PerreaultForever

There were a lot of picks, so there are a lot of prospects, but so far how good they are remains to be determined. imo there is only one way to evaluate success in drafting and that is to wait 3-4 years and then go back and look at the whole draft. Is your guy better than the next 10-20 picks made? If he is, they got it right, if he isn't they blew it. It's all relative to the entire draft pool. Peterka looks like a win. Quinn remains to be seen but at the moment we might have blown that one. Rossi, Perfetti, Mercer, Schneider, maybe Quinn comes back from injury and is better than all of them but right now no. In the case of Rosen, Wyatt Johnson would have been a win. Time will tell if Rosen is a complete fail or not. I'm not saying you have to get every single thing right, but in overall terms you have to do better than the opposition and better than the average odds if you want to claim your analytics get the job done. Personally I still think you need the Rick Dudley type to point to guys and say "this guy's got it, that guy doesn't" and then you can run the analytics and if it meshes up that's your guy for sure. As far as I know, there is no analytic for character/attitude.

Unless the Rags show up hung over and half asleep (from celebrating all weekend after taking over first place from the Bruins) Sabres have virtually no chance. None.

The Sabres are supposed to be relying heavily on analytics. How's that working out? I have no issue with the use of advanced analytics. You use every piece of information you have and you look at everything available. This is just common sense. I only have an issue with using them in isolation from the eye test, experience, and character. If I'm the coach following that New Jersey debacle, I'm not looking over the advanced stats today, I've got the entire team doing wind sprints until some of them start to puke. Close the country club doors until these guys learn a proper work ethic. After that, we can start digging deeper into the nuances of the analytics.

A good part of this I wouldn't argue with but your comment about an "elite defender" isn't really true. It's a team game and elite players can only do so much on their own. If they are surrounded by stiffs their stats will still suck. What also has to be considered is who is Granato putting out there against who? I don't have those stats but is EJ being put out in more situations where Granato feels he needs a better defender? Is he up against the top forwards? I don't think anybody would argue that EJ is no longer a top D man but he wasn't brought in to be a top D man. He was brought in to be a veteran mentor and bottom pairing guy, an upgrade on Stillman/Bryson. No more, no less. Bottom line, EJ is not the reason this team is losing or why they looked so pathetic against New Jersey. Not by a longshot.

Looking at so called advanced stats without considering what's actually going on in the game is stupid stuff that should be reserved for bored children and shut ins who spend too much of their lives on computers and nobody else. Simple example. Face off in your own end. Team puts player on ice because they consider him a better defender. Team loses face off. Opposition controls and moves puck around perimeter and after some time bangs in a rebound. Said player now has bad metrics. On ice for goal against. Team did not possess puck while he was on. Danger chance not prevented. Blah blah blah. It's the team's fault, but when computer nerd looks at stats he or she goes oh man, what lousy advanced stats. This guy sucks. and all you had to do was win said face off and all those metrics change. (Now the computer nerds can proceed to tell me how I don't understand advanced metrics because I didn't give enough long winded explanations and illustrations and they will think they are smart because I'm lazy and annoyed and just pissed off with this stupid f'n hockey team. Have at it. idc)

I have had the thought for some time that the philosophy has been "I have all this draft capital so we will increase our odds and if we draft 3-4 of these guys we are almost guaranteed one home run". In any event there are too many the same and even if a few of these guys turn out okay the same holes will still be there on the roster.

Well at least he's not going on IR.

They have not had a decent goalie since Ullmark left and they have botched or passed on any opportunity to solve that. I mean come on, the team was celebrating Craig Anderson as if it was some sort of big deal. I got nothing against him and he even seems like a nice guy, but he was a well past his prime has been whose best days were over a decade earlier. He'd been bounced around and waived by others if I remember correctly. Wasn't he 4th string in Washington? Anyway, they signed him and then re-signed him as if it was an accomplishment. It's just absurd how they've mishandled the singularly most important position on the roster.

Montour is a perfect case in point. You see Montour's a wanderer. But he is aggressive and attacks the goal. Adds a lot to their offense. The difference though is they have a system and a forward covers for him when he takes off. Our forwards, very often, don't do squat.

Oh okay, but how so? My understanding is players are making more take home money there than in a lot of other states and definitely more than in Canada (which is where people were suggesting he'd end up after this year).

I'm confused. You say it's a debunked myth and then you say he gets away with a lot which argues against the debunking. I just know what I saw and the Rags were favoured in that game. I'm not blaming them for the loss, Rags were better than the Bruins by far, but the refs called it pretty one sided all the same and that Trouba play wasn't even a minor.

Our D sucks, no question. As does the goaltending on many occasions. For years now people have argued about it, and which D is the worst and who has to go and some of them do go (and often play just fine on other teams) but just once, I'd like to see the discussion of what the forwards do NOT do which is the biggest factor in all of this. Every single D man who comes here plays worse than they did on their previous team. Advance stat that.

Why would he leave Florida? He's doing well there and no tax. He's not going anywhere. Didn't even get a penalty and then the Bruins got a high stick call minutes later for next to nothing. Refs love the Rags. League loves the Rags. It's not surprising at all.

ex-Sabres can't fight any better than Sabres. https://www.hockeyfights.com/fights/n268132 Probably shouldn't have cut the hair.

answer - cause he's not even close to being ready. As we saw.

I'm not sure I care. I'm definitely done doing this. I mean what difference does it make. 8 first rounders in the line up from the last few years, you think 9 will make a difference? I don't give a flying F who they draft next year.

So I guess Kulich and Rosen learned what it means to be a Buffalo Sabre. That was pathetic. Just truly pathetic. The only thing ALMOST as sad was New Jersey's response to the Clifton hit that put Hischer out. Smith really showed him with that 2 minute wrestling minor. You know I watched Florida Boston a few days back and Florida hammered MacAvoy constantly and almost hurt him bad for the suspension hit and that guy wasn't even important and didn't miss any games. So good luck to you New Jersey, enjoy this one cause it ain't going to last and you have no chance come playoff time. Since I watch the Bruins too (as you know) I was also amused looking at little Rosen wearing 63. I'm going to think of him as bizarro world Marchand. The exact opposite (and completely useless). Sabres are the laziest hockey team in the NHL They have absolutely no concept of how to play defense at all. Games like this make me hate this team. Such a waste of time watching them. Damn you Perreault, Martin, Gare, Dudley, Ramsey (etc). If it hadn't have been for you guys I could be free of this shite.

Similar styles. No reason not to win if we come at them with speed and some physicality.

Bruins are exposed. Tenacious speed and their D falls apart. They are starting to look like the old and slow team many expected before the season started. I don't see them going far in the playoffs and if they continue to play like they did this weekend they might not even make the playoffs despite the big early cushion they've built.

They lost to Columbus today. Clearly not playing at the level they did last year.

I'm going to suggest a possibility based on an examination of Linus Ullmark. He was inconsistent and average when he was here. When he first went to Boston he was not good and he let in several bad goals. As communication improved, he got used to his D and he learned he could trust and rely on them he got better, played bigger, gained more and more confidence and won a Vezina. In the playoffs, the Boston D cracked under the Florida pressure. He lost his edge, overplayed the puck again and was not the same goalie. See where I'm going? The relationship between the goalie and their D is key and a team with solid structure and good defense leads to even better goaltending. Our goalies do not have that and feel they have to do too much. For example, if UPL or Levi leave a rebound and it gets banged in by some guy moving past our D, he starts to think I can't leave that rebound and he tries too hard to eat the puck and that might not be the best way to make the save. Ullmark on the other hand just gets some part of himself in the puck's way and he feels confident Carlo or MacAvoy or whoever will take that rebound away. I'm being a little reductionist to illustrate the point but I think that's the general crux of it in terms of what you're asking. Improve our team D and the goaltending will magically improve drastically.

He may be hands off but his choices for management show a clear desire for a particular direction and his decision(s) not to leave the team hierarchy in the charge/care of an experienced hockey person who demands standards and accountability determine a lot about this franchise and it's failure. But F Eichel.

But you could be bothered to tell me that. lol. Troll on.

Because they weren't "bad" signings. They plugged holes and filled needs with the best available options. They now have a decent mix of vets and youngsters with some degree of leadership. DeBrincat a huge part of that of course. Watching him I see some similarities to what Benson might be. Time will tell.

That was a pretty good comeback and probably one of the better games of the year as a whole. Felt more like real hockey. Both Pitt goals the result of sloppy D turnovers that simply shouldn't happen (first Samuelsson then Dahlin) but otherwise a decent team game. Clifton with a heck of a play likely preventing a scoring chance. All the haters need to watch that one on a loop. Balanced effort from the whole team really. Don't think either team looks like a playoff team but it's a start.