PerreaultForever

Disco Dan doing a great job with the Firebirds. He's a good coach.

Eichel praised for his great defense. Will the nightmare never end............ https://www.nhl.com/news/jack-eichel-has-been-complete-package-for-vegas-golden-knights/c-344729990?tid=344544256 (in fairness, it's what Cassidy does. Hall got similar praise in Boston under Cassidy when he arrived)

Stats (not including this Vegas run cause that's the point) look relatively even. Comrie is worse for Buffalo than Winnipeg because our D isn't good yet. https://www.nhl.com/player/adin-hill-8478499 https://www.nhl.com/player/eric-comrie-8477480

Do you honestly think the league has an anti Buffalo bias? That's some massively over inflated sense of importance for the franchise. I personally don't think the league cares much about Buffalo one way or the other.

Defense CAN be taught, but it also HAS to be taught. Offense is their natural way of approaching the game. Being the star, making the big rushes and moves. They've been doing that for a dozen years already (give or take). Learning to do what HAS to be done rather than what you WANT to do is much harder if you don't start early. Girgs had to learn to play D when he found out he couldn't score those goals at that level. That's what role players do. I think Krebs is in the same boat.

No. First, the only thing I prefer is winning, and defense wins. Second, yes, you can use age as an excuse, but it doesn't change the fact that they could not handle defensive shut down hockey. Lastly, Sabres struggle against that as well. Is there a correlation? A pattern? Is it in the team philosophy? Well, where there's smoke there's fire. It's not that difficult to see what's coming. Seen it all before.

So you're not watching the playoffs then? You can't quote regular season stats as any sort of evidence for what's happening in the playoffs. They went over it on HNIC a couple times about how Maurice has had them switch styles and it only came together over the last 1/4 of the year. Vegas switched as well, but it took Cassidy longer.

Ya, he's playing pretty good for having such a chronic injury isn't he? Ah well, Tampa did it too. It's the NHL way until they change the rules. Gudas has the best playoff beard though, Eichel might have the worst. So there's that. 🙂

That's kind of my point though. What we are looking at here is how Hershey plays a dull defensive system that basically shut down all our shiny offensive prospects. This is the problem imo. We aren't taking our shiny offensive kids and instilling defense into them as a part of their development plan. We've stressed offense first on both teams and that's what they revert to as it's what they know and what they prefer. It's hardly surprising to me that you saw that regression, as it's their natural preferred style of play. I have always felt, and still feel, that we are doing it backwards. With our approach, if we are lucky and keep hitting on picks, we will become Toronto, but we won't win in the playoffs like Florida or Vegas. It will be a new frustration. Better than missing the playoffs, but still frustrating.

Against popular views by some I still think he's a good coach. Can he coach today's pampered star players? idk, but if he'd learned to adapt like Tortorella seems to have (a little) he could be very successful. Mind you, it's a crap team so it won't be easy.

No, to the bold. If you look over the whole season, the teams that play better D are the teams that gave us the most trouble. Regardless of how good they were. Otherwise I agree, but would also add bad D makes goalies look bad and then people say "our goaltending sucks" and good team D makes average goalies look good. For example Hill, playing for Vegas right now. He's no better than Comrie as a goalie, but you wouldn't know it behind that team's defensive system. Put Hill on Buffalo and he'd look like a sieve.

We have the wrong Stillman

So brighter than ours? Look, I know defensive shut down hockey can be less exciting than fast open offensive hockey (both terms used loosely for the sake of discussion but you know what I mean) but it wins. Reading about Savoie being invisible is part of that. He's never faced D at a higher level and it'll be even harder in the NHL with D oriented teams. Part of the learning curve is learning how to fight through that and adapt your game to face it. It's also about learning to play it, although I'm not sure the Sabres think you need to at this point. Anyway, it's how Vegas got to the final. It's how Dallas got as far as they did and it's partly how Florida got there as well. More often than not, defense still wins championships. Jersey raised the cup in the 90s after all. We never have. Remember this year how a total garbage team like Philly shut our high powered offense down and then realize we have a dimension of our game missing.

Yup, until we are winners we are losers. The air will only be cleansed of the stink when we make the playoffs and even then we have to keep rising. Like many people here, I was not anti-tank, but I was against Murray trading away all those picks and making the (in his mind) quick fixes he made after gutting the thing. Total disaster.

I think it's probably Spezza. He resigned right after Dubas was out. He's obviously loyal to Dubas and I suspect Dubas will want "his people" under him. If Pittsburgh does hire JBot, it probably means Dubas has not got as much free reign and as long a leash as it appears. JBot, or any other old regime guy would be a spy or fly in the ointment ready to take over as an interim should Dubas get booted down the road. I was listening to Kypreos talking to MacLean on his podcast today and their view was that anything over 34 million for your top 4 puts you in a tough spot for building a team around them. If that's a valid number, it's easy to see why Toronto has a problem that can't be fixed without trading one of their big 4 away. Pittsburgh has 20 million in cap space but only 15 players signed. Sabres top line costs them 21 million and then Cozens adds another 7. Dahlin adds a wrinkle soon but at the moment, the top end is very affordable by NHL standards.