dudacek

According to the Athletic's recent piece on NHL trade value, these are some of the players with approximately the same value as Power: Oettinger, Hischier, Robertson, and Aho. According the Nov. 27 piece — which attempts to balance age, contract, team control, and performance — he's part of a tier of players (including Sidney Crosby and Victor Hedman) thought to rank outside the top 30 and inside the top 60 most valuable NHL trade pieces. "What’s more valuable between a young, cost-controlled defenseman with a bright future (but who is still taking some early lumps) and a proven top-line center who has already made a significant impact on the biggest stage, but who has just one year left on his deal? The answer may vary based on a given team’s current and future outlook — which is the very basis for most trades, even if the magnitude is usually lower." The piece says Power has more trade value than Tage Thompson, Sam Reinhart, Matthew Barzal, JT Miller, Cole Caufield and Mark Stone, among others. Personally, I think piece makes some strange choices - particularly the further down the list you go, but I don't think Power is one of those. You may beg to differ, but the Athletic generally has more credibility than some guy in his basement. It's reasonable food for thought. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5920905/2024/11/27/connor-mcdavid-bedard-nhl-trade-value-rankings/

They're picking up Trouba, aren't they?

The difference between a 3-game winning streak and a three-game losing streak is often negligible. Game 1: a titanic defensive struggle where 2 teams gave up very little and the game could be decided with a coin flip. LA loses 1-0, Wild wins 1-0 Game 2: the Sabres roar back after an uneven start to send the game to OT. In Anaheim they win, against Vancouver they lose. Game 3: 3rd game in 4 nights and you wonder about the team's legs. It shows, but against SJ they get big stops and timely goals and push through, against NYI they get neither and fade. I don't think the Sabres played too differently over either stretch. Such is parity and life for most mediocre teams in the NHL's mushy middle.

It's not, but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that his -13 is the team worst by a considerable margin. He started well, but he's going through a particularly rough patch: 1/4/5/-8 in 14 games over the past month, with only 1 point at even-strength over that span. He' s been on the ice for 8 ES goals for and 15 against, has 5 hits and his faceoff % is 36.7. Pretty unanimous around here that Dylan Cozens has not been good and these are his numbers: 5/2/7/0 in 13 games over the past month, with 5 ES points. He' s been on the ice for 10 ES goals for and 10 against, has 31 hits and his faceoff % is 48.6. I'm betting Casey will pull it together, but his struggles are clearly not just a factor of his team.

The bold is what I’ve seen too, plus Byram’s awareness and commitment in the defensive zone is night and day compared to last year down the stretch. The complaints about his defence then were completely justified. He was making bad reads and getting caught in between on a frightening basis. He’s still not awesome at the above but he’s greatly improved. You can’t question his engagement and commitment, and his feet and his stick have often been effective at tilting the ice and snuffing plays. He’ll never be “safe” or “shutdown” because he’s all about speed and forcing things in all 3 zones; he’s made for uptempo hockey. But he does very much care about defence. I constantly see him reading and rotating, thinking about where he needs to support what’s going on in either end. It hasn’t been a huge sample size, but the past month has been pretty impressive. He’s very clearly helping the team more than he’s hurting it.

Thought of you when I saw this: Dahlin leads the entire NHL in penalties drawn this year, with 10 - one more than he’s taken himself.

So if you are trying to convince me a player is an absolute disaster defensively, telling me he's -3 at high danger chances ain't going to do it. Looks pretty mid to me 🤷‍♂️ I did this really weird thing and compared Byram to his peers — all the defencemen getting fed 1st-pairing 5-on-5 minutes — and looked at how successful they've been preventing and creating actual goals. According to NHL.com, there are 63 NHL defencemen averaging at least 18 even-strength minutes a game. Byram ranks 28th among them in fewest ES goals against this season, with 17 — little better than average. That's raw actual results on defence. If you want to talk all-around play, he ranks 13th in actual ES goal differential with 8 — better than 3/4s of his peers — and he is 17th in ES goal % at 59.5%. Here's how he compares to your guy Hedman Hedman — ESTOI: 18:44 ESGA: 18 ESGD: +7 Byram — ESTOI: 19:09 ESGA: 17 ESGD: +8 More ice time, fewer goals against, better net Here is a list of some other well-regarded heavy-use defenceman in that sample: Miro Heiskanen — ESTOI: 21:01 ESGA: 16 ESGD: +7 Noah Dobson — ESTOI: 20:55 ESGA: 21 ESGD: -3 Quinn Hughes — ESTOI: 20:18 ESGA: 18 ESGD: +6 Rasmus Anderson — ESTOI: 20:12 ESGA: 18 ESGD: +3 Evan Bouchard — ESTOI: 20:05 ESGA: 23 ESGD: +5 Roman Josi — ESTOI: 20:02 ESGA: 30 ESGD: -11 Gustav Forsling — ESTOI: 19:45 ESGA: 15 ESGD: +9 Erik Karlsson — ESTOI: 19:30 ESGA: 33 ESGD: -12 Moritz Seider — ESTOI: 19:17 ESGA: 17 ESGD: 0 Cale Makar — ESTOI: 19:06 ESGA: 25 ESGD: -1 Shea Theodore — ESTOI: 18:59 ESGA: 20 ESGD: -3 Jake Sanderson — ESTOI: 18:50 ESGA: 22 ESGD: -11 Alex Pietrangelo — ESTOI: 18:38 ESGA: 24 ESGD: +5 If Byram has been useless, he's in good company. https://www.nhl.com/stats/skaters?report=goalsForAgainst&reportType=season&seasonFrom=20242025&seasonTo=20242025&gameType=2&position=D&filter=evenStrengthTimeOnIcePerGame,gte,18&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,18&sort=evenStrengthGoalDifference&page=0&pageSize=50

Just found out he's also leading all NHL defencemen in points per 60.

He’s one of about 10 defencemen under 23 who are lineup fixtures. About half of those guys are playing 20-plus hard minutes a night. None of them have as many points as Power, despite the fact most get more PP time. Power is a plus player when more celebrated guys getting ridden hard like Sanderson and Hutson are big minuses. Perspective is a wonderful thing.

Power seems to have taken an interesting step this year. He's gotten better, but he's mostly gotten better at the things he was already good at, while making less obvious progress at the things he needed to improve most. I guess hockey is like politics, people get fixated on specific things to the exclusion of what should be a broad palette of considerations? It's weird to me that people who say things like 'Power can't clear the front of the net, he needs to sit' never say things like 'Dennis Gilbert can't make a breakout pass, he needs to sit' or 'Adam Fox can't clear the front of the net, he needs to sit'. Owen Power is among the best in the league at playing the point on offence, joining the rush, exiting the zone and making the stretch pass. He defends the rush pretty well, retrieves pucks pretty well, is OK at defending puck carriers one-on-one and pretty good at getting his stick into passing lanes. He often fails to adequately tie up his man off the puck, and is often guilty of making poor coverage decisions. His length/mobility combination is rare and allows him to be used in all situations against all types of opponents. He is a horse in terms of the amount of ice time he can handle without breaking down. He has a low panic threshold with the puck and sees the ice very well. He's had an increasingly positive role in an improving penalty kill. He tends to be inconsistent with some notably excellent and notably poor games. He literally has been the best in the league at creating offence 5-on-5 from the blueline. So many things he does well seem to get missed because of his lack of edge. The idea that a player who brings so many good elements needs to be sat in favour of a Bryson or Gilbert or Ryan Johnson is unfathomable to me.

What things are mostly likely to push in the opposite direction: The very solid recent goaltending of UPL? The abysmal production of "2nd liners" Cozens, Quinn, Benson and Kulich?? The fact that the remarkable 5-on-5 production of Byram and Power is kinda offsetting the abysmal production of the 2nd liners? The amount of times a defenceman will make a costly mistake? The incredible and criminally under-discussed numbers Rasmus Dahlin is putting up since he got healthy? (17 points in his past 13 games? Are you kidding me?) The play of the blueliners other than the big 3? The positive contributions of "3rd liners" McLeod Greenway, Zucker and Krebs? The thus-far inconsequential nature of the 4th line? The bounceback seasons from Tuch and Thompson, especially their two-way games, along with the eye-test dominance of the first line The improving special teams? Feels like we need more data

It’s odd the difference three games can make. Even three precarious games against less-than imposing opponents. I was kinda waiting for the 1/4 pole to cement my impressions of what this team is. At the 18-game mark I had pretty much written off these Sabres as last year’s team on repeat. Sure there were reasons for optimism; there always are if you squint. But the hard facts were this: this is team that clawed its way back to .500 three consecutive times, and three consecutive times it failed to push past that most ordinary of signposts; this was a team in desperate need of separating itself from the pack that in the course of a few weeks managed to fall to the Islanders, the Flyers, Detroit, Columbus, Pittsburgh and Montreal. These have been the hallmarks of the Kevyn Adams Sabres: the persistent refrain of not quite being able to get over the hump, of squandering opportunity after opportunity to turn the corner. California was different. Long road trip, three games in four nights, top scorer unavailable, top PKer unavailable, jacked arena saluting a legend, backup goalie making his first start, a parade of penalties, and — most consequentially — mediocre opponents: these are circumstances that inevitably seem to bite my team in the ass. But they didn’t. Not this week. The Sabres did not play particularly well in California, but they did something they have not usually been able to do in these types of situations at this time of the season: they gritted it out and found a way to win. The coach has been preaching from day one that this team needs to find ways to win when it doesn’t have its “A” game, preaching that this is the difference between the playoff teams and the also-rans.. Somehow, after a 1/4/1 start, these Sabres have reeled off a 10/5 run. That’s not an insignificant sample size. Over that stretch, they have the NHL’s 7th-best record, its 11th-best offence, its 11th-best defence, its 11th-best PP and its 6th-best PK. And that has vaulted them into 3rd place in the Atlantic. Is it a blip? Probably. We’ve certainly been conditioned to expect that it is. Every team gets hot once in a while, even Buffalo. The December schedule looks much tougher. The play of the 2nd line has been a major hole that needs to be mended. But progress has to start somewhere and winning games when they matter is something different. And it’s much better than the alternative. In a month this thread may be laughable. But the fact that it exists at this particular moment without actually being laughable…I guess that’s something.

Their top 3 are #6, 9 and 18 right now in NHL scoring among D — #1, 7, and 25 in ES scoring. Buffalo's 3rd-highest-scoring defenceman would be #1 on 21 teams. There's been a good amount of fancystat dumping around here on Byram's relative SA%. His actual SA% is a fraction over 50%, as is Power's. Dahlin is over 57% Their issues has been making the big mistake, especially Power, but that kind of offence from the backline is rare and something to build an identity around.

Sometimes it's OK to actually look at real goals for and against — the things that actually win hockey games. Byram is +9 for the season. He has 11 points, all of them at even strength — top 5 among all NHL D in even-strength points. Since Oct. 31 — roughly when he was elevated to the 1st pair, this is his stat line: Trust your eyes, like Lindy does. Can you imagine this D corps right now with Jokiharju and Samuelsson eating Byram's minutes? Byram was brought in to be a top 4 defenceman and so far he's delivered. Meanwhile Mittelstadt: 6/10/16/-11 has 8 points at even strength and wins 41.2% of his faceoffs McLeod: 5/6/11/+7 kills penalties and wins 52% of his faceoffs Way early to judge overall, but initial returns on Byram and McLeod for Mitts and Savoie have given the Sabres exactly what I hoped it would.

(Picks jaw up off the floor.)