Flagg's Midseason Report

[WildCard]

Let's be honest, this deserves it's own thread.

Flagg, we missed your smart ass around here
 

Hope everyone is doing well this holiday season! Stopping in to take a quick Sabre dump. Might be interesting because usually my ideas are heavily influenced by conversations that take place here but this is all coming in cold. 
 
Lol I have no idea who anyone is. The democratic socialists have defeated the soviet-era communists? What must Yuri think?
 
E. Kane: We have come to understand exactly what Kane is and exactly what he can bring, and since last December he’s been bringing it. I have absolutely no issue with Kane the player, and what he’s done for this team. But going forward, he’s not for my team, and here’s why:

Our biggest on-ice problem is still an inability to play as one cohesive entity, it’s still 5 guys who aren’t sure what they’re doing out there. If I’m running a team that has a play structure drilled into their heads through several seasons of repetition, and needs a goal scoring push, I’m salivating to add this guy. Kane driving Tampa’s third line, or playing with Hagelin and Rowney in Pittsburgh? That would be something to behold. Same goes for Vegas. I think he’d fit in well there. Carolina needs goals and has a solid base of team-centered hockey so that his addition could fill in weak depth spots and not disturb anything they’ve built with the style he brings.

But Buffalo hasn’t even laid their foundation on which to build sustainable, winning, entertaining hockey. This is where assets need to go. Kane simply isn’t THIS. I haven’t been around lately, but I know it was becoming more and more popular around here to jump on the kids for their attitudes and efforts (in many cases well deserved) and decry the thought of moving on from Evander. Given some baseless and outlandish claims to back the former viewpoint (not necessarily here, definitely other places online) I feel comfortable throwing this out there with the expectation that it’s viewed similarly – E. Kane has been a key piece to every team he’s been on, and is going on 9 seasons without ever seeing a playoff game. Perhaps it’s not wise for ANY team to invest significant cap space in him going forward, much less a team that has years to go before it becomes a well-oiled machine because even on that team, Kane will be the same enigma. I don’t think we need more Evander Kane and I don’t think we’ll be worse off going forward addressing areas of concern that I place much higher value on with that money. I won’t miss him too much, because we’re pacing for fewer wins this season with him at his peak than we got when we traded half our remaining NHLers for him knowing he wouldn’t play for 8 months.
 
Phil Housley: I’m not as mind-numbingly frustrated with Phil as I was a couple weeks ago. I still have a problem with the lines, elaborated below. The philosophy underneath each iteration is troubling, and was predicted by many posters here upon his hiring.

I wonder what it was like to watch Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid clown third lines in sheltered roles? We never got to see that with our kiddo, and he’s the one that needed it most between the 3. Auston is STILL getting the 7^th most difficult minutes among Leaf forwards in his second year. McDavid’s have been similarly handled. Jack has the hardest minutes on the team aside from Risto. Why. He can’t handle them. Worse, our other good center, ROR, is right there with Jack in terms of QOC. We don’t have the depth to load our two best (by light years) offensive centers with every single tough minute there is, especially when lines 3 and 4 SPLIT THE REMAINING WORST PLAYERS EVENLY AT ANY GIVEN TIME. First it was Griffith on one, and Nolan and Moulson on the other two. Then Moulson on one, Nolan on the other. I get evening things out if you’re going to give each line a fighting chance and some tough minutes. But two boat anchors on the only two lines not playing Crosby and Malkin, Bergeron and Krejci, Drouin and Patches, Stamkos/Kucherov and Johnson/Point, how can you rely on any given combo of players getting you 3 goals any given night in this situation?
 
I love how Risto is playing right now. It reminds me of 65-point-pace Risto in the first half last year, and 65-point-pace Risto in the first half of two years ago. I wonder how the home stretch will play out THIS time, now that he’s playing even more minutes than ever before. This is super smart and is not only helping us win now but will help every single member of the d-corps 2 months from now when Risto is zombie Risto.
 
We’ve spent 3 seasons (well, Housley didn’t watch tape from what happened before he got here in his own words, and so really 3o something games) being safe with our forward lines and having horrible records to show for it. Go wild. Get ROR and Eichel together. Stack a scoring line. Play Reino with Kane and Okposo. Don’t distribute your anchors so that each line has one with already suboptimal usage and chemistry. I swear there was a game recently where Pominville was with Jack, Nolan with ROR, and two equivalently mediocre scrap lines. It was one of the games we were shut out. I have not seen a single lineup-usage combo this season that maximizes a single piece of this roster, let alone a couple, or most importantly, our best pieces, which should be the whole entire point of any given NHL line combination. Play to your strengths, not to minimize your weaknesses. 2.5 seasons of doing the latter has only left us embarrassed and ashamed.

I’m also skeptical of Phil’s ability to channel his Torts on these guys, it’s cliché, but they need it.

I did say that for me it isn’t all bad though. Namely, we are objectively better at transitioning the puck than at any point in the last two seasons, and while it’s still terrible, the transition game is being coached to keep the puck. I will not be counting this season, but we do not have 19 failed stretch passes from D who are under the circles to forwards at the far blue line per game anymore. Players are back, and I’ve seen some downright nifty plays that we never saw last season. Also, since we’ve gotten healthy the d-zone coverage has improved. However, we still stick to the perimeter in the offensive zone and have nobody with instincts in high danger areas. This is both a scheme and talent thing and both need to be addressed.
 
Our ES play has actually improved relative to the rest of the league, from the last two years. The goal scoring is the same as last year, but the possession numbers have jumped 6-8 teams depending on which night you check. WTF did you do to the peeper, phil? Jack producing at last year’s PP rate -> Jack over a PPG and hovering around 10^th in scoring. Instead he has 2. Sure, players need some blame, but throwing Beaulieu and Scandella out on the top unit consistently for two months despite disastrous results and those guys never having QBed any PP ever, let alone a competent or great one, is ###### stupid. We are what, a +2 on the PP this year? It’s something horrific. If you compare any stat you can think of with this team to the rest of the teams, the one that sticks out orders of magnitude more than any other is power play scoring versus SHG given up. It simply is a huge reason why we’re horrific instead of mediocre.
 
I will say that even though our season feels like an Avalanche season, Phil still often has these guys playing hard (relative to what the Avs looked like when they started to unravel) and even though they’re bad, I see guys having fun sometimes. It isn’t an Avs level disaster. I think Phil may have helped stem some of the bleeding even if he is part of the initial gash.
 
You can see that a lot of our transition goes through defensemen, and they have gotten into the habit of moving it back and forth until a forward is open, which is a lovely example of undoing the stuff I hated about DD. But sometimes I feel that this defensive focus is a problem, because the strength of this team is at center ice if there is any. Phil is still teaching like he has Nashville’s players and has done a number on things that made this team exciting before, namely, Jack Eichel doing things with the puck, because instead we have Bogosian hitting the wing with speed and backhanding it to RW. Which in a vacuum isn’t a bad thing, but it’s troubling when a coach is coaching to what he wishes he had and not the pieces he actually has.

Watch a Lightning game, watch how they play with the puck at ES. I think everyone knows what I mean when I say that. That didn’t start as soon as they had enough good players. It wasn’t “oh these guys suck, add some Kucherov and give Hedman a step, and boom.” The magic that we see on tv, which makes us love hockey, quite legitimately began in 2011 in Syracuse with Jon Cooper and a bunch of no-name kids. I’ll close this observation by stating that Chris Taylor impresses the hell out of me every time I see his team play and hear him talk.

The Lines/Misc.: I know Kane-Eichel is my calling card, and I know they’ve been producing lately. I’m not going to spend much time here because even though I have the same misgivings and preferences in this regard as always, and even though I detest the “they score once every game or two, because once out of every 30 one-and-done solo efforts ends in a goal instead of a turnover, so they’re fine together”, this team has a lot bigger problems, so I’ll just say this – I’m currently watching, right this instant, Jack-Sam-Zemgus mishandling pucks AND STILL spending more time in the zone on this single shift with the puck than we’d see in an entire game of Kane with Jack. And this is the fourth or fifth shift of this nature through about 25 minutes of hockey today. Long-term, this is what you want your hockey team to look like when your franchise is out there, not the absolute nonsense passing and running into each other and utter lack of instinctual hockey that we see otherwise. Typical Patrick Kane, Stamkos, Tavares shifts look like what the Jack line did tonight and never resemble the product I argue against putting out there. But again, the team has bigger fish to fry than these two playing together right now so I don’t even really think twice when I see them together anymore (and I like them killing penalties together).
 
Okposo is done and dead. Pominville severely hampers any top 6 line he’s on, even though he’s a smart cookie. Pouliot is either invisible or the only guy scoring. Jack has lots of mental problems but will be completely fine. He’s an inconsistent 21 year old on a ###### team and still makes me smile whenever I have a chance to turn the game on. That hat trick is special, and ###### the rest of the losers for not helping him win that game. If it’s not Kane and Eichel, it’s nobody. I can’t remember who it was, bob_sauve? I’m sorry buddy but Beaulieu may well be the worst defenseman I’ve ever seen play on the Sabres with my own two eyes during a non-tank season. His shot selection is pathetic and has directly cost us at least 5 goals in situations where we have man advantages. He has not chosen to shoot correctly once. When he does shoot his shot is pathetic. He has no idea how or when to pass or when to do anything. The only thing he can do at a pretty-good-AHL-level or higher is skate, and that is completely it. Jake McCabe is AHL-level. These two get top 4 minutes while Falk and Antipin, and sometimes Gorges, all of whom have played several tiers better this season, take turns on the bench. We don’t come close to maximizing the pieces we have, even if that theoretical maximum still isn’t a good team, I still don’t think we should needlessly hinder the team like we do so many ways.
 
Lehner has been fine but I simply cannot believe in a goalie whose fundamentals are so lacking. Chad is pathetically bad. ERod can be a good bottom six player. It was funny watching Wilson come in, a guy with zero talent, and still make plays we haven’t seen from Sabres players in half a decade just by having existed on a team that plays hockey like the Penguins do. Talent is an issue, perhaps the main one, but we still are suffering from having no structure for sustainable hockey.
 
For some reason our current coach and the last coach have decided that Zemgus either must be a driver or is useless. Every, single, trip, into the top 6 that this guy has ever made, his linemates have immediately increased their goal scoring. Most recently, the ROR line had like 4 goals in his 3 games there. He only had an assist on 1 but was integral to each play. 4 periods with Jack, 3 goals/primary assists. His last shift with Jack before that, 2 years ago, increased both of their scoring rates, details can be found on a post of mine earlier this summer. And as soon as this happens he gets 21 consecutive games with Larsson, Moulson, and Nolan in some combo. The dude can’t create on his own with those guys and 5 minutes of even strength ice time per night, but that doesn’t mean we need to completely kill his development, confidence, and trade value for literally no reason. I don’t understand why we do almost anything that we do honestly, and it’s not as if we have the results to convince me or anyone else that it’s good and right.
 
Reinhart sucks and Nylander really, really, really sucks at playing actual professional hockey. Dude’s going to completely own a bunch of beer leaguers though someday with his mitts. But we’d better be patient because he’s going to go score 12 points in 4 games against Belarus and Latvia and 0 against Canada, Finland, US, Russia. He will not be a long-term NHL player. I am very high on Asplund and think he’ll be better here than these two. Mittelstadt is nice and his tape looks better than his production, which suggests that we are getting someone near Tyson Jost’s tier much more than a Boeser/Connor/Keller. That’s fine. But getting Reino and Alex and 2^nd and 8^th in 2 of 4 critical rebuild drafts will be a part of why we aren’t planning the 2020 cup parade like us pro tankers had envisioned back in 2014.
 
TLDR: Flagg hasn’t talked about hockey with anyone for the past 4 weeks and so he wrote this drivel.
 
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year everyone <3

Oh, and GO BILLS. It’s weird though cuz I thought they were going 5-11 because they had too many meaningless interceptions in garbage time against teams they already beat, and the 5 picks rookie boy threw in SD are far more sustainable and indicative of how the rest of the season would play out, because Bills?

I am so happy that we get meaningful week 17 football.
 
Peace.

[Taro T]

Let's be honest, this deserves it's own thread.

Flagg, we missed your smart ass around here

 

Faaaack, seriously, after several (euphemism warning) beers, you're going to make us read that dissertation a 2nd time? Charlie, up yours. :p

[WildCard]

Faaaack, seriously, after several (euphemism warning) beers, you're going to make us read that dissertation a 2nd time? Charlie, up yours. :P

Only reason I made it a thread is I'm too drunk to find it tomorrow :lol:

[Taro T]

Only reason I made it a thread is I'm too drunk to find it tomorrow :lol:

Sadly, that works. :beer:

[LTS]

Meh.  Randall thought the Bills would be 5-11.  Right there tells me he doesn't know what he's talking about so I'm not reading it.  :w00t:

 

I won't debate it... I don't agree with everything in there, but it was a good read and has value.

[Taro T]

Yep. Randy, it was a good read. Welcome back. Congrats on surviving your 1st semester. Get through this next 1 & it all gets easier.

 

:beer:

[rakish]

Nice piece Flagg, I'm most happy that I'm not the only one bringing bad tidings on some prospects.

 

I expect Jt to stop by criticizing quality of competition by shot differential, right Jt? That's going to happen... right?

[Thorny]

Nice piece Flagg, I'm most happy that I'm not the only one bringing bad tidings on some prospects.

 

I expect Jt to stop by criticizing quality of competition by shot differential, right Jt? That's going to happen... right?

Well, he really only brought bad tidings on Nylander, no?

[nfreeman]

Good work Flagg and congrats on getting past that 1st semester.

[GASabresIUFAN]

The Sabres aren’t making any progress.

Record 1st 12 games: 3-7-2

Record 2nd 12 games: 3-7-2

Record 3rd 12 games: 3-6-3

 

Consistently bad.

 

Now Wowie isn’t getting fired this season, but when do we start seeing progress? At what point does his seat get hot? Does Taylor’s success in Roch help stoke the fire?

[WildCard]

How do the stats look though? They appear to be playing better

[GASabresIUFAN]

First 12: gf 29 - ga 43

Second 12: gf 26 - ga 39

Third 12 : gf 23 - ga 38

 

We are actually worse. My bad. Our anemic scoring has fallen by 1/2 a goal per game to less then 2 goals per game, while our defense is marginal better, but still giving up over 3 goals per game. Awful.

Edited December 25, 2017 by Georgia Flakt

[nfreeman]

Great stats GA.

[Rasmus_]

Awesome thread, ty Flaggy.  I agree with Reinhart for sure.  I've thrown in the towel on him at this point. 

[Samson's Flow]

Good stuff by our resident marathon post writer Randall Flagg. I can't argue with any of it, but expecially agree on the player usage and Girgensens stuff. I would love to see Zemgus play 3rd forward for a top line for an extended stretch.