Jorcus

This is not a national ESPN game. Hulu shows a few games each week that are also on on ESPN+. Watching hockey on Hulu is a bit wonky. The video will trail the voice at times so I have to back out of the stream and go back in to get it synched again.

It's a very insightful article and lines up with the Sabres philosophy of a few years ago during the flat cap era of the NHL. I remember Don Granato talking about how they had to develop players quicker because the salary cap was going make it harder to keep good older players. Adams talked about building a pipeline of talent because in the opinion of that time you were going to have to replace players that you lost to free agency. Add in the loss of revenue to having a crappy team, small market and Covid you pretty much can explain where we are. The article does not touch on one failure of bringing up the prospects too soon and that is loss of eligibility years and control of the contract. A lot of players on this team played games in the NHL a year before they needed to which affects waivers and contracts. In other words to some extent the opposite happened where they have higher numbers of RFA contracts that could end up forcing trades although we are nowhere near that point yet. As far as the disconnect part goes I think that is real. I think they have a bias toward certain players in this org. and are trying to force them to be good until they guy below them finally just outplays them to the point they are going to give in. Peterka vs Quinn, Levi vs UPL, Johnson vs Novikov. There is no absolute balance to having old players vs young. The Predators are the oldest most experienced hockey team in the NHL yet they are no better off than we are right now.

Counter productive. Not going to sign.

Joker certainly has some value. As far as the trade goes it is not as lopsided as it seems. Kakko has become a very slow player on a team that is full of slow players. I am not sure what Seattle thinks they can do with him. Borgen at least gives the Rangers more back end speed. It will be interesting to see if Kakko improves out west but I think for the most of his NHL life he will be a third line winger mostly playing on the defense side of the ice.

I won't say everything Adams has done is bad. There was a plan and he put it in motion. The bottom line is he is too married to his players and plan even when it all goes south. The team needs a new set of eyes and an overall vision reset. There is a lot to work with talent wise. At least enough to be respectable but it comes down to having a system to maximize the talent that is here and shore up the weak points. The hiring of Ruff is turning into a big mistake. I can't honestly say I know what his offensive game plan is but no way is it working. On defense they want to hurry out of the zone. When they have 3 good puck moving D men I can see why but it just has not worked. The down side is all this hurry motion tires the team out. Your lucky to get 30 min of good game out of this group. They have to be more efficient. Ruff took the thing that was working well in the second half of last year and broke it. He has also made the power play worse. If there was one thing that needed fixing It was that. The head coach is in charge of the power play not Appert, he just puts in what the coach wants. I blame the owner a lot less than most. A lot of people say's he meddles but other than approving massive money outlays does anyone really know if he is telling the GM and coach what to do? At the end of the day though he is the only one who can change the situation so you can blame him for that. This comes down to utilization. It's what Granato for the most part was good at. Find out what a player can do well and let him do it. I think Lindy is trying to make some of these players into something they are not to fit a system. There are some players that are not as good as we think they are because they can only do certain things. Maybe Lindy can change players into something else. It seems like he has lost the room before he has even started. I don't know if the the assistant coaches are bad or good but It's up to the head coach and GM to decide so they are the ones to blame if it's not working. If the power play was good last year Granato would have been the Sabres coach to start the season. It has to be fixed or the the black hole of this team will just suck more coaches and player's into it. Goaltending was fine under the Granato system at 2nd half of last year. There was a style of defense that boxed out, allowed one shot from outside then cleared all rebounds mostly to the corners where puck possession could be obtained then worked it's way out of the zone. With the hurry out of the zone offense they are giving up a lot of rush chances on turnovers entering the other zone where the players are in not in position to cover. They give up too many rebounds. Some of what made UPL better was Granato's system. Maybe those goaltenders are not special but they can be effective.

It's an interesting Idea and one of the few trades that could actually happen. If Vancouver is going to move him they have to do it this year because the No Movement Clause kicks in next year. We would inherit that along with the 11.5 M salary for 7 more years. I don't think we would fork over Cozens and Byram. Cozens plus might make more sense because of the salary exchange.

Here is a list of people you probably can not get with that pick. or pick and package. We are so screwed the only way to get out of it is keep drafting until there is so much talent on the ice a hamster could coach them. https://www.prohockeyrumors.com/2024/07/players-with-no-move-no-trade-clauses-in-2024-25.html

According to Paul Hamilton the head coach designs the power play, the assistant coach implements it. We can blame Appert but it's Lindy's job to decide who is on it and how it is designed. A lot of things on this team are no better or worse under Lindy than they were under Granato. The good defense that Granato set up during the second half of last year is gone. The Power play is no better. The PK is about the same. No one knows who they are playing with from shift to shift. Who is playing better this year than they did when healthy under Granato? Not that I was totally against Granato getting replaced but the main thing that got him fired was the bad power play and somehow it seems worse than what it was. Talent wise the team is probably a bit better up and down the line up as last year so it's not like we can blame that on the regression. Injuries? Sure missing Dahlin has hut but Thompson, Tuch and Cozens were all playing hurt last year. Maybe come January the team does a U turn like last year but I just don't see it coming. Instead of building upon what was working, the new coach comes in and starts over. Whatever happens this team goes nowhere until that power play gets fixed.

Dustin Tokarski starts for Carolina tonight.

According to Daily Face off Levi gets the goal today.

The trouble is there are no proven number 2 centers you can trade for that are much if any better than Cozens is even in his current extended funk. There are about 8 that are a clear up grade at the position but you are not getting them or they are too old to get. The old guys are Matt Duchene 33, Brock Nelson 33, Evgeni Malkin, 38, John Tavares, 34,. The younger guys who you are not going to pry away are Jack Hughes 23, Logan Cooley 20 and Tim Stutzle 22. The middle age guys Sam Bennett 28, Anthony Cirelli 25 just are not going anywhere. Other than going after Pius Suter (pending UFA) or Pierre Luc Dubois (8.5M) long term. What are you going to do. Everyone says get somebody but I have not seen a realistic idea than makes sense.

One thing you notice when watchin this and other highlight videos is that he scores most of his goals when he is skating toward the net and shooting. He is not a tip in / rebound scoring type. Mostly a rush player. At least so far.

I have noticed a lot of the positioning issues at times. It was bad in the first few games. As the lines settled in it got cleaned up but during this streak it got bad to very bad again. Two players where one should be or worse smashing into each other. A few things to blame it on. Guy's not understanding the system, constant line shuffles, new players in the line up. or some players just not being part of the system. It's probably a little bit of all. I went from a coach who never changed his lines to a coach who will not settle on any line. There has to be a middle some place.

So not only are we losing our players to Palm trees we are now losing our posters?

Levi only gives up 1 goal against 1st place Laval last night. 3-1 Amerks win. They even got a rare power play goal.

I often look at the number of games a drafted player plays in the NHL. If a guy plays 500 or more NHL games in general you have made a good pick. For the most part once you get past the top 10 or 12 players in any draft the odds of someone playing that many games goes down pretty quick. You do want to make that top dozen pick to be a very good player. They are not always, and they are not always a fit for your team. People overestimate what you are going to get out of any draft. If you get 2 functional NHL players out of a draft you are on par or better than most other teams.

Oilers Make the claim.

Given the choices of all those combos I would take number 7. I hate using Krebs with Cozens and Benson. I don't like Krebs on any of the top 2 lines right now. He is a good for checker and can cycle well with the third or 4th lines but he is not a great passer and they never seem to know exactly where is going to be when they try to pass it to him. Benson can be a little erratic positionally as well but he is starting to develop chemistry with Cozens and Benson can back check well which helps. If there are no better options I will take Yuri on the right wing because he is strong enough and fast enough to get back and play D.

Lots of AHL players come up and play well for a few games then the reality of going against the top players in the world night after night sets in. By 10 games in they often become liabilities in the line up. Kulich has more speed skill and is more NHL ready than Kozak. I don't know why they sat him last game. I guess it was because Greenway came back and Lindy did not want to change the 4th line. As far as Johnson goes that was a big mistake putting him on the first pair if at all in the line up. If they want him to play they have to ease him in but I think he may be the third best D man in Rochester right now so I would have chosen Rathbone or Nikita depending on what was needed.

And the Power Play is even worse. at 14.5% vs 16.6% for all of last year. When is someone going to fix this?

I took the exercise of looking at every current second line center listed in the NHL per Daily Face Off. By the way Cozens is listed on the 3rd line wing so they must update this quickly. Just to indicate how tough this position is to fill Cozens has scored more goals than 16 other second line centers and is tied with 1 other. His points are lower than most, but he is also younger than most of them. There are 6 to 8 second line centers that a clearly better than him in scoring and talent, looking at scoring and NHL edge he is equal some and better than many. The shooting percentage holds him down the most. I will repeat it is a hard position to fill.

I think I am a little mis quoted or misunderstood. I did not indicate Benson quitting on play. It was in reference to the goal on Saturday where Cozens became immobile, which I am pretty sure was due to time on ice. It was the goal where Benson was chasing the puck carrier around the zone. The internet looks at one play and instantly Cozens is now a quitter. Forget all the back checking Cozens does to cover other mistakes made on this team. A quitter would not bother. Cozens make plenty of mistakes. He gets tied up in the O zone he misses assignments but if he is not making a play it's because he physically can not at that moment. I would not tag him or most players on this team as quitters. At least not yet.

It's a very difficult position to replace. As far as the cap space goes maybe he is not earning all of it right now but it's not as if that salary is blocking this team from bringing someone else in with the cap space we have. There are very few plays he has quit on. The play in question on Saturday was broken down by mjd1001 which pointed to Benson as being a problem among the issues of not getting off the ice when they should have as well as a Utah player coming unguarded into the zone. Yes he makes plenty of mistakes but I would not lay not trying or quitting on Cozens. Be careful what you wish for.

How Quinn has scored goals in the past is either shooting from the dots or hanging on the side of the net. Just watched his Amerk highlights and his 22-23 Sabres season highlights. He just not a guy who has been setting screens and tipping on shots. He was good on the rush and can feed players that way. You have to wonder why the Peterka, Cozens, Quinn line was so good in 22-23 but not effective the times they were together this year. They may have been the 3rd line that year and faced less attention than they do as a second line. There is good hockey in those guys someplace.

In Quinn's case it is logistical. At the beginning of the year they put together a roster where only 1 player could realistically be moved down and that was Levi. You can try to have him work through his problems or find a trade of disappointments, where he gets swapped for another guy who was supposed to be good but is not performing. You ask why coaches like Cozens? Adams kind of answered it when he said player development is not linear. They have ups and downs and they feel Cozens has an upside in him. I tend to think they are right on Cozens. You have often pointed out defensive lapses and positional issues that plague his game. Those are things that can be fixed. Cozens brings a lot of raw talent to the table. Go look at his skating and shoot speed on NHL edge. He is not quite where Thompson is but other than the goal percentage his metrics are good. Now go look at Quinn. Those metrics have never been very good. His skating is marginal and his shot speed is pretty weak. Cozens plays all situations and is an aggressive player. coaches like that. I don't thinks he is helping the power play at all but it doesn't mean he isn't out there trying hard most nights and most shifts. This year he has had almost no stability of who is on his wings and he is normally the oldest guy on the line. He needs a Tuch like player to play with to help his playmaking. He is starting to gel with Benson but with Peterka on the other wing you don't have a lot of size to help fight off the defensemen that is not a good line to have in the D zone. Benson also does not have good skating or shot speed metrics on NHL edge. Unlike Quinn he makes the most of what he does have. He has a lot of hustle in his game and often finds the right places to be. He is good along the walls, he steals pucks and sneaks his way into the front of the net. Cozens fights his way to the front of the net. I think the one thing that would help Cozens is to not to get caught up in physical engagements in the O zone as often as he does. He gets into wrestling matches that tie him up when the puck goes back the other way. At any rate Cozens is a much harder player to replace.