in the last 4 years. I have no interest in Gibson, below average Goalie play, even if it might be better on a better team, is not close to worth a top 5 goalie contract for FOUR more years. I’m 2 years do you want to not be able to sign one of JJP/Quinn because your backup goalie is making way too much?