sabresparaavida

More size for the Sabres.

6'1" G Jakob Fowler taken in the third, thats a little surprising.

Whelp, there goes Sawchyn, I was hoping he somehow made it to our third.

Strbak

Plenty of good D options here

If he continues to fall, Andrew Christall would be a steal at 39, even if the forward cupboards are pretty damn full.

Andrew Christall still on the board, a steal here. Even though we probably should stay where we are and pick the best D available, wouldn’t mind a trade up to snag him.

Bummer, I was hoping he’d make it to the second.

Hopefully

Clinching in March would be an incredible season, the Bruins clinched on March 11th which was a record for the quickest clinch in an 82 game season (64 games).

Unfortunately, this trade helps the bruins more than it hurts them.

Im thinking its going to be one of Quinn/ JJP. They both are going to be more settled into the league next year with more strength built up. Cozens may take another step this year, and each of them being better is going to reflect in each other's stats sheets. JJP just won the best forward at the world championships and put up a stat line nearly identical to Cozens from the year before. Quinn's development path so far also indicates he has the potential to explode in his second year. If all goes right, they could produce like an average first line.

In my opinion, to make this a good or great offseason, KA still needs to upgrade the Defense. Adding one 4/5 D would make this a good offseason (Graves, Mayfield, Soucy, trade candidates, etc). Adding 2 would make it a great offseason and fix the team's biggest current weakness. Something like Samuelsson-Dahlin Power-Graves Soucy-Jokiharju Stillman-Boosh Would give us a great defense, and would leave goaltending as the only area of concern (a concern I hope is soon lifted by Levi).

The risk is the contract he would likely require post bridge. While Power could be signed now for 7-8 mil on a long term deal, if we wait 3 years on a bridge, that could jump to 11 if he develops how we want him to. That money could cost us an important player during those 9 years.

Unless he was angling our way.

Obviously who the team is meeting with doesn’t mean everything, but that makes me think they are going BPA at 13, then leaning somewhat to defense for rounds 2/3.

He is the UFA that I’d love to see the Sabres go for. He’s been playing ~19-21 minutes a game over the past 4 seasons, a reasonable amount of playing time for a 4D. He blocks shots, he hits, and the last four seasons has put up a respectable 26, 15, 28, and 26 points. His Corsi for numbers are not great, 44%, 49%, 47%, 47%, but it is clear that the Avalanche and Devils both viewed him as a mainly defensive player, as his defensive zone starts made up 58-65% of his starts over the past four years. This also likely explains to some extent the lower corsi numbers.

Just want to expand on the car analogy real quick. If players are cars that you can buy and sell, goalies would be more like the used car market. And for these used car sales, you aren’t allowed to test drive the car, nor look under the hood before you buy. You could buy an expensive classic car like Hellebuyck, but you could break down driving it home, it could have rust in the engine block, or it might drive just fine. With Goalies, there is no knowing that the car will be good or great. Just look at the goalies that changed teams last year. Samsonov and Georgiev were both bad in 21/22, but were top 10 in save percentage last year. Husso, Campbell, Comrie all played horrible after putting up good numbers. Some, like Hill and Vanaceck, performed similarly to before switching teams. And if you believe that these goalies were unproven, and that because Helle has been more consistent than them he will continue to be, you may be mistaken. The best comp for Hellebuyck, assuming he switched teams, of the past few years would probably be Phillip Grubauer. It’s not an exact fit, as Helle played more games each season. However, before going to the Kraken, Grubauer’s worst season save percentage was .916, which happens to be Hellebuyck’s career average. Grubauer was 30 when he switched to the Kraken, as Helle is 30 now. Since switching to the Kraken, Grubauer has not beaten .890. While we could get Hellebuyck, he could be elite, average, below average, or downright awful. There is no guarantee that he will be good or great, but Winnipeg will want to be paid as such, and he will want to be paid for his next contract based on his success with Winnipeg. In my mind, it is unlikely that he will be worth the combination of assets and cap that he will require.

I would not make this trade. Levi has shown a lot of potential, and by all accounts is extremely mentally tough. He’s young enough that he can develop in the Sabres system and learn how to play in the NHL behind this Sabres team. He has a couple cheap years left, and after those years, his next contract will likely be cheaper than Helle. (Even if Levi plays at an elite level, it would be for 2 years instead of the 8 years of solid to elite play)The Sabres will be able to build around Levi better. Hellebuyck is also 30 and bears a lot of risk, as who knows how much longer he will be productive. Maybe he’ll play another 5 or 7 years at a good level, maybe it’s 2. All of those factors might be acceptable if we were guaranteed top 10 goalie play for 3 or so years, but goalies that switch teams are far from consistent with their play. We could trade for Hellebuyck and very well end up with an expensive below average goalie, and that is not a risk I want to take.

Responding to the bolded, speaking from an outside perspective, I’d disagree. And even if that’s the case, the Sabres and Raptors are/were in wildly different situations. Before Kawhi came, the Raptors had made 5 straight playoffs, winning at least 1 round in each of the last 3. If they won 2 series and lost to Philly in the conference finals, the addition of Kawhi would be viewed as a disappointment. And if we’re discussing the benefit of a long playoff run, we should have seen an improved Toronto team after Kawhi relative to before Kawhi, which is not the case, they won 1 series the next season, and didn’t qualify the year after.

Is Robert Thomas “franchise altering”? No, but he has been roughly a ppg player the past 2 seasons. He’s a low end 1C/high end 2C which is more valuable than Jokiharju. Also, I’d assume most on this board know who he played for, as he was who most were hoping we got when they announced ROR was traded. I’m not saying we should trade Jokiharju, but your data for 20 OA is more like a 1 in 3 get a better player than Jokiharju in 3/4 years, as the other few picks haven’t had enough time to determine what they’ll be. With your house analogy, if Jokiharju is worth 800k, it’d be more like 1/1000 chance you get 2.5 million, 3% you get 1.5-2 million, 20% you get 1 million, 10%you get between 500k-900k, 15% you get between 0-500k and ~50% you get nothing.

There is a reason Goalies do not get that big of a return. Goalies are fickle, each year can bring about large differences in performance, especially when switching systems. It is unlikely that Helle would perform similarly in Buffalo than he did in Winnipeg. While we may still get an above average goalie, or possibly still elite, we also could get below average. Some goalie comparisons of goalies that switched teams last year: 2021-2022. 2022-2023 kuemper 5th in sv%, .920. 22nd in sv%, .909 Husso 7th, .919. 44th, .896 Georgiev 48th .897. 8th .919 Samsonov 50th .896. 7th .919 Campbell 18th .914. 87th .888 While there are some goalies that did not change as much, they tended to be middling goalies (Vanaceck, Hill). Goalies have too much uncertainty, that it is not worth sending a big package for one, we do not know how Helle would perform in the Buffalo system. If you can get him for a 2nd+3rd or something like that, sure, but I wouldn’t pay much more for a goalie.

I have a possible 309 points but am also mathematically eliminated at this point. The bracket in first has the same winners as me, with only one game wrong so far, I can’t catch up to them. Edit: I called 3 series perfectly (Knights, Devils, Stars), but I picked Boston, Colorado, and Lightning. I have Edmonton over Carolina in the finals.

He won his first game, he earned another. None of his games did he play himself out of the started spot.

That 10 million will be going down after this season, I’m not sure by how much though. According to capfriendly, the Bruins have ~30k of cap space left, with up to 4.7 million to pay for eligible bonuses. Any bonus overages count against next year’s cap space. I know Bergeron had 2.5 mil in bonuses based on games played, and I think Krecji had something similar. Regardless that number is more like 6-7.5