dudacek

These posts suppose the ultimate goal is “make the playoffs and see what happens.” The ultimate goal is being in contention for an extended period. The two are not mutually exclusive - not even close - but where they don’t overlap, Adams is going to firmly stick with the latter. Which doesn’t mean he’s not interested in making moves, it just means they won’t be of the Ryan O’Reilly for futures variety.

To my mind, this was the primary focus of this season. Identify them and lock them up, then fill in the missing pieces. The Samuelsson Cozens and Tage contracts confirmed they are considered core. You know Dahlin and Power will join them, but for how long, and at what price? You've got 3 more years of Tuch and 4 more of Skinner. How many other "core" pieces do we need? How many of them are already here? How much more time does he need in order to answer those questions? Who is on the market? What's the price? How long will it take to close a deal? Are those discussions underway? These are the "Adams" things I'm most interested in. Upgrading Clague/Bryson — while necessary in my view — is mostly inconsequential to the big picture.

GA is smart guy and I totally get why he feels the way he does. But it's been pretty clear since the summer of 2021 that Adams has a plan and that plan is focused on putting his young players through a crucible of learning by doing. It does not involve adding mercenaries in a desperate bid to make the playoffs this year. He's like the dad who's packed up the family in the car, mapped out a route, and is driving cross-country to Disneyland. Encouraging him to take shortcuts and repeatedly asking "Are we there yet?" isn't going to change a thing. Like you, I am very curious to see where he goes once we finally have the Magic Kingdom in sight and it's time to take the car off the freeway and into the park. I feel like I have no idea how close Adams thinks we are.

When I watched them play live I walked away liking Benson’s game, but it looked to me like Savoie was the driver of the duo. It was just one game and may have not been representative, but Savoie was about getting pucks, Benson about getting open for them.

Objectively, their plan to develop talent in-house has resulted in huge performance jumps from a bunch of key players. Objectively, they have a boatload of younger players capable of making similar jumps coming up behind them to further advance the team. Objectively, moving a thoroughly gutted, last-place team into a playoff bubble team in a season and a half represents significant progress. Objectively, Adams has to look at where the team is and conclude their plan — setting the team up for long-term success through a stable, consistent positive culture and responsible incremental improvement — appears to actually be unfolding on, or possibly ahead of schedule.

Why does this take guts? Doesnt it take more guts to stick to your plan/principles in the face of pressure to do otherwise?

If they Sabres pick 20 picks over 2 years and 4 of them are defencemen and the Bruins make 10 picks over the same period and 3 of them are defenceman, the Sabres have still added more defencemen to their pipeline. The way you are using percentages is irrelevant. Putting aside the numbers for a second, and look at what Buffalo has actually done compared to its rivals over your chosen time period. Boston: Lohrei, Brunet, Mast, Gallagher, Edward Toronto: Niemela, Villeneuve, Rindell, Fusco Tampa: Gill, Schmidt, Gagne, Pelenkov, Thompson, Powell Florida: Alscher, Jansen, Lukashevich, Hache, Benning, Uens, Puutio Detroit: Eidvinsson, Buim, Wallinder, Sebrango, Johansson, Mathurin, Plandowski, Viro, Cotton Ottawa: Sanderson, Kleven, Nordberg, Hamara, Donovan, Roger, Waller, Romeo Montreal: Guhle, Mailloux, Hutson, Engstrom, Tourigny, Nurmi, Kostenko, Trudeau, Sobelev Buffalo: Power, Lindgren, Komarov, Novikov, Lyckasen It seems to me you’re investing a lot of angst over the Sabres being short a Tyler Kleven or two. If you said some of those teams have better odds of adding future Jacob Brysons, I’d say “probably.” If you said you’d take any of the other groups of drafted blueliners ahead of the Sabres’ group, I’d say you’re lying.

That part he said about the Sabres development coaches being around the Ice constantly — more than any other team he can think of ever - was pretty revelatory about how the Sabres are doing business. I think back to how the Sabres gutted their hockey department, decimating the scouting staff. The hockey department is back up to a similar complement to where it was prior to the purge, but a lot of the scouts were replaced by analytics guys and development coaches.

This is not this year's Leafs. Very curious to see how we match up. They schooled us in the fall.

Just to add a bit to be clear. The defence is definitely the weakest part of the pipeline and should be addressed this June. But that’s relative to the overall pipeline and ignoring the players already on the team. Relative to their peers in the NHL, Lindgren Komarov Novikov and Johnson is mediocre, but not bottom of the barrel. When you add Power into the mix (how many D from the past 2 drafts are in the NHL?) the Sabre group is closer to top of the barrel. And when you look at what the depth chart in Buffalo looks like for the next 4-6 years - you know, the reason you have a pipeline - the Sabres rank right at the top of the league.

You’re being pretty selective here on how you are presenting your numbers. Going back 5 years is not a false flag at all, not when players - particularly defencemen take 3 to 5 years to even reach the NHL. It’s certainly no worse than choosing to draw the line at 3 years so you don’t have to include the 3 top 32 picks used on defencemen the 2 years before. NHL teams, on average, get 7 picks a year. Since defencemen make up 30 % of the roster, they “should” be using 2 picks each year on defencemen. The Sabres, under Adams, took 2 last year, 2 the year before and 1 the year before that. On average, an NHL team “should” be picking 1 defencemen in the 1st round every 3 years. That’s what Adams has done. You can choose to ignore that the Sabres had just invested 3 of their 4 highest picks and traded for another recent 1st round defencemen just prior to Adams arrival, but you shouldn’t. It’s definitely relevant and should factor into the rationale of how they’ve picked since. The Sabres have invested an NHL average amount of draft capital on defenceman over the past 3 years and well above average over the past 5 years. That’s not even accounting for the unique fact they have invested 2(!) #1 overall picks on the blueline. The idea that they are ignoring the defence is an absolutely false narrative that crumbles to dust under close examination. You’re missing the forest for the trees. Just ask yourself how many U23 groups you’d rather have.

That was a great read on Savoie. His coach basically said he is the best player on the best team in the league and is contributing in every area of the game. Loved his comments about Hockey Canada. And Savoie sounds like another guy who is happy to be here. Pumped about his chances. Big fan of Östlund and Kulich, but Savoie is still my #2 prospect after Levi.

Agree completely. The numbers don’t look impressive in and of themselves, but in context you have to be very happy with where he is.

Just so we’re clear, this isn’t Johnson “news” any more than Lance’s Tweet about him was last week. It will be news when he announces he’s signed, or that he won’t be signing. (And for the record, my position - for years - has been “he’s given us no reason to believe yet that he isn’t going to sign.”)

I just think that in practice GMs are rarely choosing between players of significantly different value and “best player available“ doesn’t carry the weight a lot of people assign to it. Basically, BPA is like “top 4 D” or “3rd-liner”: it means different things to different people. BPA matters when it’s obvious, like if Adams thought Beniers was O’Reilly and Power was Marco Scandella. It doesn’t matter if he thinks Beniers is O’Reilly and Power is Pietrangelo because in that case it’s in the eye of the beholder and their asset value is roughly similar.

No wonder at all, since they’ve invested two 1st overall picks and 2 top 32 picks in the past 5 years on defencemen, more high picks over that span than any team in the league save one. (And also traded to add another former 1st rounder) This “stop ignoring the defence” thing is one of the worst memes on Sabrespace. The reason there are no defencemen in Rochester is that all our recent picks are already in the NHL. This complaint is basically saying the Sabres have taken too many Rouseks and Weissbach when they should have been taking more Laaksonen’s. If that’s what’s important, 🤷

20 years ago, I used to enjoy Timmy’s. The quality and consistency definitely fell through the floor over the past 10 or so. Avoid it now for the most part.

Personally I think fans factor in pre-draft rankings way more than they should and somehow convince themselves a guy ranked 10th is obviously and demonstrably better than a guy ranked 20th. Ask 10 Sabrespacers to rank McKee, Campbell, Tallinder, Pominville, Briere, Drury, Connolly, Reinhart, O’Reilly and Skinner and you will get 10 different lists and I doubt many of them would be “wrong.” It’s not that GMs reach for a position, it’s that the players are so close, position and type of player is frequently used as a tiebreaker.

Schenn is Boosh. I'm not opposed to adding him, but I'm not sure why people think the team needs 2 of them. I mean, he's probably better than Clague/Bryson, but if we're sacrificing a 2nd-rounder, it better be on something more than 20 games of a 3rd-pairing guy. I assume people are thinking of something like: Samuelsson Dahlin Power Schenn Jokiharju Lyubushkin Or, given handedness, and teaming a puck mover with stay-at-home: Dahlin Schenn Power Lyubushkin Samuelsson Jokiharju I'm just not seeing him as a great fit 🤷‍♂️

They're not going to sit Mitts or Victor for a guy like Lafferty and I doubt they sit Zemgus or Kyle for anybody. Maybe they like him better than Jost, but I doubt it. IMO, our two least effective forwards recently are Peterka, then Quinn What's more valuable: what Lafferty contributes down the stretch, or what Quinn and Peterka learn down the stretch? We've already got Asplund and Vinnie for injury coverage. I think I'm only adding a forward if he's an upgrade on Mitts and/or Victor.

What do the advance stats look like on Boosh since the New Year? Eye test has been more like what I was expecting we were getting when we signed him, leading me to suspect his problems in the fall were more about nagging injury. I think he was better than a lot of guys teams run out on their 3rd pairing, at least he was in January.

Not sure what you guys get overseas, but on Canada's West Coast I get every Sabre game through Sportsnet Now — no searching, always in the same place. Used to only get blackouts for games against the Canucks, but even that is gone now since Sportsnet has the Canuck regional contract.

But...

Thank you. There’s a level of revisionist history around here that Ullmark wasn’t that good as a Sabre. No, he wasn’t a Vezina caliber goalie, but he was a good NHL goalie for most his time here and his numbers reflect that.

His historical numbers show a .904 NHL goalie. He was .917 last year. History suggests pulling his numbers up, which is what has been happening. He has 5 absolutely terrible starts where he was under .850 in his save percentage. He also has 5 fantastic starts when he was over .940. 4 of those crappy starts were in his 1st 6 games.