JohnC
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Posts posted by JohnC
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38 minutes ago, Doohickie said:
But for most of us, the bills are not, in fact, inflated, because of an outdated system or any other reason. Texans pays 25% less per kilowatt hour than the national average. The issue you brought up was about how much Texans pay, and that has everything to do with the "variety of companies that draw their electricity from the Texas grid."
The issue I was focusing on was the grid that serves Texas is not part of the national grid. So when something damages the grid, such as a storm etc., it doesn't have the ability to have electricity rerouted to them from another grid, at least on a temporary basis until their grid is repaired. It is during that period when the costs go exponentially higher because of the normal supply is out of service.
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The Sabres outplayed Dallas. On offense, we were dominating the play. The difference in this game was the opposition's goalie. Our goalie was very good while their goalie was exceptional. We had our opportunities but missed on our shots.
My major complaint with this team and its makeup is that it is not able to have enough net presence on the offense. Dallas didn't have the quantity of chances but because of their presence around the net it resulted in at least one score.
I thought Cozens is starting to regain his game. Dahlin was superb but missed on his shots. Overall, I thought the Sabres played well. We lost to a quality opponent that required exceptional netminding to beat us. The loss was frustrating but that's hockey.
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15 hours ago, Taro T said:
Would prefer to get away with just 2 pieces given up for him. And 2 1st equivalents is quite a bit to give up for a guy that is still a high end prospect.
But have only minimal pause before making that deal. (Sabres would likely get a B prospect or a 3rd or 4th rounder too; but yeah, really expect Jiricek to be something special and he's cement the D-corp for a long time. Dahlin, Jiricek, Power, Johnson, Samuelsson, & whomever else (Jokiharju, Clifton, Novikov in a couple of years) is a seriously solid D-corp a couple of years from now. And would be pretty good next season too.
@Pimlach boos you and me for our similar responses. This is what happens when there is an over population of curmudgeons in one location.
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3 minutes ago, K-9 said:
Never. Again. 😂
Never say never! With this team the never keeps coming up again, and again!😂
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Within this WGR link is coach DG doing his weekly segment. It is approximately 13 minutes long. He talked about the injury to Samuelsson and Quinn. At a little past the halfway point he gave an explanation of his thinking when assembling the lines. He gave an explanation of why he split Tuch and Tage. He wanted to create multiple lines so the other teams matchups are more favorable against our other lines.
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1 hour ago, Pimlach said:
This guy is a head case right now. He is 20 and complaining about playing in the AHL. Who does he think he is?
Why do we need another 20 year old defenseman right now? Especially an entitled one? We already have Dahlin, Power and Muel all getting paid, plus R Johnson is coming along. Trading for Jiricek is going to mean spending and inordinate amount of $$ on another young defender someday.
If we want to win more games then we really need a solid veteran in his prime, 28-30 years old, shoots from RH, and is a big, mean, stay at home type of defenseman. We should trade a prospect and pick for that. We need someone to stabilize things on the backline right now.
Why do you say that he is a head case? He's a young guy who sees some of his draft compatriots in the big league while he is not. Are you surprised that a young guy is impatient or a has an attitude of entitlement? I'm not. Welcome into the world of young pro athletes. Right now, our prospect pipeline has an excessive number of smallish forwards, some of which won't get an opportunity to play with the big club. Acquiring a player such as this high-end defensive prospect would better balance out our prospect pool.
I'm not precluding any other deals to improve this roster. Last offseason, the GM acquired Clfiton from the free agent market for a reasonable contract. So, there are a number of ways to bring in plays. My primary point in a previous post is that when you have assets, some of which won't be used, then parlay them into a more useful asset.
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11 hours ago, Taro T said:
Would prefer to get away with just 2 pieces given up for him. And 2 1st equivalents is quite a bit to give up for a guy that is still a high end prospect.
But have only minimal pause before making that deal. (Sabres would likely get a B prospect or a 3rd or 4th rounder too; but yeah, really expect Jiricek to be something special and he's cement the D-corp for a long time. Dahlin, Jiricek, Power, Johnson, Samuelsson, & whomever else (Jokiharju, Clifton, Novikov in a couple of years) is a seriously solid D-corp a couple of years from now. And would be pretty good next season too.
I wouldn't be as hesitant to give up the extra asset for the defenseman who is a high-end prospect who is a defenseman. The Sabres have a number of quality prospects who play similar positions and roles. It's more than likely that some of them won't be able to crack the NHL roster. If you have an asset that most likely can't be used, then why not use it as a chip in a deal that will in the not-too-distant future help to create an impressive blue line. The issue isn't so much whether we would want Jiricek, because we would. The issue is can we make the offer enticing enough if he is marketed to beat the other appealing offers that would be made.
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6 hours ago, PerreaultForever said:
One of the reasons for that is that we keep a guy like VO on the roster all season but he can't crack the line up ever so why is he here??? It's as ridiculous as the 3 goalie situation was.
Where's the half dozen fringe NHL vets that can be called up when needed and/or waived and sent back down when not needed? Other teams have them. If the kids aren't ready for call ups the organization HAS to have those guys.
We don't have any more injuries than any other team (at times) so for the roster to look this bad with a few guys out is just ridiculous and the GM didn't do his job.
Your criticisms are valid about the lack of options to turn to when injuries happen. My point is simple: You go with what you got. If VO is our best option, then so be it.
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6 hours ago, K-9 said:
If last season taught us anything, it’s that Mitts and VO must NEVER be linemates again. Never. Ever. Again.
I'm not worried about last season. In order to get the best out of Mitts he needs to play with wingers who can shoot. I'm not over-evaluating VO and try to make him out to be something he is not. But at least this year (when he plays) there is an effort to check and play a tighter game compared to his previous seasons. When injuries happen you go down your list to come up with an acceptable option that is available.
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5 minutes ago, Taro T said:
They chose him a few picks before Savoie so they'd presumably want quite a bit more than just him.
Just because Jiricek doesn't want to be in Columbus doesn't make the Sabres the only suitor for his services. (Presuming the Sabres would be interested and IMHO they should be interested. He's going to be a heck of a player.) They'd have to make an offer better than any other team that might want him would make. And, because there would be more than one or 2 teams interested in him, his wanting out of C-bus is pretty much immaterial, again IMHO, to what he'd bring back in a trade.
And according to fans, if the Sabres wanted Lafreniere it would've taken Eichel plus. Fans can be, and often are, delusional.
How about Savoie, Rosen and this year's first for Jiricek?
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1 hour ago, Night Train said:
Good grief. KO with TT and Skinner ? sigh..
Call up Kulich. I need to have some long term hope and he can finish. I get the age thingy.
Even if the front office prefers to keep Kulich in the AHL, I just think that there are better options for the first line. I would rather re-assemble the first line with Tage in between Tuch and Skinner, and move Mitts onto the second line as either a center or winger with JJ and Cozens. It just seems to me that with Okposo on the first line you are suppressing the offense and I'm not sure that he could keep up with his line-mates.
Injuries are part of the game. However, the Quinn injury seems to have reverberated throughout all the lines.
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Over the past 16 games the Sabres are 9-6-1. They were on a 98 pt. pace. The problem is that they still lost ground to the teams in front of them. The all-star break came at a good time. I needed it to get recharged. I'm glad they will be back in action tomorrow.
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Okposo on the first line make little sense to me. I would move Tuch back up to the first line and put Olofsson on the Mitts line. At this stage in his career, Okposo is a fourth liner. The Quinn injury had ramifications for all the lines. It was a consequential loss.
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Does anyone know what the nature of his injury is? I'm aware that it's reported as an upper body injury. Is it likely to be a shoulder issue?
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1 hour ago, Taro T said:
It is INCREDIBLY rare for a player to flat out say to management, the way you are doing things HAS to change, and here is what SHOULD happen. Chris Drury told management that Satan was a cancer and with the end of the lockout letting teams get out of contracts and simply walk away from players management was able to listen to him and let Miro walk. It was the right move.
The season after Bob Woods left, the PP still had pretty much the same talent but it wasn't nearly as good as it had been the previous year. Pretty sure the players took it upon themselves to go back to what Woods had been having them do and it started excelling again. It ALSO was the right move. But without a Ryan O'Reilly to push for that change, nothing improves.
Does anybody see the players led by Okposo going to management or the coaches and telling them the system is f'd? Personally don't see that happening with the current cast. And without a leader that will tell the emperor he has no clothes, the PLAYERS aren't going to make the adjustments. That's not how things work unless you have a REALLY strong personality in that leadership role. As an aside to highlight this point, how often did your boss tell you to do things one way and things weren't quite going right following his plan and you simply made "the adjustments to get (your team) back on track" without having the boss buy-in ahead of time?
If it doesn't usually happen in the "real world" why would it happen in this environment except under extreme circumstances?
I don't want to over examine this PP issue because it can end up as a futile back and forth. Even within a structure set by the coaching staff, it is not a static event on the ice. Players have the ability to move to the open areas and have the ability to move the puck more quickly. Teams have various strategies on the PP and PK. It isn't so much about outsmarting the opposition because there is a fundamental aspect/strategy to playing on the special teams that all teams follow to a certain extent.
The persistent problem I see on the PP, and in the game in general, is our inability to have a net presence that can to a degree obstruct the goalie. If there is one identifiable problem that needs to be addressed revolves around having more net presence. The two players who do it the best on this team (my opinion) are Greenway and Benson. Benson is arguably the least imposing player on the team, yet he provides as much net presence than most of the bigger and stronger players on the roster. That's not acceptable!
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3 hours ago, Pimlach said:
John, I agree with quite a bit of this. Blowing it up again is drastic and making huge changes is risky.
My one big issue is the coaching staff. I dont see any indication that this coaching staff is up to the NHL level. The team is almost always not ready to play at game time. First period stats tell the story. Adjustments are lacking, the power play being the biggest example of a huge failure with no answers.
Another abysmal home record haunts the team and its relationship with the fans. The roster is still way too young and lacks the leadership and accountability to even string 3 good games together.
I think DG has reached his max level, and if I owned this team I would ask Adam’s to start looking at everyone and everything to finally take the next to step.
We are in general accord regarding the assessment of the team and franchise. However, with respect to DG having run out of runway for his stewardship, my response is: I'm not sure???? With respect to Adams and his approach, I don't expect major changes. But because he has so many prospects in the system and draft assets, he needs to judiciously use them to improve the team. A couple to few astute moves can make a big difference.
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3 hours ago, Taro T said:
To the bolded, the PP WAS effective, for ALL OF 6-7 WEEKS. End of October through mid-December it was hitting at 34%, the absolute best in the league. It was below 15% on either side of that BRIEF span when it was all-world.
And IF a PP can hit at 34% for a month and a half, it shouldn't be absolute trash the rest of the year. But yet, here we are. Replace that coach. He doesn't know what he's doing.
We are in agreement that our PP can be better. In this season, our paltry production has been the difference between being in the middle of a genuine playoff pursuit as opposed to being in a deep hole that needs extra effort just to get out of. I agree with you that it's unreasonable to expect to match the sterling PP percentage that we had in our end of season run. However, if we could have gotten it to an average plus level this year, our perception of the season would be dramatically different.
Is coaching the underpinning problem for this PP unit? I'm not sure? The players need to make the adjustment to get this unit back on track. I hold them mostly responsible for the struggles.
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16 minutes ago, dudacek said:
The Canuck blueprint to go from 27th at last year's all-star break to 1st t this year's all-star break:
- Replace Boudreau with Tocchet, along with switching most of the rest of the coaching staff.
- (Effectively) trade Horvat for Hronek
- Swap a handful of depth guys (Bear, Schenn, Ekman-Larsson, LAzar, Dries) for a different handful of depth guys (Cole, Suter, Lafferty, Blueger, Soucy)
- Have your core (Petterson, Miller, Demko, Hughes, Boeser) all have fantastic years at the same time.
I can tell you guys first-hand from living in the market that one year ago the Canucks fan base was a frustrated and out of hope as you seem to be, and fan expectations in training camp were very low for this season.
The main reason why there was such a high expectation entering this season was that a number of our core, including Tage, Cozens, Tuch, Skinner etc. had exceptional scoring seasons last year. And on top of that, our PP was productive. Neither of these two elements have happened this year, at least so far. What is the reason for this decline? I believe that injuries and other teams adjusting to our strengths resulted in a noticeable decline.
I am on the side of the table that argues to stay the course and don't overreact to what has happened this year. It should be remembered that the Sabres earned 91 points last year compared to the previous year's 75 points. The trajectory was clearly pointing in an upward direction.
Although the Sabres are in a tough position entering the second half of the season, I haven't given up hope for a playoff run. In my opinion the last thing this franchise needs is to lose its nerve on the course it has set. If the front office panics to the point of changing course and significantly altering the roster, it would in my opinion set this franchise back, again! Just because I'm mostly arguing to "stay the course" doesn't mean that it should stand pat and not make some tweaks to the roster this offseason.
I realize I'm more upbeat than most about this team and that I'm very much in the minority here.
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3 hours ago, Sabres73 said:
Because I trust the Sabres medical team with their care of Quinn. Quinn is not a patient of the internet poster doctor, who is speculating. Lighten up.
I don't understand where you are coming from. He gave an opinion based on his medical experience. Although he doesn't have any inside knowledge about this particular case, his conjecturing about the injury and timeline based on his experience is consistent with the information that is coming out. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this mostly an opinion forum?
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2 hours ago, Sabres73 said:
I guess we need to listen to you instead of the medical staff.
How can anyone who read @Wyldnwoody44's knowledgeable professional response to Quinn's injury and the rehab timetable not appreciate his contribution on this particular topic? He informed us on the nature of the injury and the usual timetable to get back to form. What was the purpose of your sarcastic response to his educated comment on this issue?
My response to @Wyldnwoody44 is thank you for your contribution. I now know more about Quinn's injury and likely/unlikely return because of your post.
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18 minutes ago, GASabresIUFAN said:
No pressure on either side to get a deal done yet. Casey’s incentive is to continue to play well, rack up points and know that every point is probably worth another $100,000 per season here or elsewhere. Buffalo’s incentive is to let this play out see where Casey ends up, how the team end up, and how a probable extension fits into their cap and budget long-term. His trade value maybe it’s highest right now in terms of picks and prospects, but Buffalo doesn’t need those. If the Sabres chooses to move him, the odds of a hockey trade such as Casey for a top 4 D are probably easier in the off-season.
I consider Mitts to be a valuable core player for this team, now and in the future. His value to the Sabres is enhanced by his versatility. He can play wing or center on any of the three top lines. Look what happened when Tage was hurt last year and was struggling. The coach moved Mitts up to the first line resulting in it playing as well, if not better, when Tage was healthy.
If I could get a top 4 defenseman for Mitts in a trade, I would still be dead set against such a deal. I would rather go out and get a Clifton caliber defenseman (who is playing well after an adjustment period) from the market and retain Mitts. When you are building a team the smart approach is to add talent, not subtract it.
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19 hours ago, Marvin said:
Not officially. They could agree to meet at the rink and practice face-offs, defencive positioning, and so on without the coaches and not at Sabres' facilities. That probably would be frowned upon by the NHLPA, though.
This is an all-star break. Players scatter and go off and do their own thing. Some players like to stay home with their families, some of the younger guys go off to warmer climates for a short vacation, some of Dahlin's buddies will be in Toronto to support him. It's as much a mental break as it is a physical break from the grinding sport. The same scenario happens in basketball, baseball and during the season the bye week in the NHL.
There's no question that the staff makes a point to tell the players to keep up with some physical activity and responsible eating habits in order to maintain their conditioning. But they don't need to be hectored about it because they are already aware of the consequences of acting irresponsibly during this short interlude.
The break is not a reward or punishment for how they have played. This break is part of hockey as it is part of every sport. I see this break as a good thing. It allows the players to refresh mentally and heal physically.
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4 hours ago, Doohickie said:
And... a lot of the conflict on the board ends up with fans on either side of the "stay the course" and "blow it all up" divide.
I'm in the "stay the course" camp. I have repeatedly stated so. However, taking that view doesn't mean that I advocate that the front office shouldn't make moves to improve the roster and better balance the roster. I liked the Greenway and Clifton acquisitions. Although it took some time for each player to adjust to their new team, they are now solid contributors. There should have been a couple more of these types of mid-level deals that would have made this roster better.
I give little credibility to those who argue to blow up the team and the staff. That's the last thing this woebegone franchise needs to do. It's not a question of tinkering but making enough smart moves to keep on with the upward trajectory that followed last season. Most hockey analysts believed that Buffalo was ahead of Detroit in the rebuilding process. Why did Detroit move ahead of us this year? Yzerman made a number of moves to bring in players to augment the young talent he has assembled over the past few years. He's simply a more experienced and astute GM than our GM. And it has been demonstrated by where his team is in the standings compared to where we are.
I'm not a KA basher. In general, I believe he has done a good job. But he could have done more to accelerate the rebuilding process to keep up with the teams he is competing with.
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6 minutes ago, Taro T said:
Love Johnson, and he'll likely be a fixture in the top 4 LT. But, can we PLEASE stop projecting 2nd year D into major roles? Let him be 1/2 of the 3rd pairing next year and look like an absolute stud rather than force him higher into the lineup than he's likely ready for.
Plus, it would be really a nice change to give Power a partner that can help cover his young D-man mistakes rather than the other way round. These kids have to cover for F mistakes often enough; cut them some slack.
Ryan Johnson already plays like a mature player. He's not an 18 or 19 year old who was moved up to the NHL too soon. His 4 year college experience makes him more prepared for a higher pairing than most prospects. I'm really not worried about him not being able to handle the support defenseman role for either of the top two pairings.
If bringing in a player to pair with Power results in Mitts being dealt, I say no. I would rather add a Clifton caliber player to the unit and keep Mitts.
GDT LA Kings at Buffalo Sabres Tues 7pm MSG/ ESPN+
in The Aud Club
Posted
Just a few thoughts on this game: I'm not going to get carried away overinterpreting this win. But the major takeaway is the big difference between a team that gets good goaltending and a team that doesn't get it. LA's goalies were atrocious. Half of our goals should have been routine stops. We didn't overwhelm their goalies with barrage of shots. What we did is get our shots on net while their goalies whiffed on them. Greenway's goals should have been routine stops.
What I noticed on both ends of the ice is a greater effort to have net presence. And that net presence on both ends is what distinguishes this game from many of our games. The Okposo tip and even the Benson nifty twirling goal resulted in scores because they were around the net. On defense, we had plenty of coverage around our goalie that resulted in a quick clear when the puck was hovering around the net after a stop.
What's noticeable about UPL's recent stellar play is that he is not allowing many juicy rebounds. And what's also noticeable is that he is using his size to play big without much wasted motion. There is a calmness to his game brought on by his confidence. If we end up finding our #1 goalie in this disappointing season it will be a plus. (I still believe that eventually Levi is going to be our #1 goalie or at the minimum our rotational goalie.)
I thought our defensive unit played well. The more I see Ryan Johnson, the more I am impressed. Eric Johnson is a stabilizing player on the blue line. It would be foolish to deal him off at the trade deadline.
Greenway would have had a good game even if he wouldn't have scored. He's not flashy but he is a strong player on a team that needed such a physical presence. The Greenway and Clifton additions were solid additions to this team. They weren't exciting additions but good additions that bulked up the roster. We need a couple more of those types of additions in the offseason.
It would be a big mistake not to re-sign Mitts. He's good, gritty and versatile.
This team needs to go on a winning streak even if it doesn't result in a playoff spot. The players have to believe that they can win so that the malaise of persistent failure doesn't contaminate their attitude towards being here. How many players wanted out because they got tired of losing and watching the playoffs on TV each year?
This was a good game with good effort all the way through. The next game should be a better measuring stick game.
He can have a role as a utility player who is brought up when needed. I agree with you that he played well in this game.