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Sabres SHOULD re-sign Pommers


LGR4GM

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What's weird is that I am fine with not bringing Pomminstein back, I just wanted to start a conversation. 

11 hours ago, Doohickie said:

While we're at, let's sign Vanek too.  Restore those glory days, yes sir.

strawman if serious, funny if joke

Edited by LGR4GM
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Why? Who are you going to sit?

Skinner, Reinhart, Olofsson, Vesey, Sheary, Johansson, Rodrigues? No chance. That's the top-9 minus Eichel and Mittelstadt.

The only place he could potentially fit is on the 4th line with Larsson and Okposo, in Girgenson's spot.


I'd rather see Pominville and Gionta move into player development, instead of Adam Mair and Krys Barch...hire some guys who have some credibility.

(They both have love for the organizations and the cities, Pominville played for the Amerks and Gionta grew up in Rochester as an Amerks fan.)

Edited by OhMyDahlin
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3 hours ago, OhMyDahlin said:

Why? Who are you going to sit?

Skinner, Reinhart, Olofsson, Vesey, Sheary, Johansson, Rodrigues? No chance. That's the top-9 minus Eichel and Mittelstadt.

The only place he could potentially fit is on the 4th line with Larsson and Okposo, in Girgenson's spot.


I'd rather see Pominville and Gionta move into player development, instead of Adam Mair and Krys Barch...hire some guys who have some credibility.

(They both have love for the organizations and the cities, Pominville played for the Amerks and Gionta grew up in Rochester as an Amerks fan.)

100% I sit Vesey over Pominville, that's easy. Because Pominville is a better hockey player.

Edited by Thorny
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4 minutes ago, GoPuckYourself said:

Buffalo fans love to celebrate the mediocre so I say not a chance he comes back.

It's not even that sad.  This thread was started to stoke off season conversation.  The OP that said Pominville SHOULD be re-signed later stated he's fine with not bringing him back.  And so another August following an irrelevant (hopefully that ends soon) team goes.

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25 minutes ago, Thorny said:

I'd sum this tweet up but the tweet does so at the bottom. 

Offensive zone start rate for Jack with Pominville vs. without him is also almost 20% higher - while that's not a great measure of anything, that's a large enough difference that it changes how you'd describe their deployment. Of course their goal split was better, that was when the team was riding ridiculous shooting percentages on the least dangerous shots in the league while getting .960 goaltending. Eichel's expected goals with Skinner but without Pominville are incredibly similar, despite the nature of the shifts being less offensive. And when you dive into the tape, there's simply no way you can come out, while knowing the key things the Sabres need to get better at for this season to have a chance, and say "this team needs Jason Pominville." He didn't DRIVE any of that. While he had some legs early on (just like 17-18) he was a passable passenger because he's a smart guy, but once the feet slowed down and the points stopped going in (I think it was something like 6 points in his last 17 games with Jack) he was a nuisance. Not because he constantly gave the puck up or was out of position, but because of how many plays were left on the table because he knows he can't do things he used to be able to do. The style of play he brings is going to hinder the Sabres' efforts to become a slot-driving, shot-funneling offensive machine.

Edited by Randall Flagg
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10 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

Offensive zone start rate for Jack with Pominville vs. without him is also almost 20% higher. Of course their goal split was better, that was when the team was riding ridiculous shooting percentages on the least dangerous shots in the league while getting .960 goaltending. Eichel's expected goals with Skinner but without Pominville are incredibly similar, despite the nature of the shifts being less offensive. And when you dive into the tape, there's simply no way you can come out, while knowing the key things the Sabres need to get better at for this season to have a chance, and say "this team needs Jason Pominville." He didn't DRIVE any of that. While he had some legs early on (just like 17-18) he was a passable passenger because he's a smart guy, but once the feet slowed down and the points stopped going in (I think it was something like 6 points in his last 17 games with Jack) he was a nuisance. Not because he constantly gave the puck up or was out of position, but because of how many plays were left on the table because he knows he can't do things he used to be able to do. The style of play he brings is going to hinder the Sabres' efforts to become a slot-driving, shot-funneling offensive machine.

They don't need Jason Pominville. I've just been saying they need him more than they need Jimmy Vesey. Especially when Pominville was free and Vesey cost an asset. 

And if the plan is to pump up Vesey's value by playing him next to Jack and then dumping him at the deadline for a 2nd, it's a dumb plan and a waste of chance to better help our top line and the rest of the team. 

The *entire roster* of a bottom of the barrel team from last year has so far been brought back. All except one guy, a guy that certainly wouldn't have been my first choice of a guy to leave if I only got to pick one guy. 

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2 minutes ago, Thorny said:

They don't need Jason Pominville. I've just been saying they need him more than they need Jimmy Vesey. 

The twitter stat geeks are loud in their requests, though. 

The other thing I don't like about that analysis they're doing is that they're treating it as sort of a blank canvas type thing. Pominville was on that line when everything was clicking for the team. He wasn't moved off for some mystery reason, to the team's detriment - it got old, quickly, highlighted by the production I mentioned. It plainly wasn't working. We made the switch to Sam around the end of the win streak, and after that point Jack and Jeff went OFF again for another two or three weeks - including Jack's best stretch of play of the year, from the end of the streak (performances like Toronto, Philly 6-2 loss, the Washington losses, and that Boston win where the team was on his shoulders), and guys like Taro were posting insistently that it would be a horrible idea to take Sam off that line, even though the depth was struggling - Taro is smart and saw how the end of Pominville's run on that line went, otherwise it wouldn't make any sense why he would suggest that. And there was never any meaningful cry here or anywhere else to reunite that line. That's because we were closer to having seen what Pominville actually contributes on the ice. A boring-but-respectable game that gets worse and worse as time goes on. The difference between Pominville in March and Pominville in November was sometimes just that the tap-ins after Eich did all the work in that Ottawa blowout were instead laughable misses where he had the open net and double-hit it with the backhand, saving his own shot. The game he brings doesn't create those numbers, he was just doing alright for a while in a golden position while everything else around him was also going unbelievably right. 

The way those guys take some xG stat (and especially regular goals, jesus) in a tiny sample size and then compare it to one that includes the entire team imploding is disingenuous. I have no way to look it up but I'd bet Sam-Jack-Jeff's goals/expected goals during that string of games after the streak was also ludicrously impressive, it is just going to get weighed down by the dreary March that we simply don't have stats for Jason with Jack in, because like everyone would have agreed at the time, Pominville was in no position to be effective on that line. 

I don't like Vesey much either though. 

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4 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

The twitter stat geeks are loud in their requests, though. 

The other thing I don't like about that analysis they're doing is that they're treating it as sort of a blank canvas type thing. Pominville was on that line when everything was clicking for the team. He wasn't moved off for some mystery reason, to the team's detriment - it got old, quickly, highlighted by the production I mentioned. It plainly wasn't working. We made the switch to Sam around the end of the win streak, and after that point Jack and Jeff went OFF again for another two or three weeks - including Jack's best stretch of play of the year, from the end of the streak (performances like Toronto, Philly 6-2 loss, the Washington losses, and that Boston win where the team was on his shoulders), and guys like Taro were posting insistently that it would be a horrible idea to take Sam off that line, even though the depth was struggling - Taro is smart and saw how the end of Pominville's run on that line went, otherwise it wouldn't make any sense why he would suggest that. And there was never any meaningful cry here or anywhere else to reunite that line. That's because we were closer to having seen what Pominville actually contributes on the ice. A boring-but-respectable game that gets worse and worse as time goes on. The difference between Pominville in March and Pominville in November was sometimes just that the tap-ins after Eich did all the work in that Ottawa blowout were instead laughable misses where he had the open net and double-hit it with the backhand, saving his own shot. The game he brings doesn't create those numbers, he was just doing alright for a while in a golden position while everything else around him was also going unbelievably right. 

The way those guys take some xG stat (and especially regular goals, jesus) in a tiny sample size and then compare it to one that includes the entire team imploding is disingenuous. I have no way to look it up but I'd bet Sam-Jack-Jeff's goals/expected goals during that string of games after the streak was also ludicrously impressive, it is just going to get weighed down by the dreary March that we simply don't have stats for Jason with Jack in, because like everyone would have agreed at the time, Pominville was in no position to be effective on that line. 

I don't like Vesey much either though. 

Me so dumb, me didn't see that. 

Second bolded is my TL;DR. 

Edited by Thorny
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A safe player making a safe but unspectacular play, a wise decision to not go for something somebody more physically able would have been able to go for, has its place on an NHL hockey team. It can fit in nicely during a bunch of wins like it did in November. It can make your metrics easy on the eye.

On a team that is last/near last in the league in several ways to measure even strength scoring chance generation, that hasn't been in out of the bottom third offensively in like a decade, whose problem is plainly the fact that they can't take their game to the other team and are stuck slinking around the perimeter, lobbing stuff into corners, and taking off-balance point shots, that's the type of play they need less of. Pominville's game on any part of this roster would kneecap an attempt to get more reliable scoring chances the way we need to get them

2 minutes ago, Thorny said:

Me so dumb, me didn't see that. 

Second bolded is my TL;DR. 

I just vividly remember him pleading the Sabres to not take Sam off that line even though it might have been to the benefit of line two, just because it was becoming clearer and clearer that Jason wasn't the answer on line one. 

Edited by Randall Flagg
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18 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

A safe player making a safe but unspectacular play, a wise decision to not go for something somebody more physically able would have been able to go for, has its place on an NHL hockey team. It can fit in nicely during a bunch of wins like it did in November. It can make your metrics easy on the eye.

On a team that is last/near last in the league in several ways to measure even strength scoring chance generation, that hasn't been in out of the bottom third offensively in like a decade, whose problem is plainly the fact that they can't take their game to the other team and are stuck slinking around the perimeter, lobbing stuff into corners, and taking off-balance point shots, that's the type of play they need less of. Pominville's game on any part of this roster would kneecap an attempt to get more reliable scoring chances the way we need to get them

I just vividly remember him pleading the Sabres to not take Sam off that line even though it might have been to the benefit of line two, just because it was becoming clearer and clearer that Jason wasn't the answer on line one. 

The main issue I had w/ Pominville post fairy tale weekend (where he was just about the best player on the ice both games) is that he wasn't getting to the spots he'd been getting before that.  He no longer was cleaning up the results of the efforts of Eichel &  Skinner.

The other issue was, and why I liked Reinhart on that line, that Eichel NEVER went deep into the zone when he was teamed w/ J&J.  He scored few goals because he was always the guy staying high ready to help on the transitions back into the zone.  He was freed up to forecheck and get more creative once Sam was added.  And that line really worked well initially but couldn't sustain it.  (Again, I'd be interested in seeing their stats broken out pre & post injury for Jack.  Would also be interested in Skinner's pre-meetup/ post-meetup stats as well.  That man has some strong legs, he should've been out about 4 months rehabbing his knee after that hit.)

Considering how bad the other lines were, yeah, Housley should've tried some other winger there, but Thompson was tried briefly (with poor (at best) results) and so was Okposo tried.  Maybe Sheary should've gotten a chance.  Rodrigues never really got a chance there, but considering he was the most effective 2C, they couldn't really try that.

But Pominville was put back there after the new year for a bit and NEVER rekindled the magic, though he did have that beer league save his own shot memorable moment, so he's got that going for him, which is nice.

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I've never been a huge Pommer fan, but he indisputably was a good NHL player for a long time.

That time ended 3-4 years ago and he's declined each year since then.  The most likely outcome is that no NHL team offers him another contract.

At this point, the fact that certain analytics can be used to justify signing him demonstrates the limitations of analytics.

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1 hour ago, nfreeman said:

I've never been a huge Pommer fan, but he indisputably was a good NHL player for a long time.

That time ended 3-4 years ago and he's declined each year since then.  The most likely outcome is that no NHL team offers him another contract.

At this point, the fact that certain analytics can be used to justify signing him demonstrates the limitations of analytics.

The broader point is that there are several players still on this roster who one could legitimately argue are not better than Pominville. The fact that the roster is still littered with these players (and that they are still actively being acquired) is incredibly troubling.

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Just now, Thorny said:

The broader point is that there are several players still on this roster that reasonable arguments can be made for that they aren't better than Pominville. The fact that the roster is still littered with these players (and that they are still actively being acquired) is incredibly troubling.

Of the 12 forwards penciled into the 4 lines (Eichel, Reinhart, Skinner, Mittelstadt, Johansson, Sheary, Olofsson, Rodrigues, Vesey, Larsson, Girgensons, and Okposo) the Pommer that would be available in October is most likely better than Okposo (who isn't going anywhere due to contract) and possibly Vesey &/or Sheary.  (Won't take him over either Larry nor Girgs due to the roles they fill.)

By Thanksgiving, he might still be better than Kyle.

Wouldn't exactly call that a lineup littered with non-NHLers.

And Thompson MIGHT be better than Jason as well.  Plus the guy Ristolainen ( almost assuredly) turns into will be better than Pomms as well.

Just say 'no.' ?

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7 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Of the 12 forwards penciled into the 4 lines (Eichel, Reinhart, Skinner, Mittelstadt, Johansson, Sheary, Olofsson, Rodrigues, Vesey, Larsson, Girgensons, and Okposo) the Pommer that would be available in October is most likely better than Okposo (who isn't going anywhere due to contract) and possibly Vesey &/or Sheary.  (Won't take him over either Larry nor Girgs due to the roles they fill.)

By Thanksgiving, he might still be better than Kyle.

Wouldn't exactly call that a lineup littered with non-NHLers.

And Thompson MIGHT be better than Jason as well.  Plus the guy Ristolainen ( almost assuredly) turns into will be better than Pomms as well.

Just say 'no.' ?

Ok, wrong word choice. The fact our roster still has MULTIPLE players of that quality is troubling. And there's still Sobotka, who you didn't count, because people want to assume he won't be playing a role on this team. 

There's also Scandella. 

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1 minute ago, Thorny said:

Ok, wrong word choice. The fact our roster still has MULTIPLE players of that quality is troubling. And there's still Sobotka, who you didn't count, because people want to assume he won't be playing a role on this team. 

Wtf would Sobotka get included if Gilmour isn't getting included in D discussions?  Did Moulson get discussed legitimately last year?

Sobotka is AT BEST the Sabres 15th best F and arguably at best their 17th best.  (The 12 already mentioned are better than him, plus Wilson and either Lazar or Thompson are better than him.  Smith is likely better as well.  Would take Asplund ahead of him too.  And that's simply ottomh.)

IF Sobotka plays any role this year barring a slew of injuries, either he had the sort of off-season we're hoping Mittelstadt approaches, Botterill & /or Krueger should be fired, or possibly both.

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5 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Wtf would Sobotka get included if Gilmour isn't getting included in D discussions?  Did Moulson get discussed legitimately last year?

Sobotka is AT BEST the Sabres 15th best F and arguably at best their 17th best.  (The 12 already mentioned are better than him, plus Wilson and either Lazar or Thompson are better than him.  Smith is likely better as well.  Would take Asplund ahead of him too.  And that's simply ottomh.)

IF Sobotka plays any role this year barring a slew of injuries, either he had the sort of off-season we're hoping Mittelstadt approaches, Botterill & /or Krueger should be fired, or possibly both.

This was already true last season. 

And is the "wtf" really necessary when Sobotka played 69 games in the NHL last season and Gilmour played 5?

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7 minutes ago, Thorny said:

This was already true last season. 

And is the "wtf" really necessary when Sobotka played 69 games in the NHL last season and Gilmour played 5?

It may have been true, but Housley didn't realize that.  That, along with several other reasons, is why he's no longer employed.  But that is one of the biggest reasons Phil has time to help his wife campaign.  And even Phil figured it out before March ended.

IF Sobotka is on this roster in October barring a monumental resurgence in September this management team will need to go. 

Sobotka fails all the analytic measures and fails the eye test even worse.  There is no legitimate reason to expect him in the top 12 barring those mentioned above.  (Injuries or miraculous resurgence back to his Bruin quality of play.). I will not expect him on the ice opening night until MSG shows him in the lineup while waiting for the Anthem to be sung.  His being there could actually cause me to Stub Hub every single pair of tix I have this year.  And I do not expect to dump my tix.

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