RochesterExpat

In fairness, of the current 25 man roster in Buffalo, Bowen Byram is 4th on the team in playoff experience.

Well Joki had a breakout year and finally looks like a top 4 D (in my opinion) so it’s probably him going out. Sammy was injured and regressed. Makes sense to keep him. How is my GMKA impression?

I'd move Savoie for an average player, frankly. He's not helping the Sabres right now and I'm not even convinced he'll hit the same number of NHL games played that Krebs will. I don't think his game will translate to the NHL. I'd love to be wrong, but I just don't see it.

He was asked in the off-season if he was going to sign a new contract and he stated he would not sign a contract during the season (which was interpreted as him wanting to see the team produce results, but could just be personal for him for whatever reason). It's possible he declined the reported offer out of principle? We don't know what's going through his head and a lot of the media tends to paint things as more dramatic than they really are. The latter is the real issue. We don't know what's really running through his head.

In my eyes Casey is the forward going back to Vancouver who can play in the lineup and the centerpiece has to be Power (1OA pedigree, etc). Add to it the Vancouver contract situation next season with their defense basically all on expiring contracts (except Hughes--Hronek is an RFA) and it makes sense.

They're not going to move him during a contending season. Rutherford even said they weren't making anymore "big" trades when the team is playing well. If he gets traded, it's either during the draft or whenever qualifying offers are due before the 7/1 date when teams could theoretically (they won't) offer sheet. If he really did decline an 8 year / $96m offer, two of Tage, Cozens, Mitts, Sammy, or Power need to be going to Vancouver. Not to mention whatever other picks/prospects it's going to take. I like Pettersson and I think he would be a franchise changing trade, but I'm not sure adding a $12+m / yr player is really worth it considering the percentage of cap allocation. I don't know. That's a difficult one. Pettersson is lethal on the power play, but if you trade Tage for him, we'll run into the same one-trick pony power play we currently have. Cozens and Mitts going to Vancouver destroys the center depth. A forward and a D makes sense to me--especially since five of seven active D contracts on the Canucks expire at the end of this season--but we're already weak on defensive depth. So now you're going to need to game plan for the free agency or find another trade. Eh. It's a fun thought experiment, but it'll never happen. Pettersson + Pettersson for Mittelstadt + Power + Rosen + 2025 2nd. EDIT: Maybe they'll throw in Josh Bloom so the people who were upset we traded him for Stillman can find peace.

It needs siracha for the added magic.

I found out because I got an automated text message from my Sheriff's office this morning letting me know they're aware that AT&T is having an outage.

You may be thinking of last season. Going back to the 2022-23 offseason, UPL trained in Finland with KHL coaches and that was considered rigorous, but it was also his first off-season in like 3 years where he wasn't recovering from an injury. This season he did not enter camp prepared. That was an observation made by numerous people including Marty.

I don't want to rain on the parade, but UPL was the bottom of three goalies on the depth chart at the start of the season. He came in unprepared from the offseason. He was not ready. This isn't revisionist view or some kind of "hot take" on what transpired. Marty himself noted that UPL looked unprepared during camp and preseason. He did not play well until a third of the way through this season. What's to say this isn't the same situation next season? I don't question UPL's talent. I question whether he has a professional mindset.

This is the best sign you, as a GM, did your job well. You’re a contender and we’re not sitting here saying what obvious needs you need to fill at the deadline.

It's a team sport after all.

UPL regressing to the mean.

Yeah, we should let this story die out. Just like the stories about the misspelled alumni names or wearing Chinese knock-off jerseys. Or the stories about coaches not working players during practice. Stories about players in the locker room not preparing during the offseason or doing any kind of pregame warm up. No one is held accountable in this organization from Terry Pegula down. From this team's entry into the NHL in 1970 until 2011, the team missed the playoffs a total of 11 times. This is going to be the 13th consecutive season the team has missed the playoffs. Those are the 13 full seasons since Pegula became the owner. The same owner who said the Sabres "reason for existence will be to win the Stanley Cup." It's been 13 years and the Sabres haven't even come close to sniffing at a cup. The only consolation is that we missed the playoffs by one point last year. Not some 'we dropped game 7 of a hard fought playoff series.' Not some 'our star player was hurt in the conference finals and the team just couldn't pull it together without him.' Just a simple: 'look at how close to squeaking into the playoffs we were!' ***** that. If no one is going to hold the organization accountable, let the few hundred (at the most) fans who were chanting to fire the coach do it. If the players want to skirt accountability that bad by rallying around a coach who can't figure out how to fix a power play or get his players motivated to play the first 20 minutes of the game every night, then ***** the players too. The players should want to win more than anything else. If they think the issue is the fans and not the coaching or their own attitudes, ***** them. But most of all, ***** Terry Pegula and the absolute embarrassment of a sports franchise that he created. How someone can own a business and not hold those under him accountable is beyond me. Especially not when it's as simple as a sports franchise where you have one clear goal: winning. These are the people who represent him. We should be concerned that Pegula is apparently comfortable with this being his representation. Thirteen years. 965 games and counting. Not a single playoff game. Just a decade of incompetence and embarrassment. Thirteen years with no accountability. So, yeah, we should let bygones be bygones and permit this story to die out too. Just like all the others. I'm sure the Buffalo Media will happily let it die and then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming of Brian 'Baghdad Bob' Duffer telling us how great he is for quitting twitter and how young and talented the team is.

You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. https://www.nbcsports.com/nhl/news/the-leafs-didnt-salute-their-fans-last-night-so-thats-a-thing-now

Because he doesn’t yell at them enough.

Vasilevsky has let in 9 tonight so far.

We laid a few engineers off earlier this week following layoffs at the end of last year. It's not fun at all. Seems a lot of companies overextended during the period of low interest rates and the expected returns never materialized. This is a consequence of that.

The point is to make the playoffs. Missing the playoffs so your goalie can “develop” is unacceptable at this point for the franchise. GMKA made a bad bet and he lost the season as a result.

"The Sabres used to suck. They still do, but they used to too." ~ Mitch Hedberg, probably

It's also harder to notice defensive players than offensive. I watch AHL.tv and the camera work... needs work. Novikov definitely slumped for a stretch after a pretty noticeable start, but he's been pretty steady as of late. His point totals aren't bad for an AHL rookie d-man at 35 GP, 1G, 12A, 13P. I know +/- may be a pretty garbage stat, but the only active D with positive +/- are Novikov at +12 and his current D partners, Metsa (+6 / 23GP) and Laaouan (+1, 1GP). Novikov leads the entire team in the stat at +12 and the next closest is a multiway tie at +6. Of course, only 6 active skaters on the Amerks are above zero, but that's a different issue. To go back to my bit about his utilization, he's not shooting nearly as much as the other D guys and his shots-per-game was higher in the KHL. That's definitely part of the reason for the lone goal in 35 games. Given the struggle he had with the culture shock of moving here, I think they will choose to keep him in Rochester and it would be understandable why. If he gets an NHL look, I would guess it is during a decently long home stretch. We have a four game home stretch starting tomorrow and there's the five game stretch from 3/27 to 4/5. Either of those would make sense to me. It's also possible they don't want to call him because Rochester is contending for a playoff spot and they'd rather have him experience that.

The 'skating issues' is a holdover from his scouting report pre-draft (2022) that said he was "slow" and clearly written by someone who spent five minutes watching tape from one game and didn't do even basic research. As I said in one of the many prospect threads during the off-season, the KHL tracks on-ice skating speed. Novikov was the fastest defenseman on the ice for either team (both top speed and average speed) for the majority of games he played in during the 2022-2023 season. In multiple games, he was straight-up the fastest skater on the ice for either team (top speed, not average). He was the only defenseman to repeat achieving the top game speed across the entire KHL for the full season as far as I could tell. That's wild. It's also worth noting that you can't maintain a high average speed if you don't know how to be agile and use your curves as well. It's one thing if he was always the fastest skater, but it's another entirely to average as the highest skater (note: the average is among D-men only--he never had the highest average speed in any game but neither did any defenseman in any game as far as I could tell and that makes some sense). The margins for being an outlier on speed isn't enough that posting the fastest speed is going to just automatically raise your average to the highest as well. You need to continue moving and keep your momentum in order to do that. I don't think his speed has been utilized as effectively in Rochester so this misguided perception continues to exist. He hasn't joined the rush as often as he did in the KHL or during prospect challenge/camp. It's not to say he isn't willing to join, but he tends to side more defensively in play. I think this is by design from the coaches who are more focused on positioning with him than maybe other defensemen on the team. Likely because of his status as an NA rookie. Lastly, it's worth mentioning that he's openly talked about how difficult the move to Rochester has been for him and his wife. We sometimes forget these are 20 year old kids moving 5,000 miles away from family and friends to a place with a completely different culture and language. Seth Appert talked about it as well and said that Novikov and his wife had a bit of a culture shock, but they're adjusting well now.

We've done jokeception at this point. We're in too deep.

I’ve got some bandwidth so I’d like to deep dive on the subject of overused Sabres buzzwords. Lots to unpack here so let’s drill down. ”The future is bright in Buffalo.” ”If we can pull off a [previous number + 1] streak, we’ll be back in the playoffs.”