Jorcus

My healthy line up in the short term. Skinner Thompson Tuch Benson Cozens Peterka Quinn Mitts Olaf The 4th line is a big question. Right now you have too many left wingers and not enough right, when healthy. KO is the right side, but he needs to go on the Anderson plan. Rosen is not really a 4th line type at the moment. Your looking at Greenway, Robinson, and Girgensons for the 1 leftwing spot. Maybe Robinson was an elaborate rental plan who ends up right back In Columbus. There could be some other swap for a 4th line right winger trading away one of the lefts. I would not break up the Cozens line right now they are going too well and expect scoring more scoring shortly.

I guess I have always been more of a Peterka fan. It's the case of this 2 guys come into together and one is a higher draft pick, that starts like gangbusters in the AHL then things go kind of side ways due to illness and Injury and the number 2 keeps growing and getting better. Peterka was a terror in the 21-22 AHL playoffs while for whatever reason Quinn was floundering around. The only goal he scored was against his own team. Then they both come up and the Cozens, Quinn, Peterka line clicks for a fast hard to handle second line. Quinn was given more opportunities than Peterka, Peterka was viewed as the the 2nd guy again mostly racing for pucks and trying to feed the others. Last year Peterka did have a habit of not having his stick on the ice when around the net or hesitating on the shot. Those habits are gone. When in attack mode puck on stick then off stick. If he is open he shoots. He has also gotten a lot stronger over the summer. I am not trashing Quinn but I have felt for a long time that Peterka has played equal or better. Quinn's return will be interesting. We all hope he goes on an improving path but I would not start him on the second line at the moment. Let him earn his way back up there.

I agree but part of what caused the problem with the scoring was how the lines were set up to start the season. I generally like Granato but I think he made some errors to start the season and then the injuries piled onto the other issues. The problem to start the year was what to do with Benson? What could he handle and should he even be here. Instead of just having him replace Quinn on the left wing of Cozens and Peterka, they tried to protect him buy having him play with Tuch and Thompson Or Casey. in various combinations. It left Cozens on the wing and that is just not working out. I like that line the way it is right now and once Cozens starts finding his shot things should get better. The other issue that contributed to this problem was having Thompson play the penalty kill to start the season. Sure he helped it but I don't see a lot of other number 1 centers around the NHL on the 1st line PK. It sucks up time you could be used 5 on 5 or the power play and you often get hit with pucks. I hope that experiment died with Thompsons injury. I do eventually see the scoring coming back around for this team. I do think barring further injuries I assume the lines would start to resemble what they did last year. Depending on how things work out. Tuch-Thompson-Skinner, Benson-Cozens-Peterka, Quinn-Mittelstadt-Olofsson. Take your pick for line 4. Benson and Quinn could be interchangeable depending on things are going. I know people are going to freak out seeing Olofsson play with Mittlestadt again but he has played at lot more defense then ever before this year. The upside is you would be back to 3 lines if playing well that can score.

Interesting analysis on the forwards. I remember comments by Granato last year about teaching teams/players offense first and then the defense part comes after and more quickly. They obviously tried to work on the D in the offseason and early part of this year, and for awhile it seemed to work as far as cutting down the goals against. Now for a number of reasons that seems to have come apart. I agree the forwards are not coming back to help but the D seems to also have problems clearing the front of the net and at times getting caught deep in the offensive zone. I know it was late in the game but watching Clifton go down behind the opposing goal leaves someone hung out to dry on the way back. Power and Dahlin get caught down there as well. If they were scoring goals like they were last year some of these flaws could be covered up but they just are not right now. Are they caught between an old an new system? That can, and has to change for this team to be any good. It can change in a hurry because there are guys on the team that can score but they have to get at it pretty quick or it's going to be a long season.

To talk about the future of Casey M. you have to keep the current team philosophy in perspective. One thing Don Granato is good about is explaining his view on things. During an interview he commented on the need to develop younger players quicker due to NHL salary cap constraints. Given the Power and Dahlin signings I think going forward they are going to identify who they want for the long term at an early age and hope at the end of the day those end up looking like good deals. Where does that leave Casey? He does one thing extreamly well. He can gain and maintain puck possesion. He might be one of the best in the NHL at doing that. Some times the problem is what comes next. At times he overhandles the puck or worse makes soft backward passes that get picked off and leaves everyone scrambling back to the defensive zone. I will say that there is much less of that this year than there was at this time last year. Many Sabres are good at instinctive east west passing Casey is not one of them. He is much better as a direct down the ice player go get the puck and find an open man. The other thing I would like to see more of is shooting the puck without hesitation. He can't just seem to let one fly without thinking about it. So there is the biggest issue going against him, goal scoring. If you look around the NHL you are not going to find many first or second line centers that don't score in at least once in every 4 games. Tonight will be his 300th game. It's pretty rare that we don't know what a player is with that many games played. He could pop one day and have a 30 goal year but it would probably be a one off. I have to give him credit for the growth in his game but I can't see giving him a big long term contract. Hopefully it won't take that much to keep him around a few more years.

Well let me clarify since I was the one who brought the whole thing up. I was lamenting the fact that we took Sam over Leon because I was expecting that we were going to take Leon. There was a lot of steam on Leon and the talking heads on WGR seemed to be pushing in that direction. At least that's the way I remember it. Having said that, Sam is fine player and he was cursed into going into a bad situation. But think about this, what if we screwed up the tank job and picked higher than second the following year? All our collective Sabre blame and hate would probably have come down on Sam. He kind of got a free pass when Jack came to town. It's possible Leon would have ended up in the same boiling pot with the same result. Not that it's worked out all that great for the Oilers. At the end of the day I don't really think Sam fits with what's going on around here at the moment.

To me he is just a painful reminder that we should have taken Leon Draisaitl.

Don't Freak out if Levi does not knock them dead in Rochester. Amerks give up tons of shots on goal so he sure will get some practice. Defensive structure goes out the window in the AHL sometimes and when you get to lines 3 and 4 it can get scary. As far as the arena goes it's a lot better than Syracuse and some how Vasilevskiy survived. In spite of the Arena Syracuse draws big crowds.