MattPie

Was there a reason that window was chosen, like Olafssssson healing or Tuch? Or is it pure cherry-picking.

I think Eichel should probably be a little higher than 35, but who knows. Between Buffalo, injury, and a lackluster return last year there's some recency bias and not exactly showcased before that. He's probably a top-10 C in terms of production if he can stay healthy, and if Vegas doesn't implode he'll be on a team that gets more exposure. That always gets players further up the ladder. Still happy with the trade all things considered.

It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. There's no way I'd encourage my kid to play a contact sport, but my family is not in a situation where sports may be the only way to a better life. It sets up an ugly dynamic of who ends up playing sports twenty years from now.

Amazing how much adding a whole line worth of decent prospects does.

At the risk of hijacking the thread, the Kraken, who are named after a mythical sea creature, chose a troll for their mascot?

To be honest, if I were in the Dolphins' place last week I'd be checking on Tua every day even if it wasn't listed as a head injury or concussion. Just like when I got sick recently I tested for COVID even though it was negative every time. The only question here is if there's something wrong with the test, Tua has a cheat code, or the Dolphins truly just ignored what they saw.

I see 5 guys that are established players, and 5 that probably haven't put together an NHL season between them. Mitts and Krebs might get passed, but it's likely two of those shiny new toys take longer than we all think to become NHL players.

My guess is it's not the same people that make wide swings. The people that are optimistic are posting up a storm after the wins, and the ones that are just waiting for a reason to go with extreme negativity are just waiting for the final whistle to blast everything involved with the Bills. I don't know how you follow a team and just be 100% negative about it all the time.

I had to go look, the Flyers have a prospect named Elliot Desnoyers, which is the same last name as my cousin's ex-husband. I don't think there's any relation, but said ex-husband's claim to fame is he scored on Andy Moog on a breakaway in some junior game, lol.

He's not retired, he's on LTIR. If he did retire, it's possible it would have cap implications (for Dallas) depending on how the contract was structured. I don't know the details, but in broad strokes if a team played games with front-loading the contract (see: Buffalo's contract with Ehrhoff) to get around the cap, but the player retires during the course of the contract, there are cap penalties for the team that benefited from the cap circumvention.

Agreed, it's pretty hard to argue that he accidentally violated an OoP if he "placed multiple phone calls and sent e-mails to the victim knowingly in violation of an existing order of protection". It's not like he happened to see the person at Chef's.

Right now it is unusual as there are *so* many high picks that actually do have a shot of making it, but the Sabres are NOT going to hit on 100% of these guys. I'll be a broken record, even if we end up with a surplus of talented forwards, we can trade for D or 2-way upgrades to find the pieces we need.

Agreed. I avoided even reading this thread until I was out of other things to read, and this group is known to be measured and sensible in their reactions.

It seemed like a tradition that Miami had to play in Buffalo in December during the early 90s.

FUCALE! sighting

If the Sabres don't have to personnel to have a competent PK, they won't win the cup. 🙂 I'm not saying it's impossible that the Sabres don't have a bunch or players that are 2-way PK stars-in-waiting, but that would be an outlier from every other team in the league.

It's not about traditional line roles, but there have to be at least 8 guys that are competent PK players on the team. Most of the young guys were not drafted for being 2-way players, so until someone can fill those PK roles there's a place for a better than average 4th line skillset player. If the Sabres really get to a place where they have 12 forwards that can play 2nd line and up offensively, then they should be looking to package guys up for truly great 2-way players to fill out the 4th line and PK. Some forwards have to play D sometimes, we're not Toronto. FTR, I don't think this will really be an issue, the odds of every single rookie forward hitting this year are fairly slim. If it does become an issue, I don't have an issue trading Z away as long as a better all-around player comes back.

Same. Teams aren't all young scoring forwards, if it really becomes a thing, maybe you trade one of the younger guys that don't fit into the plan for a piece that you need. If one of the younger guys truly matches Girgensens full skillset, then we can talk.

I hope not. Well, not sure. I think I normal team could turn Matthews into enough very good pieces (a la the Eric Lindros or (hopefully) Eichel trades) to be a better team afterwards. Somehow, I think Toronto would do something dumb and they'd get worse.

I think the stats (both fancy and not) do have a tough time with trending data vs. average. "well, last year xxx averaged below the league for the season, etc.". But as the Sabres are showing, that doesn't always make sense. At best, they stats folks will cut the data down to half a year or since Valentines Day or whatever to show that it's different. But I don't see many "over the course of the year this changed x" type stats. As others said above, this makes sense when you're dealing with relatively static players and doesn't cope well with very dynamic situations (like the Sabres, 2019-2022). I'm going to pick on @LGR4GMfor a second, in the Tage thread there's a lot of talk about his average shooting % over the last three years, but (IIRC) it's only gone up each year. You can't really take a meaningful average in that case; there's no stability in the data. I think the average that comes out (~11%?) does make sense, but the data used to get there would predict something ridiculous like 30% if taken at face value. This isn't to excoriate stats, I'm an engineer and I do believe math can explain a *lot* of things. People are still learning what predicts and what doesn't. I think as the methods get refined the stats will get better at seeing trends and not just averages.

Yeah, there was such a big gap between #8 and #9, the top of the east were siphoning points from the hapless bottom half more than most years. In most years, the 7-8 teams would be battling the 9-10 teams down to the last week. 1st para: I think it's just the way it rolls. I remember a few years in the 90s or 2000s where there was a *clear* line between the playoff teams and not in the west. One year there were 7 good teams in the west, and then #8 had 88 points. It happens. 2nd: I seriously doubt any team is going to tank from #9 to try to get to #11 to gain a couple % chance. No owner is going to approve "Well, we may have a chance to get at least 2 more home games and have people in the seats right down to the wire. But if we lose a bunch of games, we can go from 0.8% to 2.6% of moving way up in the draft!"

It's Buffalo, something will fall apart this year. Yes, 1991-1994, 1999, and 2000 scarred me, why do you ask? Also: Beasley to Tampa Bay... practice squad.

Still surprised Suban didn't catch on anywhere. Or maybe it just wasn't worth a minimal offer to get beat up for a year to him.

I understand this timeline where the Bills are good. I figure the wheels will fall off at some point.

I think there's room for "This is the best offer we can make" and "Oh crap, we *have* to match this even though it doesn't make sense". And "we're not going to add even more to an offer we don't think makes sense".