PerreaultForever

lol, Even in a full team scrum good old Rob Ray never could leave his jersey on could he? Say what you want about the neanderthal era, but that team stood up as a team.

All good. Sometimes my stream of consciousness babble isn't clear and can be misread. I get that.

This is a very interesting one for me. Calgary plays solid D, pretty much as close to old school hockey as you get these days and is exactly the kind of hockey I don't think we are built to play against. It feeds perfectly into the ever ongoing size and toughness and grit debates that go on forever. If we can hold up well against them I might have to accept I have outdated ideas, but I don't think we will.

To be clear, I'm in no hurry to trade him away. I think the deconstructing already done is enough. If I was KA I'd see what we could get for him and if there was a big offer out there I'd seriously consider it but I wouldn't ditch him. I'd much rather build a team where we can reduce his role. I think that'd be the best option. Drop that idea of him as the dominant D man, the Hedman or Lidstrom or whoever and say this is our offensive guy we use on the PP and play more when we're behind and need to gamble, and we keep him off the ice more in the 3rd when we're protecting the lead. But for that we need to add that complete player or some additional solid D men. Hopefully Power and Samuelson help get us there (among others). Would I prefer he was a complete player? Sure. But I don't see that happening right now unless he makes big changes.

Fast starts are due to youthful exuberance and doing what the coach tells them to do when the game starts. Then they get caught up in the game and it fades. I really don't find this overly surprising or unique. I mean what's the alternate hypothesis, that these young guys are bad athletes and can't keep it up? They're unfit? I don't think so. Not sure why you're upset over the other comment. Guess you read it as condescension? Wasn't. Just saying that I've seen this sort of thing many times before. Haven't you? So thank you very much for your kind words and judgements. Have a nice day.

I'm hopeful. I really think Cozens is different from what else we've had here over the last decade. he doesn't play the same (and it's a different game now) but I see a lot of Mike Peca elements in him. A true leader.

Well, I don't think it's all that complicated. At this time of the year most teams play harder/better at home. Florida 8-0 at home, both losses on the road. Toronto 8-2 at home, 3-3 on the road. Boston 6-1 at home 2-4 on the road and so on. Calgary had a great road trip but not many exceptions to that including us. It shouldn't be this way maybe but it's a long season and teams simply don't go as hard on every game and home games tend to bring out the best efforts. Second half of the season this will change and the truly better teams will be tougher on the road too as points become crucial. I think it's also true too that young teams historically take longer learning to win on the road (and to hold leads). If you've watched hockey for decades you've seen this play out time and time again. Line match ups do matter but I don't think that's huge in our case as we do not have clearly defined top lines or checking lines, they are all kind of equal. Sure, Tage's line is the bigger offensive line at the moment but it's not by a lot. Scoring is spread out and so is defense. The defense is another matter though. We do not have big minute shutdown D men who can carry big chunks of the 3rd. This matters a lot imo which is why I like all those shiny D prospects we have coming and want to keep that cupboard stocked full.

Cozens. He will be here a long time and captain this team, mark my words.

In fairness though I don't think there are many regular season games where any teams come at you every period for 3 full periods. They usually fluctuate and have off and on periods. We want to start faster I think and try to get ahead (that's the plan anyway) and we do run out of gas. But I also think we run around and panic under pressure in the 3rd. I'm thinking it's a work in progress sort of thing. I feel we are seeing more effort than in the past years so I am hopeful that it keeps improving.

I'd like to put in a vote for Power Bryson. I'm starting to love the way he plays and think he could be an unexpected piece of the puzzle. Of the veteran Jags I'm ditching Hagg, Butcher and Miller but maybe keeping Pysyk for a few more years. RHD, nothing special, but a little tougher and a little more reliable and consistent. Now for the big one, I'd consider trading Dahlin. I'm starting to convince myself that he is indeed thick as a post and since he hasn't had good D ingrained into him so it's instinctive, whenever the game picks up tempo and he has to react and think he gets confused, hesitates and makes big mistakes. He's fine when we have the puck and when he controls the rush, good even, but in his own end under pressure he's like a deer in the headlights. Not sure this is fixable so I'd entertain the idea of ditching him if a good trade was out there. If not, I'm hoping with Power and Samuelson and maybe somebody else we can decrease his late game minutes and minutes in general. joker I just don't know. Wait and see what he brings when he returns. He could imo go either way. What this roster really still needs is a new Bill Hajt, Jay McKee or Mike Ramsey.

Still better than last year, but they do seem to have trouble especially in the 3rd if the other teams kicks it up a gear like Pittsburgh did. They panic under pressure.

You're avoiding that. Tough is tough, what's to define? Are they tough enough? No, emphatically they are not. Disagree? Haven't watched enough to be definitive. At this moment Savoie would be the better/higher pick. Both imo will be NHL players. Either would improve the Sabres but if both were there I'd take Savoie before Geekie. Time for you to go watch some dreaded Zdeno Chara highlight reels. (and of course it doesn't, big guys can just be giraffes, don't be obtuse)

Lighten up buddy. Its an amusing anecdote from playing actual hockey. If you'd been on the ice back then as a scrawny teen like I was you'd get it. Pity we lost ex Sabre Ron Roscoe at the time as he was too good for high school hockey. Now he was tough. and if you thought Marty McSorley was tough, you should have met his relatives. Crazy the lot of them. Not my point. Please stop.

Nice to finally have a hockey team again isn't it? Now we can spend our time on pointless arguments about size and attitude. Question: Is the current Sabres roster (players and prospects all) in your opinion big enough? or tough enough if you want to get picayune and separate that. Cause that is the real question. You know my answer, what's yours?

Can't disagree with any of this. Also think Cozens needs to keep getting stronger (which I think he will) not because he is soft or weak but because of the style he plays demands it.

Seemed like every game of their's I've seen had Swayman in it and I know they shocked the announcers by playing Swayman back to back last 2 games before their little break here. Swayman definitely seems to be #1 of the two.

lol, that is really weird to me. You have some fine looking toilets wherever you live................. Farm boys that's what we need. One year we were pretty good in high school hockey and won the city (Hamilton) championship. Went on to play the provincial regionals and met this team from the rural area around Hagersville and all these guys were freaking huge. Arms like our thighs from pitching those hay bails I guess. We were far more skilled and fast but they just pummeled us. They were all built like brick sh*thouses. Marty McSorley country.

Oh ya, we definitely have a long way to go, and everything depends on the Rochester guys becoming at least decent NHL players but I think the tear down and futility pointlessness aspect is over. There's no more reliance on one star savior, it's a TEAM concept now and that imo is a better approach. Adams I think has successfully torn down the old rotting structure and now we are pouring concrete and starting to build it back up. As long as they keep adding piece by piece and don't rush it we will finally be a real hockey team again.

You're purposely ignoring my comment So yes, obviously genetics is only one thing and not a guarantee, it's a combination of things. There are always exceptions to every rule but overall you can tell but you have to look at the whole package, you have to consider EVERYTHING and if you have players ranked similar in skills, I'm taking the bigger meaner ones cause we need more of that.

Mitts is soft as butter.

Exactly. Forsberg is a great example. He was strong and powerful.

The ship is righted, it still needs sails and a full crew........... We are at least pointed in the right direction.

Oh come on, there's all kinds of ways to project their future "size". I worked with Dave Andreychuk's dad, for example. One look at "Big Julie" and you knew Dave was going to be "Big Dave". (At this age he is the spitting image of his father too). This is why you hire scouts as well as analysts. Go meet the families, watch how they train, look at their work habits etc etc all of which aids you in your projections of who and what they will become.

You get a sense of which they will go though even at that age. Mitts for example. You're drafting him you know he isn't going to be "big". Arguing this is, I agree, "stupid".

Yes, we might be trending in the right direction but to this point he's not wrong. We do need to get bigger.