Archie Lee

Love the pick. Here’s hoping he is our Aho. Now make some moves between now and Tuesday that relate to the coming season. Lots of time left.

Fun exercise, but I really doubt a 3rd line role playing with Noah Cates will entice Kane to sign here.

I'm not great at valuing NHL talent v. draft picks. There are players though who might be available, who would change the team dynamic and who shouldn't cost a first. They aren't sexy names, but players like Laughton, Dowd, Iafallo, Mathieu Joseph, maybe Kakko, and others, might be had for post-1st-rd picks. Maybe we are grabbing an extra 2nd in order to make a move for a lesser player or two. My gut tells me that this isn't part of a larger plan (much like Byram for Mitts). I think San Jose wanted to move up and were willing to meet our ask, and and since we had nothing going on for #11, we made the trade.

Not reading any specific implication into your comment, but it seems likely if we trade for Necas there will be a few “why do we even have Ventura” and “does Adams even consider analytics” posts. I get it, but what makes people think our analytics team doesn’t love Necas? Our internal models may well tell a story that the public models don’t. Why pay a small fortune for an internal analytics team and model development if we are just going to go by what J Fresh tweets (and I like J Fresh).

Agreed. My prospect knowledge comes from what I have read and not what I’ve seen (I have seen almost nothing). The point is that for a player to fall in the draft another has to rise. When you are drafting outside of the top 5 the tendency is for fans to look for someone to fall when it is always possible that your team actually likes a player who will be considered a bit of a reach. There appears to be no inside info in this guys mock, just an attempt to apply some logic that may well be very faulty (which is good, because it got me reading about a player I had not considered much). I don’t think we are taking Luchanko, but would not be shocked if we take a player rated in the 18-22 range, because we did that just 3 years ago.

A little bit I guess, but I think it would be like the Rosen draft. We were picking 13 and as fans generally focused on who might fall, not recognizing that the Sabres might be a team that reaches a bit. The consolidated rankings had Rosen around 20-21. We reached, but not ridiculously so. Luchanko come in around 19 in consolidated rankings. It wouldn’t be that much of a head scratcher.

Correct, but then question was “how much cap space do they have before the buyout”.

This is the correct answer and I know that you’re just giving the raw $ number (Not suggesting you are being misleading). Unless they do something unexpected though, at least $8 million of that and as much as $11 million, is going to UPL, Joker, Krebs and Bryson. That still leaves money to do some meaningful stuff, but close to half of that $23.5 could be gone on existing RFA’s.

For us, the hump is the playoffs.

I don’t like the idea of Necas as a centre and bumping Cozens to 3C. If we acquire Necas then I want him in the top 6 playing with Thompson or Cozens (I’m indifferent to who plays centre; they can try Necas at centre with Cozens on the wing and then switch it up if it doesn’t work). With a Skinner buyout it doesn’t need to be our only move. Could still grab Mangiapane in trade or Stephenson as UFA. My guess is that Carolina would want Quinn or Peterka and I’m not sure that’s a good deal (actually think it would be a bad deal).

Fair enough. I just don’t think that a Skinner signing would even register as a factor in what the Leafs can do if they move Marner.

I don’t get the connection? They are worlds apart as players.

Great series. Better team won, but boy it was close. Panthers are maybe the best team I have seen at taking away shooting lanes. The Oilers didn’t back down from any of the dirtbag stuff and because of that Florida didn’t do as much of it. Tonight, and early in the series, I thought the Oilers were much too quick to shorten their bench. They ran their top 5 into the ice and by game’s end there was nothing left in the tank. Fun to watch though. Congrats to both teams and mostly to the Panthers of course. Now let’s make some trades.

Agree on 3 of your 4 views. - I would be good with the Washington deal. I think if we really wanted to make this happen then we should just make it Dowd and Jensen for Joker and a 2nd. Not sure if the Caps been do that as it doesn’t make them a better team now. - The Blueger deal would be good. - Don’t understand the Farabee deal. - My one difference from you is on Foegele. I think he is just a really good middle six glue player. I think he is like pre-Oilers Hyman. Not saying he is going to become a 50 goal scorer (not close), but I think he can play higher in the line-up and that there is more offence coming.

I didn’t make any excuses for Adams, nor did I suggest that you or I or anyone should view the team as up and coming, nor did I state Adams should not be fired if we miss the playoffs. I only pointed out that it’s far from a sure thing that he will be fired if we do miss the playoffs and offered an opinion on why the person who makes the decision, Pegula, might see it different than us.

I’m no expert either. I think Wheeler and Pronman are correct though that our 1st rd pick would be viewed as a more valuable asset than any of our prospects. Savoie had a great regular season. He was 19 though (not 17, like Catton). Also, I think Savoie’s performance against tougher competition may hurt his value a bit. He had a poor World Juniors, his playoff production dropped this year v last year and he did not have a strong Mem Cup tournament. I’m not personally down on Savoie, but I think it is fair to say his value has slipped.

If these players were dropped into the draft on Friday, they would go lower than where they were taken in their draft years.

We currently have one player on our roster over the age of 30 and indications are he will be gone in the next week. We are going to be one of the youngest teams in the NHL again next year. If the Sabres have a 90+ point season and miss by a point or two, it will mean that multiple young players have had really good seasons. There is no question that if they come that close and many of their young players have strong years, that the Sabres will still be viewed as a team on the rise. I'm not offering a "hot take" here. Your well-earned cynicism aside, really young teams that come really close are viewed positively. Nobody, or almost nobody, is saying it would be wrong to fire Adams if they miss. All some of us are saying is that there is pretty clearly a scenario where the Sabres miss again and Adams isn't fired and where him and Ruff together will get the two years on their contracts.

I think Pronman has a network of NHL scouts who he speaks with regularly to get feedback on his evaluations and rankings and who do share their opinions with him on such things as this. I also think that the assessment in that article that our prospects (specifically Savoie, Östlund and Rosen) have not held their draft value is correct. That doesn't mean they hold no value, though.

Sure, but again, who is collecting the data? I'm assuming it isn't A.I.. The person who is charting the outcome of puck battles in Spokane will be different than the person who is doing it in Oshawa who is different from the person doing it in Stockholm. Some of these data points seem subjective to me. I'm not suggesting analytics are not valuable or that they are fake or anything of the sore, but I can't personally fathom how data for all these leagues/teams/players can be consistently reliable.

The off-season is time for optimism. The Skinner buyout talks have given my optimism level a bit of a boost. The buyout in itself won't improve the team in my view, but if the plan is to spend the savings then there is great opportunity for improvement. I also think it sends a message to players around the league that the Sabres are serious about getting this turned around, which might have a small impact on the willingness of some to consider Buffalo as a destination. What I didn't like about Adams's comments in the press conference is the continued "We are open to anything" narrative. I don't expect him to layout his plan and nothing that he said indicates that there is no plan, but being open to anything is really not the positive thing that he seems to think it is. He said (as with every time he speaks) that he has spoken to every team. He goes on to say we are willing to trade #11 and/or prospects to get better and also that we are willing to move down in the draft and even that we are willing to move up in the draft. That doesn't sound like a man with a plan to me. It sounds like a man who went to every team in the league and said he is open for business and who is hoping someone makes him an offer that will make his team better. What we really want is a man who has a clear plan to make the team better and is aggressively pursuing the actions that will make the plan come to fruition. Again, nothing he said means he isn't the latter guy, but he continues to come across, to me, like the former guy.

The part that I struggle with is: where is the data coming from on 32,000 draft eligible players? The article references puck management, puck battles, back checking, defensive commitment as measurable data points. Some of these seem a bit subjective to me. Unless I'm missing something, an actual human being (or many human beings) would need to watch games and focus on individual players in order to track such data points? Asking because I don't know the answer, not out of skepticism: How is this done? Who does it? How can it be certain that the data is reliable? With a prospect like Benson who has eyes on him all the time, I get it. But when you get deeper into the pool, it's hard for me to fathom that this level of data exists or can be considered consistently reliable. Again, I'm not really doubting so much as I'm struggling to comprehend.

I would be surprised (not shocked) if the Sabres buyout Skinner and then don't spend at least 50% of the saved space, taking them to within $2-4 million of the cap. I can't imagine a more disastrous outcome to the season than using a Skinner buyout to scrimp, only to miss again while Skinner goes on to playoff games. The Sabers missing and Skinner being in the playoffs could easily happen (I might argue that it could be likely to happen), but for the organization to not even try to capitalize on the cap savings to better the team would be bordering on scandalous, I think. Also, I think you and some others are drawing some conclusions that aren't really there to be drawn. 1.) The "Ruff won't stand for it" and "Ruff is running the show" view that I read quite often is wishful thinking I think. Ruff put up with a lot of junk from cheap Sabre owners before. Maybe he is now in a spot in life where he is demanding things of ownership and management, but I doubt it. I'm sure his opinion is valued and that he will be involved in the off-season roster moves, but I don't see any reason to think Adams isn't the GM in the sense that every other team has a GM who ultimately is responsible for the roster. Ruff will coach the team he is given, I think. 2.) A lot of people have concluded that this is a playoffs or bust year for Adams. I have not seen or heard anything from Pegula or Adams that indicates that to be the case. I can certainly imagine a scenario where things go so badly that a change practically is forced on Pegula. I can also easily imagine, though, a scenario where we finish somewhere between where we did in the last two seasons, miss by a few points, and the general consensus in the hockey world is that the Sabres remain a young team pointed in the right direction and an Adams firing is not even a consideration. I agree that time starting to run out on the Adams tenure, but I don't think it is close to being a playoffs or bust year.

The latest Athletic Mock (podcast) has Iginla falling to us. They think Calgary will go defence.

That's logical to me when you look at the background's of the two players; Demko up to his signing date on that deal and UPL to today. They have quite similar trajectories. With a Swayman signing by Boston, a $5 million cap hit would put UPL tied for 15th among goalies with Demko, Saros, Ullmark (who will all likely surpass $5 million on their next contracts), Lehner and Cal Peterson. Oettinger and now Skinner, will get more on their next deals. It's a risk, but something around 5x5 is not crazy to lock UPL up.