Jorcus

The bigger question is who are you replacing on the roster? It's fine to trade picks but NHL rosters are very limiting in movement so you have to get rid of people if you go that route. Some candidates a easy targets. Quinn is probably at the top, Sammy is on a lot of peoples list. But beyond that if you want vets who are you replacing in the top 6? The youngest candidates are Kulich and Benson. They are not untouchable but I can just see the the angst now if Benson gets traded for a vet. Peterka would be the next candidate or McLeod. Thompson, Tuch, Zucker, Norris and Greenway are most likely not going anywhere because of age or the new contracts. The other guys are 4th liners except maybe Krebs. We have a lot of assets but roster players have to go. Once you get by the 1st one or 2 the questions about who get tougher.

I guess this is what happens when you have chat bot do your work for you.

Any one notice on the Sabres.com site they gave him an F grade? Pretty sure it's a mistake but kind of a bad look.

I always thought RJ would have made a great race caller because he had a way of accelerating his voice to the action. Good luck with your horse.

That is a pretty amazing fact because all in all Secretariat was not a great sire. What helped things out was that people lined up the best dam's they had to bred to him. Secretariat did not produce many stake winning horses but a number of the fillies he produced went on to foal very good horses. Storm Cat and AP Indy were some of the most influential sires in American racing. They trace back to fillies with Secretariat as a sire.

Probably the most famous horse with a Buffalo connection was Arazi. He was bred by Ralph Wilson and sold at auction as a weanling. Back in that time in US racing we had very few grass races for 2 year old horses and being a precious sort he was sent to France to race on the Turf. He did so well they brought him over for the Breeders cup Juvenile on dirt in 1991. They did not have 2yo Breeders cup races on the grass back then. Still he was favored going into the race. Tom Durkin who is the Rick Jeanneret of race callers belted out one of his most famous calls during this race. This is pretty much his Mayday call.

Say what you want about the penalty, I thought it was legit. The Avs had plenty of chances to take that game. They did not score on the 4 min. advantage in the 1st and messed up the one they got in the third. Blackwood slid too far for the wrap around goal. Otter made key saves. Avs got no one to blame but themselves. The huge amount of roster turnover they had this year had to play a role. You can appreciate the all in attempt to win the cup but it backfired. A lot of the in season pickups, Nelson, Coyle, Lindgren and even Necas did not come through in the playoffs. They could have kept Rantanen and let him walk after the playoffs for nothing. Maybe they would have walked away with the cup. Who knows what would have happened if Dallas did not go get Rantanen. Maybe it would have worked out for the Avs. I read the Avs boards every so often and that fan base is going crazy on management right now even though most of them liked the Rantanen trade. They never thought it would come back to haunt them. I thought we were a harsh bunch but every fan base is demanding

Rat says take that.

I am a big fan of horse racing. I am not all in like I used to be. Computerized wagering has changed the betting aspect so much that I am not playing as much as I used to. Very hard to find overlays these days. Wagering in Kentucky seems to be particularly bad. It's great sport, you learn something everyday.

Komarov and Brannstrom are very different players. Komorov looks like a Vulture on skates. He likes to hit and he will clear the space around the net. Brannstrom is smaller but is faster and better with his stick He is also more experienced being 4 years older. Speaking of injuries I wonder what happened to Conor Sheary. The Crunch leading scorer was missing and the help from Tampa, Geekie and Crozier were not enough against the Amerks.

No one smashes a stick like Markstrom. That was not even one of his better ones. I think the guy is a wannabe axe murder.

Everybody except Zucker.

Yes the numbers do not come down by playing more games. They only go up. With 23 more games Norris would most likely added enough 20 -22 mph and 18 -20 mph speed bursts to pass or get close to McLoud's numbers in those categories.

Keep in mind the numbers are not normalized for games played or ice time. McLoud played 79 games and Norris played 56. If you added 23 games to Norris totals they would be pretty similar numbers.

How the Sabres finished up on NHL edge. B50 means below 50 % a number is compared to the rest of the league. Other than top speed the comparison is how many times a player skated that fast in MPH. This is a percentile comparison so Byram is in the 91st percentile in terms of the number of times he skated faster than 22 MPH. Top Speed 22+ 20-22 18-20 Benson b50 b50 b50 63 Docker b50 b50 b50 b50 Bryson b50 b50 59 52 Byram 78 91 91 93 Clifton 65 62 61 61 Dahlin 56 B50 70 89 Greenway B50 B50 B50 B50 Kozak 66 64 B50 B50 Krebs 67 64 80 92 Kulich B50 71 83 82 Lafferty 78 88 64 B50 Malenstyn 76 76 77 58 McLeod 82 87 96 99 Norris 98 94 90 78 Peterka 56 71 87 87 Power B50 B50 80 92 Quinn B50 B50 53 62 Sammy 81 88 61 65 Thompson 76 64 79 93 Tuch 65 64 85 78 Zucker 56 51 B50 B50

At the bottom of the data set it shows that Brandan Wadlow used the NHL edge information to generate that report. It will not be in that format on NHL edge. NHL edge does not like to embarrass anyone so if you are below 50% compared to the rest of the NHL they just state that as a comparison. The numbers are there but the comparisons are not for the lower half of the league.

Yes there are some questions about how this data is generated. The main one is how far do you have to skate before a it is recorded as a speed burst? I assume it is close to half the ice. You have to skate unimpeded to generate a good time. One thing to note is they don't normalize for ice time so say your comparing Kozak to Quinn the number of speed bursts will be higher if you have more opportunities to record them. These recordings seem to favor larger long stride players who cover more ground going end to end.

https://edge.nhl.com/en/team/20242025-regular-BUF Over all team stats for the year vs. other teams Top speed below 50th percentile 22 mph plus bursts below 50th percentile 20-22 mph bursts 70th percentile 18-20 mph bursts 96th percentile Top speed is kind of a one off event so it does not mean a whole lot. The league average for 22 mph bursts is 80 times for the whole season we had 61. Thats not that big a deal. As this points out what we do is skate fast often. If you look through the individual stats the speed is in our forward group.

That had to be the longest 2nd period I ever remember. Even before the fight it was really dragging. Syracuse plays a very trappy game and the Amerks were having a lot of trouble with it. Once Kulich blasted home the Power play goal The Crunch had to open up a bit and the Amerks had more ice to work with. To the Amerks credit even though they gave up a lot of shots few were high danger and it's not like either team was giving up breakaways. Levi was good not to give up any soft ones. Crunch had one open net post hit when the got behind Levi but that was it. Amerks needed to clean up own zone exits and offensive zone entries. Took too many off side plays. Still they can skate circles around the Crunch when they can avoid the checks. Hope they keep rolling.

Some random comments about the locker cleanout pressers last week. The newer players seemed much more open, upbeat, and analytical about the season than many of the existing Sabres. I guess the team has not beat it out of them yet. Zucker, Byram, and McCloud all gave open dialog. Tuch and Thompson were some what depressed but made insightful comments. You never really get much out of Dahlin. Power was miserable just did not want to answer questions. Quinn was not a lot better. Peterka spent most of the interview hydrating himself and watching the clock for a flight out of town. Greenway is always spacey in interviews, not a whole lot to say. Sammy was pretty dour but at least he was reflective about his season and where he was during certain periods of it. Maybe I am reading too much into this but I wonder if the Byram trade was as much about offloading Mitts than wanting Byram. I could see that they might not have wanted to pay Casey the money it was going to take to keep him around so when shopping the Byram trade was the best value they came up with. Well they put off the problem until this year and I just think push come to shove if Adams has to chose between Byram and Power he going to choose Power. Another thing that struck me is that they still think Ryan Johnson is the best defensive prospect they have in Rochester, or at least the most NHL ready. The Rochester coaches talk that way as well so maybe he is. The problem is he is just another version of a mobile puck moving defenseman who probably is going to have trouble clearing the front of the net. So what are we going to do with him? I hope they don't see him as a replacement for Byram or Power.

He was close to being the hero in game 2 before he turned into the scapegoat. He had a wrister going into the top corner with a minute left before Stolarz made a long stretch with the glove to save it. He got turned around in overtime to let Domi get that winning goal in. If nothing else he seems to be skating faster. Toronto is playing defense first. They do not give up many good looks. It's been like that for awhile. Like most players Cozens is pretty much the same guy who left here.

I don't like that Greenway contract at all. Even without the injuries it seems like a 4M per year for a third to 4th line player might not be the best option.

"And, according to multiple veteran players, the frustration of losing led to some griping over factors that were out of their control." When I think about this statement there are only a handful of current veteran Sabres who could make these statements. Thompson, Tuch, or Dahlin are the obvious 3. Beyond that it would be hard to call many of the players veterans that were here last year to comment about the Levi, Benson and Johnson group. I guess Greenway Clifton or Krebs might be considered veterans. Then there is last year vs this year so some sources may be mixed. A few things to note though. It sounds like in 2 cases the players were being heard about their concerns. Levi and Johnson got sent down. Maybe Benson would of gone back to Jr's if Quinn did not get hurt again. In any case they started to bring players in. The second issue was about the defensive structure this year. I think the players convinced Lindy to go back to the zone defense that Granato used in he second half of last year. We saw a lot more boxing in and less attack and race toward the end of the year. I would take those as positive developments. Now if they can only fix that stupid power play.

No tall buildings and cook your own food, Stay safe Dom.

Yes it would be about Salary cap and I agree that straight up not an even trade. Can't carry a long term 6.1 million guy and keep all our own I don't think.