ska-T Palmtown

Got the Minnesota Frost jersey (and a t-shirt to get free shipping!) cuz I got notified of my promotion, raise, and bonus today. Treat yo'self! I'll post a pic when they arrive!

But I have been told NUMEROUS times that the Sabres are the only team that trades their captain ... thus, this must be a clever ruse.

Am I the only one that thought Power looked "just fine" last night as a first pair? What I have really noticed over the last few games (throw out the Avs, Dahlin going down with the injury threw things off) - is that Byram is playing the stay at home or deep safety pretty well when Dahlin pinches are jumps up. I can't remember an opposing team player being behind him. Sure, they have beat him 1:1 or 2:1 ... or hell 4:1 ... but he has been where he should be - which is like 75% of playing transition D. Certain players, and I will leave that to @mjd1001, end up getting scrambly in the D-Zone, the structure collapses and the two D guys often end up outnumbered 3:2 down low. When the forwards meet the basic criteria of doing their jobs, we usually fair pretty well.

I don't buy that it is all the players fault. Yes, there are some (toxic/cancer/troublemakers/hooligans) out there - but by and large a good coach/manager can fix those things. At the point where the manager/coach starts to call out their BS, the offending party becomes akin to a bully. Once the "good apples" see someone is working to fix the problem, they tend to band together and become more vocal against the "bad seed". For the case where there is NOT a bad apple in the lockerroom (which I believe is the case), what you have is talented people (yes, professional athletes are talented. period. 🙂 ) who lack a leader. It is sad the players don't have a MacKinnon or Crosby, but let's be honest those players are few and far between. Often the leadership comes from the coaching staff. I think too many current Sabres players have gone too long without that. Look at our outsiders: Zucks, McLoedsie (?), the 4th line guys - no one has voiced any concerns about their effort levels. There have been some very odd calls from a few folks to run them out of town because the 4th line guys are not on pace for 50 pts each or other such silliness. But they skate hard, they *backcheck*, they hound the puck. Benson only had one year under the "hey, go play and hope for the best" regime, so he seems like he is not broken - honestly, I think he becomes MORE tenacious each game. Maybe Zucker (or Benson?) needs to just slam their helmet down after the game and be like "GUYS!! what the F*CK are we DOING out there??? Gawd!" "Tage, I swear to whatever higher power you believe in, if I see you coast on the back check ONE. MORE. TIME. I will fight you on the ice myself!" 🤷‍♀️

I gave you the beer thingy for the first part - but since I absolutely detest the NBA, I will respectfully disagree with the latter half of your post 🙂

I am trying to embrace "support women" by throwing a few dollars their way and I intend to try and watch some games, if they are available. If they are fun to watch ... maybe I will avoid losing my "love for the game" lol

I actually don't care for the Montreal logo - somehow it seems stale to me? And also, Toruntoh, Montreal, Boston, and honestly NYC can all eff right off ... so I am left with two. I think the away whites are pretty sharp, too - but they don't sell them, yet. To the bold ... say what? Have you not watched any women's hockey? Or are you implying they don't check hard enough? Because checking is absolutely legal and I have seen plenty in the international tournies.

I am torn ... I would like to support this endeavor, but would it be OK to support Ottawa? It feels wrong. Second choice - and the only real safe choice - is Minnesota: Help me, Oh Wise ones!

I can see his point that any one or two of the rationalizations, by themselves, are not so bad. Like, each one on its own merits holds up. But all 5 back-to-back ... ugh, gross.

But by points% - the Sabres were in a playoff spot ON american thanksgiving day ... they are just trying to be on the list of teams in a spot that did NOT make the playoffs twice 😞

I had to step away after the first period - reading the rest of the game day thread is a hoot! The melt downs, the name calling ... the PANIC in the posts. Gold.

The is a vocal minority (it seems) that thinks if a D-man is not top-10 in the league in points, he is worthless. I blame Bobby Orr 😉

Helluva shift - seems fine.

PK looked fine for the most part. First unit was very aggressive, but disciplined. Did not see Cozens out there.

Boo.

Le Challenge!

No backup for us tonight ... sigh

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna tune in before dinner ... here it goes

I wish this was not so accurate 😞

Hawks are my second team, since I have spend a large portion of my life in Chicago after Buffalo. And they are a Western conference team, so, ahem ... cough, cough - there is no appearance of conflict of cheering interest 😉 Although I do wear my red goat head practice jersey when the Sabres are in town to get a couple fewer insults hurled my way, lol. That said, I sure hope they don't find a way to ruin Bedard. The kid is special, but the last interview I saw with him - he looked frustrated. It might be another case of an outrageously talented kid who is finally encountering players at or above his skill or hockey IQ level for the first time and struggling to find his footing a little. I think they asked him to play "real" hockey this year, not just be an O-zone highlight reel and he is struggling to balance it all. He hates to lose and has done nothing but since joining the Hawks and I think it is eating him from the inside.

haha - wait what? This is one of most interesting discussions in a while! Certainly better than all the doom and gloom Sabres threads 🙂 That article was sweet - being an engineer, I would be in the "stat nerd" part of one of those 4-way graphs, for sure. I like knowing the nuance of things - and I find outliers (like how in 21-22 Matthews obliterated expectations) to be fascinating. It is also fun to find negative outliers to try to pin point where things go wrong. Player? Model? A little bit of both? Good stuff!

I will first say that I am a HUGE Benson fan for all the reasons you said and what most people have ever praised him for. He is gonna be a "glue" guy on a really good team some day (Lord, let it be in Buffalo!!) Just to be contrarian, (why not?), on the score sheet I would not say Benson has contributed significantly. 3G and 4A and a +/-0 in 19 games gets most other players a pretty "meh" reaction (obviously ignoring his age and ELC). Personally, I feel his impact is harder to measure since he is, at this stage in his promising young career, an "effort" guy. I think it is just to say that I think we'd cut Quinn the same slack if he were the tenacious forechecker that was lifting sticks and swiping pucks but maybe not lighting up the scoreboard. But as you said at $7M ... Cozens needs to either win the Selke or be at least responsible in is own end and still put up 60+ points. Maybe he gets to be Nylander/Skinner (allergic to his own zone) if puts up 90 points?

I'll jump back into the fray and attempt to elaborate my understanding and personal opinions. (I was late for a meeting earlier and had to rush, lol) Both +/- and any of the xGF% stats are a combination of what has happened while that player is on the ice, in total. So, if two players hop on and off the ice at the exact same time every shift, every game, their numbers would be identical - even if one has 60 goals and the other has 2. So, if a player has an xGF% of say, 45%, that means if you look at all the shots taken by both teams while that player is on the ice and assign them the NHL average shooting % (someone jump in here if it is from that location or overall - i think it is from that location?), it would say that Player X's team should score 45% of the goals that occur when they are on the ice. Which, if you are a shutdown line that regularly faces the other team's top line - that is pretty good. But a less than 50% xGF% tends to mean you give up better chances than you get. Just personally, where I find that a little lacking for judging Player X, let's say they are McJesus and are just regularly burying goal after goal - but their linemates are a bunch of Cozens and Quinns - getting good shots, but not many, and certainly not burying many. Player X's xGF% might be pretty high, but their actual GF% may be low - so it was sorta my point that not too many stats are good on their own. I guess over a full season, you would expect xGF% and GF% to normalize to a team's abilities?

My bone to pick with the xGF% family of stats is that is looks at the "average" shooting percent across the league for the spot on the ice where the shots are taken and does simple math to say player X and their linemates get these chances and give up these other chances. It does not account for the actual skill of the person taking the shots, etc. So, things can be skewed one way or the other, given that a MacKinnon vs Lafferty getting the same scoring chance is way different. Again, not saying it does not have its spot - but it also requires several grains of salt and other information to be truly useful* *the author fully reserves the right to have completely misunderstood xGF%, etc and thus further cluttered the thread with non-sensical babble.

Not defending the play, just adding in that this IS a strategy employed by a lot of teams. Did Quinn execute it properly? Possibly not. Sending your weakside (non-puck supporting) winger on a fly pattern can be a very useful tool to get the opposing D to give up your d-zone blueline more easily. There is a chance (not saying this is true), that someone else in the D-zone missed a rotation that was supposed to happen. In my opinion it is more likely that Quinn did not recognize how the Avs were set up which probably should have triggered "abort" in his mind. I will say - if the Sabres get the puck and make a good pass, Quinn has a good chance there. I know way more is made of it in football because there are hard resets after every play - but good NHL teams (I jest, they all do) run preferred defensive and offensive schemes that often require near-constant real-time adjustments to continuously counter your opponent's adjustments. Maybe the Avs had noticed that the Sabres like to do the back-door fly-pattern and MacK banked on the Avs keeping the puck and slid to the space he knew would be open if/when Quinn took off. I am honestly not that mad when we get "Gretzkied" by a MacKinnon or McDavid type, you just tip your hat to super savvy veteran moves. What really grinds my gears is when we let the other team's equivalent of Girgs do it to us 😞