rakish

No, the puck needs to cross in front of the goaltender to make the goaltender move. The Hurricane never get the other goaltender to move. The second sentence I agree with mainly because I believe you need to value scoring more highly when you draft. Murray thought he could watch hockey and know who's good, but this for me, is why scouting fails and has such terrible results.

Totally serious. For me, the Sabres are trying to increase their number of shots, under the mistaken belief that shot differential correlates to winning. WC, last week you posted a chart claiming 'Things are better, shots are up, we're on the cusp of a cusp.' If Botterill viewed the underlying math like me, he would have never hired Housley, but if he looks at the underlying math like you, Blue, Brawndo, QWK, the Sabres are much better now, for you, Housley's not the problem, it's something else. I've been harassing PA, because ownership meddling is the only solution, Botterill will never understand the problem. Bylsma had a lot of bad coaching in him, and not enough talent to work with, but at least he understood that the PDO rankings relate to wins, since what you are trying to do is win the shooting percentage battle. I don't know how many times over the summer someone said 'Lehner's numbers are going to get much worse', and yeah, they did. It's one of the reasons the Sabres are worse. I've stopped watching the Sabres, been watching the Hurricane play. The Hurricane outshoot their opponents by wide margins, but they lose because every shot is a low percentage shot. In the defensive zone they employ strategies that limit shots, but those shots are high quality shots. I might be wrong about Botterill, (although he does understand the whole college development thing), but my guess is only Kim can save us.

That is spot on. The Corsi people are nuts, but unfortunately, I believe Botterill is one of them, so only Kim Pegula can save us now.

Thanks for the input, I would have lost motivation weeks ago, but enough people look at it each game, so I spend the 10 minutes required.

Dude You don't get to call someone out, then slink away when you are asked to elaborate as if this was hockeybuzz. If this place is going to be moderated like hockeybuzz and #### behavior like this is tolerated, let me know. For those of you playing at home, Tom has a Crystal Ball theory on drafting, that since you don't have a crystal ball, you don't know, and if you don't know, you're guessing, and since you are guessing, anybody can guess. Let's walk through 2014 from Mom's Basement Stakes, my drafting contest. 2016 is exactly the same, except Bratt instead of Point. In 2014, at the top of the draft Tim Murray drafted #2: Sam Reinhart #31 Brendan Lemieux #44 Eric Cornel #49 Vaclav Karabecek #61 Jonas Johansson Taking my draft board, and taking the top player remaining yielded this: #2: Reinhart #31: Barbashev #44: Holmstrom #49: Glover #61: Brayden Point Under Tom's theory, I should get no credit for drafting Point, since I drafted Glover before him, and if I knew Point was going to be good, then I would have drafted him first. This is a ridiculous argument because no one has a crystal ball, what we're doing is valuing players, and the ability to value more correctly allows you to draft better. After 4 year of Mom's Basement Stakes, had I drafted for the Sabres, the team would look something like this: Brayden Point Eichel Jesper Bratt xxx xxx xxx Reinhart Barbashev (if you don't trade him) xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx Chychrun xxx Andersson xxx That's half a team, add in a few Ristos and other veterans, and with competent coaching, you're looking at a playoff team. The truth is my drafting is killing the Buffalo Sabres scouting, not only would the Sabres be considerably better, but New Jersey without Bratt and Tampa without Point would be considerably worse. So in the end, I'm getting called out for junk science? no, it works, it works better than the last GM, it works better than this GM.

In Pittsburgh, Penguins 5, Sabres 1 EICHEL9.71 KANE9.68 POMINVILLE9.60 RISTOLAINEN9.12 SCANDELLA8.85 JOHNSON7.32 O'REILLY6.95 POULIOT6.67 REINHART6.61 CRISCUOLO6.32 GORGES6.31 BOGOSIAN6.22 GIRGENSONS6.20 MCCABE6.14 LARSSON5.91 NOLAN5.41 OKPOSO5.30 BEAULIEU5.23 FASCHING5.16

We'll compare notes in a few weeks

I'm looking forward to the 'Road to the Outdoor Game', or whatever it's called. I think it will provide some answers.

In PA's voice, go on... Want to talk methodology, or results? (results will make Inkman cry, I will point the finger at you)

Pittsburgh 4, Buffalo 0, at Buffalo NOLAN8.90 RISTOLAINEN8.87 SCANDELLA8.60 BOGOSIAN8.46 BEAULIEU8.42 O'REILLY8.13 OKPOSO7.98 EICHEL7.75 REINHART7.39 GIRGENSONS7.31 Lehner 7.21 KANE6.91 CRISCUOLO6.82 LARSSON6.82 POULIOT6.19 POMINVILLE6.09 MOULSON4.64 MCCABE4.37 ANTIPIN3.41

No, it isn't

Are you holding you middle staff again?

I'll try to get something together for Christmas. It's not something I do well off the top of my head, but for an 8th pick, Mittlestadt's numbers look OK, but not great. Last year was really disappointing for Nylander, I thought the AHL was a really poor choice.

Andrei? They're 16 months apart when they each played in the USHL. Andrei scored about 72 (base 60) that year, Adams is 54, the model may pick up Alger at 57 (I forget where the cuttoff is, Alger played only 20 games), anyway Andrei is the best player on the Lumberjacks by 15 or 18 points. Andrei's on a better team than Mittelstadt, but not by much, and that's sort of arbitrary, since Mittelstadt didn't play the entire season there. Both have NHL bodies. Mittlestadt also scored about 72, and outscored his teammates by more (72-50), so 22 points better. So they had very similar seasons, but 16 months apart, so not comparable.

I find I get much better results using 2 years of data (so this isn't exactly my board), but this is what I had of 17 year olds since Mittelstadt's high school numbers aren't really usable Suzuki 829 Pettersson 826 Vilardi 788 Andersson 746 Patrick 710 Boquist (SHL) 689 Norris 667 Mittelstadt 645

Mittelstadt is finally getting some usable numbers (high school doesn't count), and while I haven't run the numbers yet (I hope to have time over Christmas), it doesn't look as wonderful as say Elias Pettersson drafted by Vancouver, who is just killing the SHL right now

Blandisi had a tryout in Buffalo a couple years back, so there're images of him on the internet in a Sabres uniform https://frozenfutures.com/2014/10/21/joseph-blandisi-scores-highlight-reel-goal/

Maybe I'm being too harsh, but people here will compare him to Keller or another prospect on that level, and he's not at that level. He gets to 1.2ppg in Rochester, I'll be happy to change my mind.

Yes, but he was bad in Rochester last year, and he was invisible in the 3-3 this year, and fairly invisible last year's 3-3 (I think he put in a couple penalty shots). My point is that Nylander's 2017 WJC wasn't representative of his play and his supporters are relying on bits of data that are too small. In my charts I don't use WJC numbers for this reason.

Group A was really weak. The Swedes played their first 4 games against bad teams, then their first playoff round they played Slovakia, so they had 5 games against bad opponents. It was only the final two games they played against good teams, and they lost both. By only looking at the stats (7 games, 5 goals, 7 assists) you ignore the competition the Swedes played against

NHLnumbers.com has it as 2.5 per

Tampa 2, Buffalo 0, in Buffalo RISTOLAINEN8.92 POMINVILLE8.67 POULIOT8.47 SCANDELLA8.37 LARSSON8.15 O'REILLY7.99 OKPOSO7.72 KANE7.70 EICHEL7.62 MCCABE7.36 NOLAN7.31 Lehner 7.31 REINHART7.00 ANTIPIN6.12 FALK6.07 BEAULIEU5.87 GIRGENSONS5.19 MOULSON5.03 CRISCUOLO4.37

Look closer at the games Nylander played.

There's actually a strong correlation between World Junior participation and NHL success.

thanks so much, exactly what I was looking for