IKnowPhysics

Because Granato (and many, many other coaches for decades) believe there's value in letting rookies watch a game or two from the press box, which is why Peterka and Quinn sat for a minute. But with three goalies, we needed to play roster games on paper to remain compliant. This isn't punishment. It's a chance to learn and a chance to rest. They were never going to put on a Rochester uniform. Also, "the harm" is that they're not practicing at the NHL level, they're not with the team for quick call ups, they aren't taking a rest from games, they aren't watching the NHL games, and they aren't making their NHL salaries (all ELCs are two way deals resulting in lower salaries for AHL games).

Sabres are now 5-0 when wearing the black and red thirds, scoring exactly six goals in each game. The individual player stats in the five games so far are bonkers (goals, assists): Fowards: Asplund 0 2 Cozens 2 8 Girgs 0 2 Hino 0 1 Jost 0 3 Krebs 1 2 Mitts 2 4 Okposo 3 0 Olofsson 4 2 JJ 2 3 Quinn 4 1 Skinner 4 1 Thompson 4 2 Tuch 2 4 Defense: Dahlin 2 6 Joker 0 1 Power 0 4

They'll reveal the other two divisions soon. But if you want to ***** with the AtlanticMetro division, be sure to vote in two more forwards that suck, thereby denying them defense.

https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/Betteridges-law-of-headlines#:~:text=Betteridge's law (of headlines) is,the author's lack of facts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

But this is Granato's special hell. He's got three problems: Goaltending, 3rd D Pair, and Bottom Six If he can solve two of those problems, we're in the playoffs. And Anderson and 6K are looking ok lately... so what's the other one going to be? I'd be shuffling Mittelstadt/Krebs/Okposo/Girgensens/Asplund/Olofsson/Jost any which I can to try to get something going.

I wouldn't. JJ-Cozens-Quinn when backed by Dahlin are posting incredible numbers: 5.93 GF/60, 4.23GA/60 3.19xGF/60, 2.13xGA/60 And I wouldn't upset Skinner-Tuch-Thompson when they're backed by Power either: 5.22GF/60, 1.42GA/60 3.86xGF/60, 3.63xGA/60 In terms of offense, Granato's playing one of the best top lines in hockey and playing likely the best second line in hockey. Individual on ice 5v5 GF/60, GA/60 with NHL ranks (all skaters): Skinner 4.83 (6th), 2.48 Thompson 4.33 (16th), 2.48 Tuch 3.72 (49th), 1.92 (215th) Power 3.95 (35th), 3.95 JJ 3.34 (105th), 3.21 Cozens 3.37 (99th), 3.51 Quinn 3.99 (33rd), 2.95 Dahlin 3.32 (108th), 2.43 (Top 160 would be something like 32 teams x five skaters (1st line). Top 320 would be 32 teams x 10 skaters (2nd line).) Sabres have a league-leading 142 goals and Thompson (30), Tuch (18), Skinner (17), Cozens (12), Dahlin (10), JJ (7), Quinn (6) total for 100 of them (70%). 68 of those goals were even strength, which is 80% of our 85 even strength goals. 80% of our EV goals. Eight. Zero. I couldn't touch those top two lines with a ten foot pole, even if the bottom six can't get their ***** straightened out.

Looked for a long time at 5v5 combinations of Mitts and different dmen in terms of the CF/CA, HDCF/HDCA, xGF%. Defensively, Mitts plays alright with Dahlin, Lybushkin, Bryson, Clague, Pilut, Power, and Dahlin. He improves the defensive results when Bryson and Pilut are on the ice compared to their other teammates. However, he should never play with Fitzgerald, Joker, or Samuelsson; they experience a increase in CA/60 and HDCA/60. It's especially awful when Mittelstadt and Fitzgerald are on the ice. But offensively, Mitts plays fine with Dahlin (Dahlin notably doesn't see a decrease in CF/60 or HDCF/60 when Mitts is with him) and Pilut. Pilut and Mittelstadt seem to make each other significantly better at both ends. However, every other dman sees worse CF/60 and HDCF/60 when Mittelstadt is on the ice, likely due to their other teammates (Thompson, Cozens, et al) being better. The problem is that this lack of offense in combination with terrible defensive teamwork with some dmen makes for a sub-50% xGF% when he's on the ice with anyone but Dahlin. Both Mittestadt's zone starts and quality of competition is balanced, so it's not much of a factor (ie, he's not always being sent out against the league's best or always being started in the dzone). The real question is how to move forward. When lined up with Jost and Olofsson, the CF% was fine, but they generated piss poor HDCF/60 and xGF%. Mittelstadt's basically never played with Okposo and it might be worth a try, but Z-Krebs-Okposo has been pretty good, especially at limiting opponent scoring, so I don't know if breaking that up is worth it... it might be. Alternatively, JJ-Cozens-Quinn, while high scoring and fun to watch, hasn't been the best defensively when playing with Power and Clague (they've been pretty good with Dahlin and Samuelsson). Maybe playing with that lineup might yield better overall results?

Math tangent. If you consider production rate, Tage Thompson isn't just the best in points per dollar, he's 2nd best in points per minute (behind McDavid). Skinner is 9th, Tuch 16th, Cozens 28th, Dahlin 118th, Hinostroza 129th, Quinn 135th. If you consider Points per Min per dollar of Cap Hit (analogous to the player's production rate per minute of ice time per cap dollar spent), Cozens is 6th in the league in P/Min/$. Thompson is 10th. Quinn is 32nd, QJJ is 52nd, Asplund is 54th, Krebs 138th. We've got several good players in terms of absolute production, production rate, and production rate value, especially Thompson and the ELC boys. But we're also getting great value from Tuch and good value from Skinner.

Not the end-all-be-all for building a franchise ground-up, but here's CapFriendly's cost-per-point tool for an idea of production per dollar. No surprise: Tage making $1.4M this year puts him at 1st place value league-wide. Even if he were making his $7.142M this year, he'd still be at $129.9k/P, good for 173rd in the league. For reference, McDavid is costing $171k/P this season, which puts him 254th. Tage's performance versus contract cost over the next years is the kind of salary cap advantage that can win Cups. Maybe surprising is who's a very close #2 in cost per point. Still on his ELC and putting up 35P in 36GP (on pace for 79P in 82GP) is Dylan Cozens. Also good to know: JJ is 29th, Quinn is 31st. Power is 62nd. Asplund at 126, Krebs at 144. Tuch at 151. Mittelstadt at 170.

$5M now.

(nsfw)

Thompson's going to single handedly win Kevyn Adams the GM of the Year. Tage makes $1.4M this year and $7.1M AAV the next seven years. His market value right now is closer to $13M.

Quinn's shootout goal over Nedeljkovic is worthy of an SVU investigation.

Rage Thompson:

Sabres played well against Tampa and they're angry they lost. Red Wings:

Petersen is playing at an Eric Comrie level but is making 278% more until 2025. Stay away. Not even sure I would do this.

Mittelstadt's stats 5v5 are quite bad, but, like it or not, he's been one of the best Sabres on the powerplay, helping make it 7th in the league.

Also obligatory:

At first glance, I was absolutely: But now looking at it for a few minutes and finding other images other than the video, I'm starting to back off that opinion. I'm starting to sort of like, but it's not everything it could be. Maybe the full kit will look sharp. But if you don't like this jersey, depending on your reason why, be warned you may not like the black thirds coming... Bad: The yellow sleeve ends are bleh. It may be the lighting in the video, but they look dingy. [The image below straightens this out; it was the lighting in the video.] If you go with a mostly white jersey, especially all-white yoke with no shoulder patches, you do it to for a clean look (see 50th anniversary jerseys). The sleeves ruin the clean look. So they didn't want to go this route. So if not going for clean... why no shoulder patches? Cost savings? The point of the stripe on the under side of the arms on the original jerseys was to make the jersey body fabric look like a buffalo head shape. A different color stripe ruins this effect and becomes pointless. [The OG blacks suffered from this.] So it's clear the route they chose was to do a blue/gold color inversion of the OG black jerseys (not the whites, because there's no yoke). Similarly, the side-body chevron don't extend to the front and rear enough at the bottom of the jersey to help form the chin of the buffalo head shape. Nor does it extend up to the armpit. So the hidden buffalo head shape is gone. This may have been forced by the oversized crest or by trying to be cheap on manufacturing more complex fabric shapes. The bigger problem is I'm betting Adidas does the same thing for our black thirds. I bet Adidas has tooled their fabric cutting and sewing for the thirds and used it for this jersey. This doesn't affect fabric color, but affects what fabric shapes are stitched together. You can see the extra seam in the gold sleeve fabric for where the gray is going to go at the end of the sleeve on the black thirds. You can see the extra seam in the gold fabric on the body sides for where the gray will go on the black thirds. You can see that the yoke fabric doesn't come down over the shoulder with curved edges like the old CCM jerseys, meaning that you don't get a curved top part of a horn shape on the sleeve. This doesn't evoke much nostalgia in me. This is now the worst jersey to incorporate the Buffalo head crest on the chest, but it's not super-bad. Good: They tried and seemingly listened to fan response from last year. No gray with the blue/gold. Oversized crest is boss. I appreciate the OG font- the nameplates and rear numbers are going to look good. They didn't perfect the clean look, but at least they didn't put numbers on the front to make it more busy. It's a relatively simple jersey, which works in its favor. Again, depending on the full kit, this could look pretty sharp. Using yellow as the outside border of the crest is risky, but for a "fun" jersey, it does pop. I haven't looked at the other reverse retros for this year yet, but I'm betting this is far from the worst. This could be considered the white counter part to the black thirds coming, except with blue and gold. Gives Buffalo a few different looks to play in. This is not in the bottom rankings of Buffalo jerseys all-time. NHL posted a better image: For comparison, the OG: Looking the other Reverse Retro jerseys for this year, and holy hell did we luck out. https://theathletic.com/3711004/2022/10/20/nhl-reverse-retro-jerseys-2022-rankings/