Who are the final cuts?

[Mustache of God]

Does Wilson's injury mean Larsson has a spot on this line-up once he's no longer day to day?

 

[Thorner]

5 hours ago, Mustache of God said:

Does Wilson's injury mean Larsson has a spot on this line-up once he's no longer day to day?

 

Yes. 

[...]

Looks like Tage and Mitts made it.

 

Edited October 1, 2018 by ...

[dudacek]

Rochester should be extremely good.

[Thorner]

13 minutes ago, dudacek said:

Rochester should be extremely good.

I think there's a very real chance that Botterill is planning on winning playoff games in Rochester before winning playoff games in Buffalo. 

[inkman]

1 hour ago, Thorny said:

I think there's a very real chance that Botterill is planning on winning playoff games in Rochester before winning playoff games in Buffalo. 

Both would be nice but I'll take some dubs in the 585

[Weave]

Interesting.  I thiught Nylander outplayed Tage and Casey.  I think he kinda got shafted.

[Randall Flagg]

1 minute ago, Weave said:

Interesting.  I thiught Nylander outplayed Tage and Casey.  I think he kinda got shafted.

It's gotta be the track record IMO. "Awesome camp, Alex. For your first real games since you were benched, go show us it's for real, and you'll be back before you know it." 

[Taro T]

6 minutes ago, Weave said:

Interesting.  I thiught Nylander outplayed Tage and Casey.  I think he kinda got shafted.

That, or the expectations for Nylander were so low relative to the other 2 he seemed better than he was.

[Andrew Amerk]

15 minutes ago, Taro T said:

That, or the expectations for Nylander were so low relative to the other 2 he seemed better than he was.

This is an interesting take, and quite plausible. 

[dudacek]

40 minutes ago, Taro T said:

That, or the expectations for Nylander were so low relative to the other 2 he seemed better than he was.

I’ve seen this a couple times now. I disagree.

The guy did lead the team in preseason scoring while killing penalties and being positionally sound. He didn’t look OK and flukily produce, or look pretty good despite not producing. He played well, and produced.

He was one of the best three or four Sabre forwards in preseason, with the understanding that guys like Berglund and Sheary were going to be ahead of him in the pecking order no matter how well he played.

[Taro T]

7 minutes ago, dudacek said:

I’ve seen this a couple times now. I disagree.

The guy did lead the team in preseason scoring while killing penalties and being positionally sound. He didn’t look OK and flukily produce, or look pretty good despite not producing. He played well, and produced.

He was one of the best three or four Sabre forwards in preseason, with the understanding that guys like Berglund and Sheary were going to be ahead of him in the pecking order no matter how well he played.

He looked bad on PK.

As to the rest of it, thought he looked ok to good.

[dudacek]

He made one horrible mistake on PK. Otherwise, I thought he did a nice job.

Moot now. I’m just happy he showed he is an actual prospect again and have no problem with Botts sending the message: “Now show us you can do it in Rochester for a month or two.”

Edited October 2, 2018 by dudacek

[inkman]

I'm certainly not Nylander's biggest fan but I don't agree with sending him down.  His confidence was peaking, embolden him with a roster spot. I could easily see him sulking, playing poorly and not getting the call. 

[...]

5 minutes ago, inkman said:

I'm certainly not Nylander's biggest fan but I don't agree with sending him down.  His confidence was peaking, embolden him with a roster spot. I could easily see him sulking, playing poorly and not getting the call. 

This could very well be among the reasons he was sent down.  Remember the buzz word is "culture".  You don't want someone with an attitude like that messing up the culture.  Better to break him of that, first, like sending a horse to the Amish.

[inkman]

14 minutes ago, ... said:

This could very well be among the reasons he was sent down.  Remember the buzz word is "culture".  You don't want someone with an attitude like that messing up the culture.  Better to break him of that, first, like sending a horse to the Amish.

I'm just concerned if they break him he can't be fixed. 

[Weave]

8 hours ago, Taro T said:

He looked bad on PK.

As to the rest of it, thought he looked ok to good.

And OK to good was certainly better than Casey, and at least equivalent to Tage.  Frankly, I thought Thompson’s game looked selfish whereas Nylander played within the system.  If we’re awarding roster spots based on performance, Nylander gets one.

[pi2000]

14 hours ago, inkman said:

I'm certainly not Nylander's biggest fan but I don't agree with sending him down.  His confidence was peaking, embolden him with a roster spot. I could easily see him sulking, playing poorly and not getting the call. 

I would've been OK with sending Nylander down IF they also sent Mittlestadt and Thompson down.     I'd like to see those 3 on a line together, whether that's in Roch or Buf, doesn't matter.    They showed some nice chemistry throughout the preseason and prospects tournament.  

[Radar]

I thought Nylander should stay up but not overly concerned. He will get his chance.

[dudacek]

Sexton with some good insight into the Nylander and Guhle cuts.

Nylander “is close” Did everything the team asked of him.

Team believed his issues last year were caused by poor training routines that were bad for his groin. New training has addressed the issues. Feeling as good and fresh as he ever has.

They liked his increased effort engaging in puck battles. Want him to learn how to win more puck battles.

Guhle is stronger than last year, but still has work to do. He acknowledged the same issues the team saw. He’s gone down with a great attitude.

”We’re trying to build an organization where the road to Buffalo goes through Rochester.”

Edited October 3, 2018 by dudacek

[IKnowPhysics]

Most of you have seen this, but it's handy in this thread:

 

 

D Pairs:

Scandella(L)-Ristolainen(R)

McCabe(L)-Dahlin(L)

Beaulieu(L)-Bogosian(R)

Nelson(R)

Tennyson(R)

 

With Bogosian injured, and a Beaulieu-Nelson pair playing terrible last year, you're likely gonna see Tennyson leapfrog Nelson into the #6 spot and play as a sheltered pair with Beaulieu to start the season.  I think if Bogosian were healthy, Tennyson would be in Rochester, and we'd have a Guhle-Nelson 4th pair.  But with Nelson edging Guhle in camp, but being a mismatch with Beaulieu, Housley's going with a pair he was comfortable with last year.

[LGR4GM]

Unless Guhle is playing, there's no reason to keep him in Buffalo. I think Pilut had a better camp. 

[Randall Flagg]

27 minutes ago, IKnowPhysics said:

Most of you have seen this, but it's handy in this thread:

 

 

D Pairs:

Scandella(L)-Ristolainen(R)

McCabe(L)-Dahlin(L)

Beaulieu(L)-Bogosian(R)

Nelson(R)

Tennyson(R)

 

With Bogosian injured, and a Beaulieu-Nelson pair playing terrible last year, you're likely gonna see Tennyson leapfrog Nelson into the #6 spot and play as a sheltered pair with Beaulieu to start the season.  I think if Bogosian were healthy, Tennyson would be in Rochester, and we'd have a Guhle-Nelson 4th pair.  But with Nelson edging Guhle in camp, but being a mismatch with Beaulieu, Housley's going with a pair he was comfortable with last year.

I commend your work in that thread. But if Housley uses a corsi sample size of less than 60 minutes with a bad hockey player to justify playing Matt Tennyson over Nelson, who rank dead last and ~8th in the organization pecking chart for me as far as actual hockey ability, then Housley has completely lost me permanently 

[IKnowPhysics]

2 hours ago, Randall Flagg said:

I commend your work in that thread. But if Housley uses a corsi sample size of less than 60 minutes with a bad hockey player to justify playing Matt Tennyson over Nelson, who rank dead last and ~8th in the organization pecking chart for me as far as actual hockey ability, then Housley has completely lost me permanently 

That's good, then, because Beaulieu-Tennyson played 63:22 at 5-on-5. 

Don't get me wrong, I think Tennyson the individual hockey player -a 28 year old AHLer- should be in Rochester, but this is likely why he's not: Beaulieu played roughly equal 5-on-5 time with Nelson and Tennyson last year, and both pairs allowed exactly the same number of shot attempts, except when Beaulieu played with Tennyson, they generated 72 shots attempts for, compared to 42 shot attempts generated when he played with Nelson.  The Tennyson CF% was among team best, the Nelson CF% was among team worst.  30 shot attempts different over ~60 minutes of 5-on-5 is a ludicrously stark metric.  How many games does it take to demonstrate how bad that pairing is?  How many games can the Sabres afford to ice a pairing that bad?

If it wasn't Bogosian that was injured and Beaulieu that needed a partner, I think Tennyson would be eating garbage plates on the reg.

You can choose to buy into the data or not, and you can choose to buy into Housley or not, but the data aligns with Housley's decisions.  Get indignant if you want, I guess, but with zero wins and zero losses, it's a little early in the regular season to start hucking rocks at the coaching staff.

[Randall Flagg]

23 minutes ago, IKnowPhysics said:

That's good, then, because Beaulieu-Tennyson played 63:22 at 5-on-5. 

Don't get me wrong, I think Tennyson the individual hockey player -a 28 year old AHLer- should be in Rochester, but this is likely why he's not: Beaulieu played roughly equal 5-on-5 time with Nelson and Tennyson last year, and both pairs allowed exactly the same number of shot attempts, except when Beaulieu played with Tennyson, they generated 72 shots attempts for, compared to 42 shot attempts generated when he played with Nelson.  The Tennyson CF% was among team best, the Nelson CF% was among team worst.  30 shot attempts different over ~60 minutes of 5-on-5 is a ludicrously stark metric.  How many games does it take to demonstrate how bad that pairing is?  How many games can the Sabres afford to ice a pairing that bad?

If it wasn't Bogosian that was injured and Beaulieu that needed a partner, I think Tennyson would be eating garbage plates on the reg.

You can choose to buy into the data or not, and you can choose to buy into Housley or not, but the data aligns with Housley's decisions.  Get indignant if you want, I guess, but with zero wins and zero losses, it's a little early in the regular season to start hucking rocks at the coaching staff.

Corsi starts doing its predictive stuff at much-larger-minute sample sizes than that. If we're stuck with such limited data, we may as well use the +/- that we would prefer corsi and stuff to improve on. Or even better, we should ignore what the stats say and just watch them. From this starting point then, the thing is, Beaulieu is just bad. So is Tennyson. Nelson can sometimes not be so bad, but is usually bad. But Tennyson is the worst, by far. And when you have to ice any of them, you have problems, for the most part, but doubly so for Tennyson. And thus they should never play Tennyson. 

I'd totes to a video project on this but it's in-semester nao and that's not gonna happen

"The data aligning with Housley's decisions" isn't really a thing for me for small-sample-corsi - Corsi improves goal-based metrics to still-bad-predictive results, so when corsi gets leaned on for bad hockey decisions, it's hard to just say "well he's doing what the stat sheet says." Well, I can find some ludicrous things to do that are backed by a ~.3 r^2 value myself, and it probably wouldn't be a good thing if I were to actually do them.

The Corsi stat sheet is why Moulson stuck around for 15 games last year. Phil can't just use a list of corsi to make his decisions, because they don't really provide a nuanced description of anything, even if they improve on goal-based metrics, which also shouldn't be used as doctrine. If he did that and followed just that data, that would display, IMO, a huge unawareness of the context and application aspect of sports analytics, and I would huck all the rocks at him that I can.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Randall Flagg