IKnowPhysics

Kids these days. Could be weather related as mentioned previously. I'd expect the team to leave tonight for @Calgary tomorrow night.

I eyeballed his usage and corsi whathaveyou. It's ok, not great. Carter's playing tough minutes in LA, but it's not like Richards is sheltered a lot or anything.

Speaking of which, has the link for the chat room been gone for a while, or is that a new "feature?"

SabreSpace After Hours

I saw. A little sharper, IMO. Could experiment with making the inner text of the badges blue.

As Big Daddy Kane once rapped, "Tankin' ain't easy."

Does the cap penalty transfer to us if he retires as a Sabre, or does it still screw LA? I'm not really that interested. Maybe I would be if his contract were 2-3 years. Or if his cap hit were less than $4M or so. Being in 30th place, we also get first crack, correct?

The page numbers listed under the thread titles could use some more contrast from the background. I know they highlight (darker/more contrast) when moused over, but they're difficult to pick up without that, especially with speed. And on a forum where we often several 10+ page threads, it's handy to have those clickable page numbers readily visible and accessible. Ghosting the thread starter info and the page numbers makes the list of threads cleaner looking, but at a slight cost of readability and efficiency. Pic:

Eventually could be useful in video review. But for now, it's extra fun.

It'd be neat if the Amerks got out to Southern California once in a while.

> Successful turnaround from tank depends on developing players we draft. > Shits on new coaching staff, claiming players should already have ability.

Or because he's gay or straight or bi and nobody cares, and what's even funnier is saying that someone who clearly doesn't have AIDS does, in fact, have AIDS. For me, the humor's in the absurdity. I mean, seriously, who gets AIDS in the FACE?

Also, there's this Player Chemistry thing. You can mouse over it and it does some stuff. Buffalo's been the Stafford/Ennis/Moulson/Gigrensens show.

Face aids.

I would definitely take on Hossa and Sharp. A 60 point right wing and a 75 point left wing. Good veteran guys. Still productive, still competitive. Stick that in your McEichel and smoke it. That's the way to get these young centers to lead the team.

Virre Reino?

Haha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burn_centers_in_the_United_States

Agreed. There will likely be no way to prove that we're tanking. That's part of the genius of Murray, Black, and in a major way, Regier. Who doesn't do the Vanek trade if you're a Buffalo GM? Or the Miller trade. Or sell Pominville high. There goes the core. There go the wins. Here come the draft picks. Bringing McDavid in with the Otters to play is over the top hilarity circus show ######, but still not in the realm of league reprimand. They've got all of the plausible deniability they need. And the league changed the draft odds, just to ###### with us anyways.

Tavares and Hodgson, and many others, have identified skating as an area for significant improvement.

Exactly right. I hadn't really noticed this until I looked at Tatar and Nyquist, and said, well ######, they're breaking the NHLe numbers... why? They're earning and getting better minutes. Well, top picks also get better minutes...so let's look at them separately. I personally think he hasn't been given a square opportunity to play in favorable situations with favorable minutes. That would -and has- really limit his offensive output. That's why I haven't given up on him, and probably won't until I see more. That said, there might be reasons why coaches don't play him this way- maybe he hasn't earned his opportunities yet. You're right. Most top picks go to garbage teams. And that sets the statistical stage for what kinds of players these picks play with. But despite the Sabres only trailing by a few points, some of the analytics are looking historically bad for us right now, especially some of the points-related stats. For example, we're scoring 1.77 goals per game. The next lowest goals per game since 2005 over a season was about 2.30 (this doesn't count NJ in 2010-11 when they only scored 2.08, but finished 23rd in points, or Minnesota in 2011-12 when they finished with 2.02 at 24th). That's enormous- we're 23% lower in scoring than the lowest scoring teams that finished bottom five over the past 11 years. It's hard to say what's going to happen next year, because there's so many factors. Top picks go to bad teams and often play well. But no recent team has been this bad. Do we have the forwards to help the youngsters? Certainly not entirely, not yet. Will coaching usage help or hinder these kids? Maybe expectations of winning next season force Ted Nolan to play the veterans in the leading roles, diminishing the rookie stats, making it initially seem like the tank was all for ######. Maybe the rookies are so good, they actually carry the team with whatever veterans we get, and start to turn up the wins. This tank business is an enormous, enormous ###### crap shoot. It's unprecedented how all-in this team is for the draft, and either way this whole thing goes, it'll be studied by professional sports managers all over the world for quite a long time. And I'm excited about it. It's ###### like this that leaves the biggest question marks for me. Reinhart should be capable of scoring somewhere between 43-55 points. But that'd pretty much be leading this year's team. Can he be the leading scorer of an NHL team his first full year? ** What personnel does he need around him to do this? Veterans? Or another #1-2 overall rookie centerman in McEichel? **John Tavares did this in 2009. Joined the Islanders and lead them with 54 points. This was 22% above NHLe expectations. So that's encouraging. Sort of. The Islanders didn't lift themselves out of the bottom half of the league until this year. Other rookie players to lead their teams in points: Crosby, 60% above NHLe Kane, 21% above NHLe Hall was close (1 point behind), 19% above NHLe McDavid is right up there with Crosby and Kane, in terms of points per game in juniors. If anyone can do it this decade, he can. Eichel's playing somewhere between Drouin and Kane. It's possible Eichel could lead a team in points, but it doesn't seem likely, from what I'm seeing in the history books. It seems like it'd be a stretch for Reinhart to lead an NHL team in points.

Let's be a little careful. There's nothing here proving that you're wrong. These stats show that top prospects can, but don't always, exceed expectations. Possible real life reasons for this may include quality linemates, good usage, lots of powerplay time, lots of sheltered minutes, etc. Prospects at the very top appear to excel statistically more than what is predicted by NHL equivalency, because they seem to get better-than-average opportunities and thrive in them. If you took a top player, surrounded him with AHL talent, and made him play against NHLers, he wouldn't have a good opportunity to thrive and beat expectations. In fact, he'd probably struggle to meet expectations. The math we've done here only describes what happens when you plug rookies into an average rookie situation. It also happens to show that excellent rookies in excellent situations often, but not always, exceed normal expectation. If you get Reinhart and McDavid and Eichel all playing together in a top six or nine, you'll definitely need some skilled veteran support on and off the ice to keep them on track and competitive. That said, based on pure talent alone, you might be able to force these kids into a meat grinder of a situation without much help and still have them come out on top eventually, but it'll be slow going. See also: John Tavares. It could also be disastrous. See also: Nino Neidereiter. The stats don't pick apart and explain each player's situation, so it's tough to talk about how good the situation was for each player based solely on the numbers.

They don't list these folks on the Sabres personnel list on the website. According to dates from tweets and news articles, Braid was working with the team at least through 2014 training camp. Malloy was brought in "late October" 2014. I sort of hope both are with the team- Braid is highly regarded.

An 8th, a 2nd, a 5th overall, a top-10 1st, and probably a top-15 1st. Plus a top-45 2nd. For one player. Jesus. I think Edmonton takes that trade. I would've thought just about any three of those things and that 2nd rounder would do it.

His single-season points-per-game pace is the highest (of any league actually) since Crosby. Kane is next on the list after McDavid. Another little bit: All players with NHLe's above 38 points exceeded their expectations. The average was 33% above expectation. These players were Crosby, Kane, Backstrom, Tavares, MacKinnon, Stamkos. Reinhart, Bennett, Dal Colle, McDavid, Eichel, and Strome would all possibly fit this category.

Due to my laziness, there's technically a few minor errors in this, but the results are close.