Archie Lee

Maybe the team is turning a corner defensively. Our last 3 games were against Pittsburgh and LA, teams in the top 10 in scoring. 6 goals against in regulation.

I thought I saw glimpses from Krebs last night that pointed towards him being our 3rd line C in the long-term. Fast, good at both-ends, abrasive, won a couple big face offs (though his final % wasn’t good). He will get stronger and the game will slow down for him.

Not likely to happen, and maybe creates a hole down the line-up, but for a short-term period how good would Cozens be on the wing with Thompson and Tuch? Gives Krebs a chance to play with Quinn and Peterka and Asplund gets in with Girgs and Okposo. Cozens/Thompson/Tuch Mittelstadt/Jost/Olofsson Quinn/Krebs/Peterka Girgensens/Asplund/Okposo

It's hard not to scoreboard watch. Just from the games being played last night, 4 teams that we are somewhat realistically trying to catch all won (NYI, Wash, NYR and Pit). The Sabres seem to have course corrected after the 8 game losing streak. I think they are closer to the 7-3 team that started the year or to the 5-2-2 team post-streak than they are to being a bad team. I'm trying to see the season as a long-game, and not get too worked-up over any single loss. Getting to Deluca .500 remains the key for me. If the Sabres can get to Deluca .500 by game 70, they position themselves to go on a 12 game heater to end the season and have a shot at the playoffs. That we had no loser points until game 22 is an anomaly I think. 35-28-7 at game 70 (as an example) positions any team to finish on a hot streak and push to get in.

The individual sample sizes on each of our 3 goalies this season is too small to draw any conclusions on what they will do the rest of the way. Anderson is not likely to stay at .917 and if 6K continues to get games his performance is likely to improve at least a bit. Comrie post-injury? Who knows? The cumulative group sample is big enough though to draw the conclusion that when Anderson plays they generally have a chance to win and when Luukkonen/Comrie are in, the Sabres are getting mostly sub-average goaltending. I know this is not a long term answer, but if 6K’s game does not stabilize in the next week then I would sign Houser to an NHL deal and bring him up. Chances are he is not good enough, but what have you got to lose? He has given the Sabres 5 quality starts in 6 games the past 2 seasons. Why not give him a month of rotating with Anderson? He is, frankly, a better minor league goalie than 6K or Subban. I don’t think the Sabres will consider a trade for a long-term goalie until after Levi is signed. Adams has put too many eggs in the Levi basket to allow acquiring a long-term established goalie solution to jeopardize a Levi signing. The best case scenario at this point, aside from an improbable 6K or Houser run, is that we sign Levi at season end and he goes to Rochester next season and then, with Levi signed, Adams signs a second Comrie-like UFA and combined with Comrie that UFA gives us tending that allows us to be in playoff contention.

I think a question to ask when determining if the Sabres are a playoff or Cup contender is: are our best players among the best players in the league? Back in September, The Athletic published an article where they ranked the league's top 100 skaters (no goalies) and placed them in 4 tiers: MVPs, Franchise Players, All-Stars and Top of the Lineup players. https://theathletic.com/3590441/2022/09/15/nhl-player-rankings-connor-mcdavid/ Not surprisingly, the league's best teams from last year led the way when it came to how many players they had on the list. Calgary has 7, Colorado 6, Florida, Toronto, Tampa, Carolina, Minnesota and St. Louis have 5 each. Edmonton is an outlier with only 3 players on the list, but two of them are in tier 1. Vegas is the only non-playoff team from a year ago with more than 3 players on the list. The Sabres had only one player who made the list. That was Dahlin who was placed in the 4th tier and was ranked 99th out of the top 100. There is a lot to debate about the list (which is the point) and I'm not putting it forward as any sort of gold standard. I would have placed Dahlin higher. I think it is a generally fair attempt at such a ranking though and I don't think there was a strong argument in September 2022 for including any other Sabre on the list just yet. Fast forward to today, and recognizing this year's sample size is too small to draw definitive conclusions, and Dahlin is in Tier 2 at least. Thompson is in tier 3 or high in tier 4. There is an argument for Tuch in tier 4. Then there are players like Cozens and Power who look to me like they are going to be worthy soon. Samuelsson could soon be a player like Pelech, Pulock or Brodin who are in tier 4. Other young players have potential to raise their games to these levels. I don't know that we are legit just yet, but indications are we are going to get there sooner than later.

I would summarize by saying it was a bad trade that looks like it may weirdly workout in the end. There is an argument that had Botterill hired a better coach and had they placed leadership in the hands of O’Reilly and Okposo instead of Eichel that things would have worked out better. There was no chance of that though because Botterill was not a good GM.

As I understand it, there is no compensatory pick for Portillo. As for Johnson, it would be the 31st or 32nd pick in rd 2 of the 2024 draft I believe. I think it is too early in the season to draw any conclusions about Portillo's performance / save %. That said, I don't think we are signing him. As for Johnson, his value was never going to be as a points producer. I think he is something between Samuelsson and Bryson. He is a defence first D-Man who skates better than Samuelsson but is not as big or physical. Johnson will most likely be an NHL player. I think he is worth more to the Sabres if signed than the 63rd or 64th pick in 2024.

This is true, but the issue is exaggerated by the small sample size through 6 or 7 games. Mittelstadt was not going to play out the season with a sub 40% corsi any more than Craig Anderson was going to finish with a .970 save %.

I agree with this, which is why we should not get too excited over 1 or 2 wins or too down over 1 or 2 losses. On balance, we probably deserved a better fate in our loss to MTL and we were fortunate to come out of Alberta with 2 wins. The season-sample-size is too small to draw conclusions yet. That goes for the team in general and for the performance of any one or two players.

Mitts and Olofsson have not been good, but they have been maybe just the worst or close to the worst on a team that is fortunate to be 4-3. I'm not more worried about these two players that I am about the team in its entirety. To this point the team is out performing their underlying #'s. I'm no analytics expert but I understand that if a player has a PDO over 102 it means that the team is likely outproducing their actual performance when that player is on the ice. A PDO below 98 means the opposite. The Sabres line-up is full of players who currently have a PDO over 102. The only player below 98 right now is Bryson; that actually fits the eye-test to me as I think Bryson more than others has had poor defensive zone puck-luck thus far. The most disturbing stat for me is that Comrie has a goals against average (GAA) of 3.41 and that is a 1/2 goal better than the expected GAA of 3.95. We have a lot of guys who need to be better, not just Mittelstadt and Olofsson.

Always disappointing to watch an effort like that. But hockey is more baseball than football and over 82 games, all teams will have clunkers. Just in the past 2-3 days Columbus beat the Rangers 5-1, Wpg beat Stl 4-0 and NJ beat Det 6-2. I’m not making excuses, but Seattle is far from a free space on the bingo card and it looked to me like the Kraken made it clear early that they did not care about our speed and were committed to it being a physical game. We looked like we were maybe just ready to get home without anyone else on the IR. Lots will be made of Mittelstadt’s lazy gaff. My msg would not be to single Mitts out but to let the team know that with a poor team effort like that everyone is at risk of being on the highlight real for the wrong reason. Learn from it. I’m not down on Pilut after one game. If we judged everyone on that game alone there would be a dozen players headed to Rochester. Still, there is no overstating how tough it is to lose Samuelsson and Joker.

I don't know. He still thinks highly of Dahlin. I don't think it is ridiculous to suggest that in an actual 2018 redraft Dahlin would not go #1 and could fall as far as #4. Also, he improved Samuelsson's ranking to #13 and basically acknowledges he was wrong on that one.

I agree with the bolded. Skinner thrives with a shooter. For Thompson to shoot he needs the puck in the offensive zone. To do that he needs a winger who helps flips the ice and retrieve pucks. Skinner/Thompson/Tuch just makes sense. I think Asplund is possibly being wasted on a "4th line". I think Asplund/Mittelstadt/Olofsson works. Of course, there is a tendency today to treat the start of the NHL season like it is the first couple weeks of the college football season where you can legitimately say if our QB doesn't get it together soon the season is lost. The start of this season for Skinner/Thompson/Olofsson is more like an MLB team's 4-5-6 hitters going through the season's first series hitting a combined .125. If it continues the season is sunk. But your 4-5-6 hitters are not hitting .125 over 162 games. Skinner/Thompson/Olofsson is not a well constructed line in my view, but they are not going 82 games with an average xGF% of 22.

Fair enough. I'm certainly not arguing that this was a franchise altering mistake. Someone wrote that we should have kept Borgen over Bjork and you, quite correctly, pointed out that it was not so simple. I just added to the discussion that there was an option that might have allowed keeping Borgen (protect Skinner and expose Bjork) and that the Sabres not doing this was a pretty clear indication they valued Bjork more. In my view that was a mistake, but I acknowledge: - We have more information on both players now than we had then. - The Sabres could have protected Skinner and exposed Bjork and Seattle might still have picked Borgen (I actually think the Kraken still take Borgen); and - As mistakes go this one may well fall into the category of barely consequential. I'll add one thing. If you went to the GM of every NHL team right now and said you have to take Borgen or Bjork and find a place for him on your roster, I think close to 32 of them take Borgen. At the time of the expansion draft it is probably closer to 50/50.

Some mistakes are small and don't have much impact on the bigger picture. Borgen, I think, is a more useful player and a more valuable asset than Bjork.

Going back to the actual moment of the expansion draft it is difficult to argue with what they did. Protecting Borgen would have meant exposing Bjork, Asplund and, barring a pre-draft trade, one of Thompson, Mittelstadt or Oloffson. In that scenario it is likely that Thompson, Mittelstadt or Olofsson are with the Kraken now. Of course, there are things they could have done different. The simplest would have been to just protect Skinner and expose Bjork out of hopes that Seattle would take Bjork instead of Borgen. That the Sabres did not do this, pretty much makes clear that they valued Bjork more than Borgen. In hindsight, this was a mistake.

I think this move clearly acknowledges 3 things: 1.) Adams and Granato do not think it is time to appoint one of the younger players as captain. Either no player has clearly established he is ready for the role or they want to at least wait another year or two until more of the young guys have a chance to show if they are captain material. There is no reason to rush the long-term decision. 2.) The leading candidate for the role long term is Dahlin. However, while Dahlin took huge steps forward last season and earned an “A”, he needs to have another year or two where he plays at that level and where he shows he can add the burden of formal leadership. Giving Dahlin the “C” and then seeing him slide back as a player or crumble under the burden of leadership (not gonna happen) would be a disaster for the player and the team. 3.) In the interim, there is no point in pretending Okposo is not the captain. He is the team’s undisputed leader. To not make him the captain until the eventual longer-term captain fully emerges is ignoring the obvious and failing to reward a player with something that he has earned. The correct decision and message is to make “the captain” The Captain.

Preseason is always about being happy to win and taking lessons from losing. The big lesson here is that is we lose our #1 centre and top 4 D for an extended period we are in trouble. 😀 Losing this game 7-1 is as meaningful to how the coming season will go as is our winning the prospect tourney or our starting the preseason 4-1. That is, it isn’t meaningful.

I think Adams and Granato are smart and are well aware that the time is coming, sooner than later, where the fan base will not accept player development, good vibes and incremental improvement as the end result of a season. What they, smartly in my view, have no interest in doing is tagging the team with an unneeded proclamation like what Pierre Dorian did with the Senators a year ago when he declared their rebuild to be over. The Adams/Granato plan is to get there organically without making needless public promises that only serve to increase expectations prematurely. I’m certain they know that pressure to succeed is coming and is inevitable.

FWIW, I think there is a reckoning coming for youth hockey and how goalies are coached. The butterfly/flare position and RVH post-play are horrible for hips. Injuries happen in sports; parents, and kids to an extent, know there are risks. For me, there is a bit of an ethical quandary when it is known that specific techniques are the cause of a common injury that requires surgical intervention for young athletes.

I think the plan is to win with a bunch of players on ELCs. It’s just that is is the next batch, not the current batch that we will win with (if all goes according to plan). Fast forward two off-seasons and Thompson, Cozens, Asplund and Samuelsson will be on higher contracts. Dahlin, Power, Joker, Bryson, Krebs, Mitts, Olofsson, Comrie will all need new deals. Not all will be kept, either because they didn’t fully pan out or because we can’t afford them all. But, Quinn and Peterka will still be on their ELCs as will the last four 1st rd picks (Rosen, Savoie, Östlund and Kulich) not to mention all the later picks and possibly Levi and Johnson. It seems clear to me that we have more or less determined that Dahlin, Power, Samuelsson and likely Joker are the future of our top four D. In net we have a cascade of 3 goalies (4 if you count Portillo) who are separated by age who are going to get opportunities to grab the #1 job; Comrie gets 1st shot, then Luukkonen, then Levi. Up front Thompson, Cozens, Mitts, Krebs, Asplund and Olofsson are getting a shot to show they are indispensable along with Tuch and Skinner (who likely can’t be moved). Not all will stick. The pipeline of ELCs upfront is intended to keep the forward group productive through a 6-8 year window where we have Dahlin, Power and Samuelsson along with the final winner of the goaltending derby dominating on the backend. At least, that’s the way the next decade plays out in my mind.

Interesting. I don't see how the Isles get significantly better short or long term by signing Kadri and trading Barzal. I hope they ship Barzal out west.

I would definitely say that he does not see this as year 11. If he is thinking in terms of years at all, then I think he may well see this as year 2.

I think Barzal is rightly viewed as an elite player. If the Isles are looking to add Kadri it is as their 2nd line C behind Barzal. I doubt he would be available unless there are off-ice issues that have them wanting to get rid of him. Even then the asking price would be steep.