rakish

Yes absolutely, what I'm doing is contextualizing the stats. Your brain does that naturally in this case since you have a good grasp of the context that Mittlestadt was in. Having the model understand the context is more important as you get further down the food chain. I understand Buffalo usage quite well, Rochester a little, NCAA stuff almost none, and Euro players zero, so I rely on the software to tell me the context. It's rather obvious that 2017 was a really good draft. Right now I'm not the biggest fan of 18 and 19, but we'll see.

I mentioned Mittlestadt in the post, he was in the wrong league, had he been in the AHL his numbers would have looked normal, but not scoring much in the NHL is difficult to get the model to adjust to. In the end, you know where Mittlestadt is, this is to tell you how Linus Weissbach is doing, he had a pretty good year

I know you guys are going to use a different method, but this is my list. This is everyone from 17 to 22, so Olofsson has aged out. This is their rank by their group(F/D) in their year in 2018-2019. I normally rank pipelines by how many 1-20's you have. There are 6 years, times 2 groups, times 20 players = 240, divided by 31, so each team ought to have about 8, Buffalo has 8 without counting UPL, so for me, Buffalo has an average pipeline. Mittlestadt ought to be higher, but he was in the wrong league, as was Thompson, so I didn't bother to chase down Thompson's ranking. Borgan doesn't have much offense to his game, so he's lower in my methodology than he is in reality. 1 Rasmus Dahlin (D) 2918 NHL Buffalo Sabres 2 JACK EICHEL 3749 NHL Buffalo Sabres 6 SAM REINHART 1776 NHL Buffalo Sabres 10 Dylan Cozens (C/RW)*** WHL 11 MARCUS DAVIDSSON 1460 SHL Djurgårdens IF 12 OSKARI LAAKSONEN 1103 Liiga Ilves 17 Filip Cederqvist (LW/RW)*** SuperElit 20 JACOB BRYSON 749 NCAA Providence College 25 Ryan Johnson (D)*** USHL 25 LINUS WEISSBACH NCAA 26 Arttu Ruotsalainen Liiga 28 Linus Cronholm (D) 500 Allsvenskan IK Pantern 39 Mattias Samuelsson (D) 399 NCAA Western Michigan Univ. 42 CASEY FITZGERALD 447 NCAA Boston College 43 ALEXANDER NYLANDER 673 AHL Rochester Americans 58 ALEXANDER NYLANDER 533 NHL Buffalo Sabres 44 Lukas Rousek (C/LW)*** Czech2 89 Lukas Rousek (C/LW)*** Czech 50 WILLIAM BORGEN 383 AHL Rochester Americans 51 BRETT MURRAY 569 USHL Youngstown Phantoms 61 RASMUS ASPLUND 523 AHL Rochester Americans 64 CASEY MITTELSTADT 602 NHL Buffalo Sabres 66 DEVANTE STEPHENS 196 ECHL Cincinnati Cyclones 69 PHILIP NYBERG 156 NCAA Univ. of Connecticut 69 Matej Pekar 458 OHL Barrie Colts 76 AUSTIN OSMANSKI 115 OHL Peterborough Petes 79 Miska Kukkonen (D) 117 Jr. A SM-liiga Tappara U20 81 VOJTECH BUDIK 84 Czech HC Dynamo Pardubice 81 William Worge Kreü (D) 95 SuperElit Linköping HC J20 87 CHRISTOPHER BROWN 383 NCAA Boston College 92 VACLAV KARABACEK 356 Czech2 Motor Ceske Budejovice 104 VASILI GLOTOV 278 ECHL Cincinnati Cyclones 109 ERIC CORNEL 259 AHL Rochester Americans 291 Aaron Huglen (F)*** USHL

That was very touching @Neo, thank you. So North Buffalo, you get that the name 'rakish' is meant to be funny? When I was trying to meet WC at the draft a couple years ago, I described myself as looking like the bass player in a ZZ Top cover band, but your description isn't far off either.

I'll grade it in 5 years, this is what others thought at the time of the draft to give it context then: Sabres: Cozens/Ryan Johnson/Portillo/Huglen/Cederqvist/Lukas Rousek rakish: Newhook/Kaliyev/Beaucage/Shalagin/Cederqvist/Massimo Rizzo @LGR4GM: Zegras/Kaliyev/Cajkovic/Filip Koffer/Blake Murray/xxxxxx McKenzie: Cozens/Lavoie/Nikolayev/Tepley/Judd Caufield/Marshall Warren Pronman: Cole Caufield/Kaliyev/Patrik Puistola/Dmitri Voronkov/Daniil Gutik***/Michael Gildon*** Button: Cole Caufield/Kaliyev/Ilya Nikolaev/Marshall Warren/Kirill Slepets/Taylor Gauthier*** Wheeler: Cozens/Kaliyev/Pavel Dorofeyev/Mikhail Abramov/Dustin Wolf/Billy Constantinou***

might be upl

Ok, the second deep was over the top, trying to be funny. That said, collective scouting doesn't work. You can spend an hour with CSS for the past 20 years (find at thedraftanalyst.com), and look at who the collective scouting would have picked. The results are very very bad (The second very there is a callback, in standup parlance). I'm trying to make people aware that it isn't Bob McKenzie who has good results, it's Pronman and Button, despite how crazy their draft lists seem. Why are collective scouting results bad? I got three reasons, if you really want to talk about it, but one of them is that meeting a 17 year old doesn't tell you anything about how good he's going to be as a hockey player. Do you not draft Gordy Howe because he was a butt? Someone upthread said Kalylev looks like a Boston Bruin. Aren't we all a little tired of being beat by the Boston Bruins?

This is why I keep my draft contest (45b.us). It's important to judge teams drafting, not today, but in a number of years. Many people on this board believe that the Buffalo Sabres are better at drafting than @LGR4GM, I don't, I think liger's better. One advantage that liger has is that he didn't meet the kids, he doesn't look deep, deep into their baby blue eyes and try to judge their soul. He's just answering the question Can they play hockey? My draft board went perfect last night. I was picking Kalylev 7th if Detroit went off the board and picked Newhook, instead I get a player I was happy taking 7 at 31, and will likely get a player I was happy taking 31 at 66 or 68, I forget.

I'm fine with Cozens, not at the top of my board, but OK. I've never really been happy picking 7, especially since Turcotte got to 5? is it? I haven't memorized the draft yet.

So, liger, how do you explain his results?

Sometimes a pipeline is a pipeline

I was thinking we should talk Anaheim goaltending some time. Me and liger are planning on next year's draft again.

My summer pipeline is out, 45b.us

Got it. I'm thinking about swapping Maxim Cajk... and Beaucage on mine. If so, we might end up with the same first 3 picks

Great to see you back Flagg

Who's talking about Time on Ice? you're measuring your first pair by how much time on ice? The only reasonable stat is the power play time of your opponents, using that metric, Hedman played second pair, Burns played second pair. As Wildcard pointed out above, zone starts are an OK metric, Burns got good zone starts.

Hedman played second line minutes this year, while in previous years he has played first line minutes. Burns played second line minutes. Laughable? thank you, I'm here all week. Yes they are

Two of the three Norris finalists were sheltered

My draft contest, Mom's Basement Stakes, is back for year 6. In the first 5 years, Pronman and Button lead me by a player or so, I'm in third, and the Sabres are roughly 4 players behind me. McKenzie is probably a bit behind the Sabres. Last season I used every draft list I could find, so about 60 contestants, which was an overwhelming amount of paperwork, so this year I'm scaling back to those who submit draft boards, and the usual suspects, Pronman, Button, McKenzie, etc. Liger has his board in, though I worry he doesn't have enough picks for his later rounds. This year we are using whoever picks 7th. If the Sabres trade up to 3, everyone will make the same pick, which takes out all the fun. The 7th is well positioned for a wide range of options. If you want to compete, just post below, I generally read everything in this thread. And you guessed it, that is Tage's little brother at the lower end of my draft board. This is mine: Jack Hughes Kaapo Kakko Alex Turcotte Bowen Byram Alex Newhook Arthur Kaliyev Kirby Dach Alex Beaucage Brayden Tracey Thomas Harley Pavel Dorofeyev Simon Holmstrom Tobias Bjornfot Nils Hoglander Nicholas Robertson Henry Thrun Maxim Cajkovic Nathan Legare Ronnie Attard Brett Leason Mikhail Shalagin Alexander Campbell Quinn Olson Filip Cederqvist Massimo Rizzo Carter Berger Simon Lundmark Samuel Fagemo Gianni Fairbrother Samuel Sjolund Tyce Thompson Karl Henriksson Adam Beckman Quinn Schmiemann Matias Maccelli Mikko Kokkonen Wilson Johansson Layton Ahac

I used to believe the kid in Toronto was the real thing, but I've changed my mind. Now I think it's whoever is running Chicago.

So if it ends up being 7 and 31, you're looking at Cozens and Robertson the forward, ya think?

I thought the Katy Perry song was a cover of the Jill Sobule song, turns out, different song.

JT Miller's usage is so favorable it makes Will Butcher and Rasmus Dahlen blush. That said, I'm probably with WC on this one

I measured mine, 18 inches, which seems pretty normal for the South.

I'm unclear on the expectations many of you have for your fourth line. The first half the season Housley used Girgensons against the other teams top lines, they were playing well because Zemgus, Berglund, and Larsson where playing the other teams top line even. Things changed after Berglund left, but how is that on Zemgus? As far as scoring, this is the Sabres (minus the last 3 games, which I haven't yet downloaded) even strength points per 60, Girgenssons is 7th, (and Pominville doesn't count because almost all of his points come with Eichel, Nylander's not a regular, so you could argue he's 5th on the team in scoring.) 9 EICHEL 2.60 53 23 REINHART 2.29 47 53 SKINNER 2.17 44 29 POMINVILLE 2.05 27 43 SHEARY 1.72 27 92 NYLANDER 1.53 3 28 GIRGENSONS 1.34 17 71 RODRIGUES 1.33 20 41 OLOFSSON 1.23 1 21 OKPOSO 1.10 16 37 MITTELSTADT 1.10 15 62 MONTOUR 1.09 6 49 SMITH 1.07 2 20 WILSON 1.04 2 26 DAHLIN 0.95 22 22 LARSSON 0.94 13 82 BEAULIEU 0.92 6 55 RISTOLAINEN 0.90 22 4 BOGOSIAN 0.88 17 10 BERGLUND 0.88 4 72 THOMPSON 0.87 10 19 MCCABE 0.83 13 17 SOBOTKA 0.80 11 6 SCANDELLA 0.74 12 48 HUNWICK 0.61 2 8 NELSON 0.50 4 24 PILUT 0.48 4 81 ELIE 0.42 1 40 HUTTON 0.03 1 35 ULLMARK 0.00 0 5 TENNYSON 0.00 0 45 GUHLE 0.00 0 33 BORGEN 0.00 0 65 O'REGAN 0.00 0