RochesterExpat

As much as I’d like to see Cozens at center, it’s worth mentioning he played left wing this year at the World Championship on a line with DuBois at center and Batherson on right. The line absolutely dominated the tournament and competition.

I am deeply offended that you called Zemgus 'NHL All Star' Girgensons a JAG. How dare you disparage the Latvian Locomotive like that? You seem to forget in the 2019-2020 season he finished 5th(!) on the team in scoring. He's the only player that didn't have a down season in 2020-2021. Come on, what JAGs have songs in their honor??? On a serious note, he's a role player and he plays that role well. Is he a flashy, high-powered offensive weapon? Not in the least. But, for forwards, he was second only to John Hayden in hits. He was third in blocked shots by a forward. His FO% was second best among centers or first if we want to pretend Cody Eakin wasn't here. There is also something to be said about leadership.

I'm the same. I really like him. He's a good role player and complimentary piece to whatever line he is on. I think/hope he's going to be a core piece of Buffalo for years to come and will be one of those guys that, when we look back on the "team of the 20s," he's going to be remembered as this team's Jochen Hecht.

I want a fourth option: "Gets time in Buffalo (10-20 games) and plays average to slightly-above-average for an NHL goalie, but is inconsistent in Rochester and we are still asking if he's NHL ready next year."

My guess is he slides in after the first injury, plays well and is traded at the trade deadline.

I'd guess: Comrie - 45 games with a performance that places him around 15th for starting goalies in the NHL Anderson - 20 games with a below average performance UPL - 17 games. Average numbers, but still everyone doubts his ability to play at the level of the NHL because his AHL numbers will be all over the place. Subban - Sings the anthem in Buffalo but doesn't start a game. That being said, if there is one thing I have learned from the NHL it's that predicting goalie performance is some kind of divination that's about as accurate as water dowsing so Subban will probably end up winning the Vezina.

Sova would need to be signed before the official start of the season, correct? Otherwise he re-enters the draft as an over-ager, right?

Sorry, I I didn't mean to suggest teams were going to play it like that, just that it's mathematically better to miss the playoffs and be under 11th than it is it just barely miss (as happened to Vegas and Vancouver). That was poorly written. My point was more that we now see teams that are on the fringe of the playoffs turning into sellers and fewer fringe teams turning into buyers (unless the GM feels his job is in jeopardy). That helps lead to point consolidation.

Point inflation exists. The east was essentially class warfare last season between the contenders and the rebuilders. Hence why the point disparity was so significant. Unfortunately, this point consolidation is a natural evolution of the draft and draft lottery. If you are going to miss the playoffs or be a fringe team at best, you’re better off just terribly underperforming. Why play for a wild card spot when you can get a higher draft pick instead? None of the wildcard teams made it out of the first round last season, but as a result of playing in the playoffs, they removed themselves from the draft lottery. Since you can only jump 10 spots now, it’s best to finish inside 11th place.

I may have phrased things a bit confusingly. Seth Jarvis returned following the 2020 draft. Kozak was drafted in 2021. As @LGR4GM already said, half of Kozak's points in his draft year season (2020-2021) came on the powerplay where he played alongside Jarvis. Kozak signed his contract at the one year mark instead of the two year mark which may be confusing you as well since that's pretty remarkable. I did some quick research. Since 2015, it looks like only 6 Canadian junior players drafted in the seventh round have signed contracts after D+1 and four of those were over-agers who weren't eligible to go back to the Juniors. Even the Europeans who signed at D+1 from the 7th round were typically over-agers (Nutivaara, for example).

This is a really good question and I did a bit of digging because I was curious. The shortened season for his draft year certainly affected him as he started the season injured. The WHL played a 24 game season in his draft year. He played in only 18 games (due to the aforementioned injury) and was at 11 points (3G, 8A) despite playing with the previous year 13OA draft pick, Seth Jarvis. This followed his rookie WHL season where he played 63 games with 29 points (13G, 16A). 2019-2020 pace: .46 PPG 2020-2021 pace: .61 PPG (once again: despite playing with Seth Jarvis) He started the season slow but started to pick it up after game 5. If he had 44 more games to his season, I'd guess, conservatively, he'd have added another 35 points bringing his PPG pace to .74. That places him squarely in the 3rd - 5th rounds of the draft based on similar WHL players with similar development tracks. Obviously size, speed, coaching feedback, etc. all influence where players end up falling in that range, but as a general rule that's accurate. I would make the argument that NHL scouts would be more down on him because his point production would be (theoretically) influenced by playing with Seth Jarvis. The old "he's only good because he was with Matthews/Crosby/etc" argument. His height/weight are good for an 18 year old, but not good enough to up his draft position relative to his peers. No clue on coaching feedback and, while he's a fast skater, he's not Steve McQueen. I'd guess he'd have gone in 4th or 5th rounds. If he played the full season healthy he might have gone in the third depending on how down scouts were on him for playing with a 1st round pick.

I'll be honest, I don't really follow the Bills, but I did tune into this game and... holy hell.

On this note, after Slafkovsky played in two of three games and only recorded the one assist against Buffalo, while also losing the puck multiple times... the Montreal media is already starting to turn on him already based on two scrimmages. That's not fun for him. Twitter + Google Translate is pretty interesting right now.

Game 1: Zero Points Game 2: One Goal. Game 3: Two Goals. I do not believe he had any assists.

It was after the first period.

Savoie with a beautiful shot.

Kisakov set that up beautifully.

Rosen is playing on a whole other level from the first period of the first game.

He's settled in and seems to be more in control. First period was shaky. I cursed him although that was a hell of a shot.

It's not great but it's good enough. The replays can come at weird times during the play. Sometimes the audio is off. That being said, if you want to follow the kids in Rochester, it's worth it.

Kozak with a nice one. Lindgren with a great read before that.

I spent half of October and November of last year on Reddit defending JJ from the haters and saying to give him time. He took quite a while to adjust.

Not sure why but he reminds me of Will Borgen, albeit with a better passing ability.

😅