GDT: 11/19/19 Minnesota @ Buffalo, 7 p.m. EST

[Taro T]

2 hours ago, TrueBlueGED said:

At what point do the Pegulas stop being considered rookie owners? They own two professional franchises and have had the Sabres for almost a decade. 

IMHO, finally being rid of Brandon (and Black, to a lesser degree) is a defining point.  (And hopefully an inflection point.)

They now are standing on their own and not making decisions based on how it will effect the marketing department.  (No way they'd've let Botterill choose Krueger were Brandon still here.)

Is Botterill the right guy for the job?  Hope so but don't know so.  Still believe that his worst move as a GM was heavily influenced by ownership and expect because of that that he'll have until the end of next season before possibly getting launched into the sun.

 

[Taro T]

1 hour ago, rakish said:

One thing that has interested me the last couple years are the Vegas Knights. When they first drafted, the average pundit said they would be terrible, that you can't get top end talent from taking the other teams 8th(?) best player. That was, obviously, wrong. Vegas has been and is a potential cup winner.

When people talk about Vegas, they talk about coaching, so I my project this year is watching highlights trying to quantify why teams score. I've always believed watching Buffalo looks different than watching Vegas, but I wasn't sure if that was me, or them. This is last nights chart against Minnesota, each team moved the puck acrost the ice twice. Now the rules for what counts is a bit fuzzy, but what I'm trying to get at is, does the belief of 'Pucks to the Net', that is repeated endlessly, work.

Last night both of Minnesota's passes ended up in the back of the net, while neither of Buffalo's. As an extreme comparison, this is the Vegas Calgary game the other night. While it's true that you won't get all the Goaltender Moving Opportunities from watching highlights, I think you get enough of them to get a fair understanding of who is making the extra pass, and who is being coached to get pucks to the net. I'll be talking more about this.

I do believe you are onto something as the mantra always is to get the goalie moving when he's a big guy and at the NHL level darn near all of them are big.

That movement can also be accomplished more subtlety by a player altering his East -  West position prior to shooting which would be extremely tough to measure/ quantify on a non-paid basis.

And the other trick (which the great scorers have and most don't) is an ability to disguise that the shot is coming.  Which would be even tougher to quantify / measure.

But am really interested in seeing how stuff looks when you get even more data.  Expecting your hypothesis will prove valid. 

[Randall Flagg]

1 hour ago, rakish said:

Watch Mittelstadt. I believe the Buffalo Sabres are telling him to go to the front of the net and get the rebound from Vesey's shot. This is a strategy that works somewhere between once per game, and twice per game, for each team (that's the list of each game at the bottom, minus the empty nets).

Now watch Reilly Smith, or William Karlsson, or Marchesseault. They pass it to each other until one has a good shot. It's a different strategy. It works better, it's far more entertaining.

I do think the Sabres have a talent problem, but for me it's not the core problem.

I never find myself getting angry when the PP tries to force cross-ice passes and they don't work/get picked off. This is probably why. They need to keep doing it!

What makes it so hard for them to do so at ES is how static everyone off the puck is. If Minny defenders don't have to move, they can get to passing lanes and stay there. If guys are skating laterally up and down the entire zone, stuff will inevitably open up. They'd rather be glued to the boards and use the point men only. 

[triumph_communes]

So much overreaction. They weren’t hemmed for nearly any part of this game, nor any of the games on the loss streak. Special teams took a dump. Spending half the 2nd period on the PK doesn’t help scoring. If anyone should be ragged last night it’s Mittelstadt. 
 

I really think they are just one or two solid forwards away from making a difference.  Oloffson isn’t good enough to play 1st line with Reinhart as the opposing wing. Two guys who are just too weak on the forecheck.  Johansson injury is holding them back, but otherwise Sheary and Skinner were causing havoc last night you can’t complain about that.  Need better finishers on the bottom lines. Mittelstadt needs a vet pairing badly. He coughs things up too much to be successful himself and gets lost alone playing with low talent 4th liners. Though I really think he is better off on the wing. 
 

 

these trades need to come yesterday, but I do believe one or two decent forwards can make all the difference. Oh, and a shake up on the PP strategy it’s too stagnant. But to trash Botterill for not making any changes? Lol, Jokiharju has been a complete steal.  It takes two to tango, too many people forget that. 

Edited November 20, 2019 by triumph_communes

[Doohickie]

1 hour ago, Taro T said:

And the other trick (which the great scorers have and most don't) is an ability to disguise that the shot is coming.

This is the one gift that Jack has that makes him elite.  He has other talents, but his quick shot is fantastic.

[Kruppstahl]

14 hours ago, PASabreFan said:

Skinner has two goals in 11 games.

And a coach who refused to play him with Eichel, even though that combo was good for 40 last season.

 

[Kruppstahl]

11 hours ago, PerreaultForever said:

because you don't build a team that wins with a handful of star forwards (and their wonderful metrics). You do it with team defense and a roster filled with players who work hard. One or two superstars added to that mix and you are in business. The Buffalo and Toronto way is backwards and doomed to failure. 

A lot of Sabres fans seem to think that because we have Jack Eichel, wins are supposed to fall in our lap.

Just about every team in the league has a Jack Eichel, if not 2 or 3 of them.  Some teams have players better than Jack Eichel.

The difference is some of those teams also have rosters that are deep with talent and hard working, gritty, players who buy in and play a team oriented game.  

Yes, we have the Eichel piece.  But almost nothing else!  And people wonder why we have problems.

 

 

7 hours ago, Cascade Youth said:

Good stuff here.

The Pegulas have an addiction to rookie GMs.  And they’re rookie owners, ones who had no background in professional sports - they weren’t professional athletes and their parents weren’t team owners.  As a result they have no time-tested standards to which they hold and evaluate their rookie GMs.  The results (both franchises) have therefore been entirely predictable.

Sabres fans are paying the price for Botts learning on the job.  He is failing at his job and, barring an unforeseen turn in his approach and the on-ice results, I expect him to lose his job between now and July.  Within the next five years, I further expect we’ll have to suffer through Tim Graham depth pieces in The Athletic about how Botts is at peace and thriving in his new role as GM or Asst. GM in some other city, sorry that it didn’t work out in Buffalo but oh isn’t it great that he has learned his lessons the hard way about sitting on his hands for too long and over-focusing on culture instead of talent and has now gotten over his fear of trying to win.  Etc.

As long as the Pegulas continue to allow their sports teams to act as developmental organizations for sports executives, I fear that those organizations will continue to act as developmental environments for players as well.  Players will continue to leave Buffalo half-broken and go on to thrive elsewhere and give intimate interviews reflecting on how fighting through the dysfunction in Buffalo allowed them to grow mentally and made them better people and players, etc.  

Regier wasn’t kidding about the suffering that was coming.

Where did you come from? If only we could get you to post more often.

Great post, well said, and as was mentioned a bit last night during the game thread, it all starts with Pegula.

When you go through cyclical failure as this organization has done for this long, with this many names in and out, it has to be on ownership.

Buffalo sports fans should know a lot about this, having suffered through so many years with Ralph Wilson and the Bills.

 

[LGR4GM]

9 minutes ago, Kruppstahl said:

A lot of Sabres fans seem to think that because we have Jack Eichel, wins are supposed to fall in our lap.

Just about every team in the league has a Jack Eichel, if not 2 or 3 of them.  Some teams have players better than Jack Eichel.

The difference is some of those teams also have rosters that are deep with talent and hard working, gritty, players who buy in and play a team oriented game.  

Yes, we have the Eichel piece.  But almost nothing else!  And people wonder why we have problems.

 

You said in another thread the equivalent of we don't hold the team accountable or aren't critical of them. Here you imply we don't recognize the problem you just laid out even though ALMOST EVERY ***** THREAD right now is talking about the lack of depth and how Eichel is basically the only forward. 

Weird. 

[Brawndo]

Hey a 31 Page GDT!!

 

[PerreaultForever]

13 hours ago, Curt said:

Buffalo and Toronto are very different teams right now with completely different team strengths.  Toronto has many quality skilled forwards, and not enough good defensemen.  They score lots of goals and are among the leagues worst at preventing goals against.  Buffalo is the opposite.  They have a lot of good defensemen, not enough good forwards, don’t allow too many goals but also can’t score enough.

true, their big forwards score more and our defense is arguably better (but are they?) but the idea of the team in organizational construction seems similar to me. Soft teams that stress puck movement and all those modern metrics. Marner is better than Reinhart but we have Eichel, they have Matthews and neither is captain material despite being the centerpiece. They overpaid Tavares we overpaid Skinner. Our Nylander crapped out but arguably theirs isn't all that either. Neither team has heart and/or gives consistent effort. imo these are very similar pathways and neither is the Bruins (or St. Louis, or Washington etc etc.)

[Curt]

42 minutes ago, PerreaultForever said:

Soft teams that stress puck movement and all those modern metrics.

Ok.  I so your point is that they are both “soft”.  I guess I can at least see where you are coming from with that.

With regards to the above, Buffalo definitely is not stressing puck movement and modern metrics right now.  The D is playing a conservative, safe game and playing the defensemen with worst “modern” (shot?) metrics the most minutes.  They are stapling a “defensive” forward to every line even if it drags down the offense.  They have an energy/checking line that can’t score playing plenty of mins (before injuries at least).  The Sabres are just not playing a progressive style in any way.  They have been pretty old school.

[PerreaultForever]

7 hours ago, Curt said:

Ok.  I so your point is that they are both “soft”.  I guess I can at least see where you are coming from with that.

With regards to the above, Buffalo definitely is not stressing puck movement and modern metrics right now.  The D is playing a conservative, safe game and playing the defensemen with worst “modern” (shot?) metrics the most minutes.  They are stapling a “defensive” forward to every line even if it drags down the offense.  They have an energy/checking line that can’t score playing plenty of mins (before injuries at least).  The Sabres are just not playing a progressive style in any way.  They have been pretty old school.

So what I would suggest here is that they can't play it. JBot built a "progressive style" as you call it and Housley tried it for 2 years and now they are simply incapable of playing shall we say "usual' or if you prefer "old fashioned" hockey. My main point would be that it is not a balanced roster and it is a team that cannot deal with any adversity, be that through a lack of toughness (mental and physical) and/or a lack of leadership. The team simply gets lost and almost nobody is willing to pay the price. The antithesis is a team like Boston where when they score (often) there are bodies in front, people falling down but still in the way of defenders and/or goalies, they play hard on the puck and nothing is easy against them. We, on the other hand, just take a shot from the circle and the goalie can see it clearly and cherry picks it so we make backups look like allstars. Been this way for the last  bunch of years. Only the true snipers (Eichel and Skinner) score because they can pick corners and openings. The rest of them mostly just fire it into the glove or pads. We are simply easy to play against.

[Thorny]

On 11/20/2019 at 9:01 AM, rakish said:

Watch Mittelstadt. I believe the Buffalo Sabres are telling him to go to the front of the net and get the rebound from Vesey's shot. This is a strategy that works somewhere between once per game, and twice per game, for each team (that's the list of each game at the bottom, minus the empty nets).

Now watch Reilly Smith, or William Karlsson, or Marchesseault. They pass it to each other until one has a good shot. It's a different strategy. It works better, it's far more entertaining.

I do think the Sabres have a talent problem, but for me it's not the core problem.

I'd be tempted to argue that part of the reason they implement the strategy they do is because they lack enough players with the talent to effectively execute those cross-ice opportunities. Do you think that factors in?