IKnowPhysics

Donald Meatballissimo Granato

Good move to rotate out to open the lane, good placement.

The Ballad of nfreeman:

@LGR4GM Do what you want. Be happy. Know that a Grigorenko jersey is a monument to you enduring the great suffering and wearing it gains you immense street cred and ironic/tragic humor. Consider rocking the ***** out of it; it'd be well received. Also know that putting Power's name on a navy jersey is technically a jersey foul, as he never wore navy. More importantly, see #1.

While the message board format is antiquated and grants no preference to user-defined higher quality content, it allows serial long form comment chains, which can, in some instances, enable deeper meaningful discussion. Also gifs

Respectfully, not only no, but hell no. In order to receive critically necessary league revenue sharing, the team needs to develop and execute plans that project increased team revenue, and the league simply won't accept a plan in which average ticket prices go down. The Sabres might throw all sorts of giveaways and merchandise discounts and concessions discounts and special events and 50/50 raffles and other incentives at STHs, and they might even change what STHs pay for seats in different sections, but there's basically a zero percent chance that the average STH price decreases. Especially after the team and league revenue losses of Covid.

We should be ecstatic if Dahlin's contract stays in the nines. Karlsson's 11.5 and Doofy's 11. The other top eight are all 9-10. After this year, we'll be lucky to keep Dahlin for <10, and it'd be a miracle to get him <9. Dahlin for 8.5 would get Adams GMOTY.

Only to absolutely get soaked salary/cap wise after that bridge deal and that's if he even agrees to sign in Buffalo?

Sabres' actual second line center Tyson Jost:

True. Dahlin's putting up 0.57 5v5 iG/60, 3rd in the league. Next best Sabres D is 0.13. Primary assists are 0.63 (13th in league) vs Power's 0.39. You either get that extra half goal and assist per game on your shift or you don't.

Away from the math, Quinn might be my favorite player on the team right now. His vision, passing, stick handling, shooting, creativity, and awareness are all fantastic and fun to watch. Especially his creativity- this kid is smart. His footspeed needs work to become elite, as does his tenaciousness defending the opposing puck carrier. But damn is it fun to see him work in space in the offensive zone.

Respectfully, the usage charts haven't showed a significant difference in quality of competition for any of the lines. There's been a little bit of zone start play (Skinner/Thompson/Tuch in the Ozone and Okposo-Girgensens in the Dzone), but the kids haven't been subjected to that. I think the rise of Mitts-Jost-Olofsson has helped the team tons of ways, but I don't think it's hurt the kids... except... What I do think may have changed is the defense. Before and after new year's, the ratio of Cozens' time split among defensive pairs has changed: Dahlin 40% -> 26% Power 43% -> 39% Lyubushkin 17% -> 35% So the kids have been playing with the 3rd pair D twice as much as they used to, and most of it came out of their Dahlin time.

It's easy to look at Quinn's game log and see that he had 6G 11A in 28GP before new year's and then 2G 1A in the 14GP since then, and think he's stalling or he's inconsistent. However, while his iG/60 dipped from 0.9 to 0.79 from then to now, his ixG/60 and iCF/60 have both gone up. He's actually creating more and better chances. So what's really going on? What's changed? Let's scan the stats. The first number is from the beginning of the season up to new year's day. The second number is since then. CF/60 55.63 -> 58.70 (no change) CA/60 52.02 -> 55.93 (no change) GF/60 3.97 -> 1.98 (big drop in actual goals for) GA/60 3.07 -> 1.98 (big drop in actual goals against) xGF/60 3.19 -> 3.13 (no change in expected goals for) xGA/60 2.43 -> 2.54 (no change in expected goals against) HDCF/60 13.19 -> 14.28 (not much change) HDCA/60 9.03 -> 11.50 (not much change) Giveaways/60 1.45 -> 1.59 (no change) Takeaways/60 1.81 -> 2.78 (huge improvement) Three things stand out. The offense of his line (xGF/60) is steady, but pucks aren't going in (GF/60). But his individual offense (ixG/60) is up and his individual goal scoring (iG/60) hasn't dropped that much. The high danger offense number (HDCF/60) haven't changed. His giveaways aren't changing. It might be someone else's fault. Let's come back to this. The defense of his line (xGA/60 and HDCA/60) is steady, but they are being scored against much less (GA/60). My money's on better goal tending or better performance from defense behind them. He's getting more engaged on defense. His takeaways are wayyy up. We see this also with Cozens (1.45 -> 2.24) and Peterka (0.96 -> 1.53). This is a Don-Teaches-the-Fundamentals outcome: the kids are improving their individual man-on-man defense and becoming better fundamental hockey players. But why aren't the pucks going in? One note is that his linemates are giving the puck away a little more. Peterka's giveaways/60 are way up (0.83 -> 1.91). Cozens' are up slightly (0.58 -> 0.75). Let's check the rest. Cozens CF/60 57.25 -> 55.65 (no change) CA/60 55.37 -> 57.37 (no change) iG/60 1.01 -> 0.75 (down a bit) ixG/60 1.10 -> 0.92 (no change) iCF/60 14.17 -> 13.45 (no change) GF/60 3.47 -> 1.49 (down a good bit; these line stats are similar to Quinn) GA/60 3.61 -> 1.87 (down a good bit; these line stats are similar to Quinn) xGF/60 3.02 -> 3.25 (very good, now 2nd on team) xGA/60 2.72 -> 3.09 (not much change) HDCF/60 12.14 -> 13.82 (not much change) HDCA/60 11.42 -> 16.06 (suddenly worst on team) Peterka CF/60 54.32 -> 62.35 (up quite a bit) CA/60 53.35 -> 66.48 (up quite a bit) iG/60 0.96 -> 0.00 (obviously down a lot) ixG/60 0.69 -> 0.78 (up a little bit) iCF/60 12.38 -> 15.3 (up a little bit) GF/60 3.44 -> 1.53 (down a good bit, same as Cozens and Quinn) GA/60 3.3 -> 2.29 (down a good bit, same as Cozens and Quinn) xGF/60 2.9 -> 3.41 (suddenly up and now leads team; this is phenomenally high, approx 37th in the league over the same period for regular forwards) xGA/60 2.69 -> 2.47 (not much change) HDCF/60 12.51 -> 14.15 (not much change) HDCA/60 11.55 -> 12.24 (not much change) It looks like Cozens is sacrificing high danger chances against (HDCA/60) a bit in favor of what should be all three players getting blistering amounts of expected goals for (xGF/60). And that's in addition to the higher giveaways by Cozens and Peterka. Because actual GA/60 is down, the increased reliance on goaltending is working for now. But the expected goals-for haven't been finding the back of the net. I'm almost positive this line is in a dam-is-ready-to-burst condition. I expect a breakout game or games coming for one or all three players. The fact that Peterka has elite offensive production with zero goals in absolutely unsustainable.

So a common reassignment wasn't thread worthy, but a petty, vaguely-targeted I-told-you-so definitely was.

I believe this: More than this: Full tin foil hat: At most this was the team asking Dahlin to write a letter about all sorts of things and to plug attendance along the way. But players do notice attendance. They feel the energy when the building's rocking. They're playing good hockey, and they're ready for the fans to buy in.

When fans, scouts, etc talk a lot about how good a player is, often times things like puck handling and speed come up. But there's two foundational elements here that are combining being used at an elite level to unlock a special ability to make moves like this. Dahlin's puck handling ability without looking at the puck is incredible. He maintains total control of the puck through these plays. Dahlin's edge work is world-class. His ability to accelerate, change direction, generate speed while pivoting is exceptionally good. The special ability unlocked is that he gets to read the opponents' hips. Watch each of those plays. Every defender that comes his way to challenge his possession, he reads the direction their hips are pointed, and he goes the opposite way. If he couldn't hold on to the puck like that (or couldn't do it without looking at the puck), he wouldn't have the vision required to read opponents' skating like that. If his edges didn't give him the ability to out-maneuver the opponent, he wouldn't be able to achieve the open lanes. It's such a simple thing: opponent is going one way, so I'll go the other. It even looks easy. But the skill required to enable that and have it be effective against top NHL opponents is what makes it wizardry.

A little more on this. For all NHL forwards with 10GP: Top 96 (3 x 32) forwards in P/GP score 0.77P/GP or more. Middle of ths range would be rank 48th. This includes: Thompson 1.42 (6th) Tuch 1.13 (23rd) Skinner 1.11 (25th) Cozens 0.90 (57th) Top 192 (6 x 32) forwards in P/GP score 0.49P/GP or more. Middle of this range would be rank 144th. This includes: Olofsson 0.60 (147th) Mittelstadt 0.58 (152nd) Top 288 (9 x 32) forwards in P/GP score 0.35P/GP or more. Middle of this rank would be 240th. This includes: Quinn 0.46 (210th) Okposo 0.46 (210th) Hinostroza 0.42 (239th) Peterka 0.41 (244th) Jost 0.40 (280th) Asplund 0.32, Krebs 0.30, and Girgensens 0.22 round out the Sabres forwards. Summary: Production wise, we have three exceptional first liners plus a standard 1st line center in Cozens (this is brilliantly good). Olofsson and Mittelstadt produce like standard 2nd liners (also amazing considering the struggle over the season). Not counting Vinny, we have three average-to-good third line-like production in Quinn, Okposo, and JJ. It's no shock that Quinn and Peterka need veteran support to develop, but they way Cozens, Mittelstadt, and Olofsson are producing underneath the top line is definitely helping get the team wins and taking the pressure off of them.

Jack "I Kill" Coaches

For real though, I hope he plays well given a healthy team in front of him. Most of his ***** stats are from when we had four D injured.

Over the past ten games, the stats indicate that Mittelstadt, et al, is producing offense (CF/60, GF/60, etc) at a 2nd line-like rate, which is fantastic. But what's even better is that they're crushing the opponent in xGA/60. This has resulted in Mittelstadt, Jost, and Olofsson leading the forwards in xGF% around 60%, which is not just strikingly good for this team... It's critical in order for Granato's line tactics to work. Player usage charts show that we don't line match skill-vs-skill or shutdown-vs-skill. We play some zone starts (ie, putting out Skinner-Thompson-Tuch in the offensive zone), but we're not line-matching. Granato rolls four lines. Mittelstadt-Jost-Olofsson a month ago was considered to be a dreadful result of all of the other lines working well. Granato's good coaching and the players' hard work have improved a once-upon-a-time all-is-lost 4th line into a transformative line 2A. Additionally, quality hockey from the "bottom six" like this helps take pressure off the kids.