dudacek

I think it's time for Sabrespace to be relieved of its duties. If there has been one constant in this decade of poor results it has been Sabrespace. Accountability is in order. It's time.

Did not see this coming. We were doing too many things right for too long. We spent a lot of time talking last season and into the fall about how bad goaltending was going to crush development by making the skaters 2nd-guess themselves. I guess we shouldn't be surprised to finally see it manifest itself. Still feeling generally positive about the direction of the team — the people in charge are good people and the players have talent. But my god it can be tough being a Sabres fan.

It’s getting ridiculous. Points in 9 consecutive games, 8/14/22 over that stretch. Kid has at least 2 points in 12 of his past 17 games.

The only way I can interpret the optics as “bad” is if: a) the Sabres goalies are getting job done in the playoff race instead of this abomination https://www.nhl.com/stats/goalies?reportType=game&dateFrom=2023-02-26&dateTo=2023-03-18&gameType=2&playerPlayedFor=franchise.19&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=wins,savePct&page=0&pageSize=50 b) Devon Levi was a 19-year-old kid who never played a game above Jr A instead of 21 and one of the top 3 college goalies of all time. Yes, they should give him some practice time first and get a sense of his readiness first. But if he looks capable in practice, this isn’t giving up on the season, it’s more like trying to save it.

Don’t disagree with this. Disagree with the idea it’s risky to give him a game. You’re not going to crush his career or our playoff chances. The latter might be a question if our current goalies were good.

Didn’t Kulich have 29 in camp? Maybe Savoie and Ostlubd take 28 and 21 from Kyle and Z?

Just so I'm clear, what happened in that whole sequence that mattered? No Sabres stepped up to fight a Flyer and made you feel better about how much their game sucked?

Plus Tuch. Seems to me the injuries were a factor, but more so how they fed into the lack of experience, coupled with the pressure of the race. The team tightened up and too often stopped playing their signature game. There have been more stinkers over the past month than any two months combined since the 8-game losing streak. The shorthand is they weren’t mentally tough under pressure enough to overcome their roster holes. The question that needs to be answered is whether this experience toughens them up the way Donnie thinks it should, or whether they need to adjust the personality of the roster. That is in addition to upgrading the roster in and of itself.

Yes, he may switch to #1 down the road, but I kinda like the symmetry of our kiddie core: 22 Quinn 23 Samuelsson 24 Cozens 25 Power 26 Dahlin 27 Levi

When Jake McCabe and Casey Mittlestadt were signed late in the season, people were excited to get them in and see what they could do. Levi was a far more dominant college player than either of them. Linus Ullmark played 20 games at 22 in first pro season. UPL played 4 when he was 22. Swayman played 10 games for the Bruins after 3 years college. Spencer Knight played 4 after 2. Levi is 21 and just finished one of the top 3 careers in college history. He’s shown he’s reached a level where he’s worth a game and the Sabres goalies have shown they aren’t getting the job done. Some people are acting like he is 16 and will be broken beyond repair and the Sabres season along with it.

Why can’t that goalie be Levi?

Brawndo's correct. They deliberately did not do this to UPL because they wanted to send him the message he's an NHL goalie now. Seth Appert talked about it with Marty and Duffer.

This kid’s for real and he will show it sooner than a lot of you expect. Praying Adams takes another college goalie in the mid-rounds this year. 😜

Things I know about Levi: Earlier in the season, his coach and teammates were not expecting him to return to Northeastern. He's been pretty clear on multiple occasions about liking the Sabres organization and looking forward to being a part of it. Kevyn Adams is completely enamored with him and is highly unlikely to be dicking him around with a contract offer. Levi is a deliberate, methodical thinker who has no issues with taking unconventional paths. I suspect Levi is taking time to decompress and carefully consider his options before putting pen to paper. But I doubt very much the delay is about your worst fears. I suspect Adams has given him a choice between 2 options: signing a max NHL deal now, practicing with the big club for duration of the season, and playing at least one game under order to blow off the 1st year of his contract. signing an Amerk-only deal, and being given the AHL crease for the duration of the season and hopefully into the playoffs, then signing his NHL deal at the end of that run. Remember, due to eligibility rules it's either/or, he can't do both. It's start the contract early, soak in the NHL and risk not playing much, or delay his 2nd contract but get a chance to be a workhorse in Rochester. I doubt the actual money would be much different this spring, it would just be the 2nd contract getting delayed.

I think they also see a hometown boy who grew up loving the Sabres and that plays a not inconsiderable role in how he is perceived by the fanbase, whereas it plays very little role in how his teammates perceive his leadership. No disrespect to Tuch, who strikes me as a fine candidate, one of a number of them in the room.

Team Canada WJC with Krebs, Cozens and Quinn, Canadian Olympic team with Power. Weird that the Sabres have started getting better when they started adding a few Canadians 😜

“I’m just super grateful that I’m with such a great organization that really cares about me and that is looking out for my best interests and their best interest,” Levi said. “It’s a similar interest where we can both help each other. That partnership feels great and it’s something I’m looking forward to.” “It was unreal,” he said. “(Development camp) was the best week ever. It was so fun. Everyone there was so nice, the players and the staff. It was great meeting fellow prospects and fellow players who already play in Rochester and Buffalo. It was great to meet everyone and compete with them. It just felt like home being at the rink, meeting and hanging around everyone, whether it was on the ice or off the ice. It was just very homey … I had a really great time and I’m excited for the future.” —Devon Levi this fall Hang in there guys

I figure Adams is probably picking him up on his way home from the GM meetings today.

See, I feel the same way about Hart as you feel about Demko. And that’s the thing about goalies, I think we all have our perceptions based on our exposure and our biases as to what makes a goalie good, and very few of us are watching these other guys night after night after night. I mean we’ve all watched UPL and Comrie pretty intently this year and I’m willing to bet there is no consensus on this board as to who is better. Listening to Marty Biron it’s clear he prefers Comrie and he clearly knows more about goaltending than me. But I don’t see it, and the numbers clearly back me up. Statistics aren’t real helpful. You prefer Hart by a wide margin, I prefer Demko by a wide margin. Statistically there is no reason to support either of us. Statistically, Demko has played 156 NHL games for a mostly mediocre team and has a 2.92 GAA and a .915 SV % while Hart has played 194 games for a mostly mediocre team with a 2.97 GAA and a .905 SV %. Each has had one outlier abbreviated season with poor numbers. The sure bets aren’t on the market. It’s a bit of a crap shoot with the next tier, the guys we’ve been talking about. Are they safe enough to be worth paying a high price? I don’t want to be paying Kulich for Hart and I don’t see any reason for the Flyers to take Rosen for him. Is there a happy medium? And after those guys, are they are they really any better bets than Levi and UPL?

Can you imagine what Devon Levi coming in now and leading the team on a run into the playoffs would do for the business side of the operations? The kid has a natural magnetism regardless, but allowing it to resonate under those circumstances…

How many NHL goalies can anyone safely predict will be flat out good next year? (I guess that's why GMs don't invest huge assets in trading for them)

Another nugget to chew on: Hart's career SV pct is .905. UPL's is .901.

Related, but separate thought to my previous post, another thing I hadn't really considered: If Carter Hart can put up a .914 season as a 21-year-old 1st-time NHL starter in Philly, and Thatcher Demko can put up .915 as a 25-year-old 1st-time NHL starter in Vancouver, is it unreasonable to think Devon Levi or UPL can't do something similar next year in Buffalo?

I hadn't really considered that he was approaching the goaltending position differently than others. Now that you bring it up, I just automatically assumed his approach would be the same to each roster position. Thinking out loud, it may be that his struggles in the crease are the result of thinking UPL and Devon Levi are on similar tracks to their peers on forward and defence, when their runways are much longer and their landings much harder to stick: basically he's isn't approaching it differently, and maybe he should?

The way you’ve come around on Quinn since the draft warms my heart.