dudacek

You think it’s remarkable to have general hockey opinions that aren’t filtered through 13 years of Sabres ineptitude? Thats kinda surprising to me

Soon-to-be captain doing captain things. https://www.nhl.com/news/rasmus-dahlin-taking-larger-leadership-role-with-buffalo

Interesting write-up on Leinonen here. Hope he can resurrect himself into a prospect again. Most interesting think to me was the photo. Kid look slike he's lost a lot of weight. https://www.nhl.com/news/buffalo-sabres-prospect-topias-leinonen-embracing-new-opportunity

It feels like I've been reading stuff like this from Winnipeg fans for years, without ever seeing them move past the pretender stage. I'll be more impressed when I start seeing him wrack up some playoff wins.

I don't expect Krebs to score a bunch either, but I wouldn't be surprised if scores more than his average of 7. Said another way, McLeod has played 219 NHL games and has an average of 11 goals a season. I'm not expecting him to score 20, but if the over/under is 11, odds tell me to take the over Yes it probably does, as I was trying to allude to in my initial post about Malenstyn. Cozens, Krebs, Benson, Peterka, Quinn, Power and Byram were all in the NHL by age 20. it feels that you are arguing that I should not expect a big leap from any player over 200 games (basically, Cozens, Krebs and McLeod) I generally agree, but it has never been my argument here to say otherwise. My argument is that when it come to matching career averages for all of these guys, the smart money is on the over.

Trying again: I think players generally score more frequently in their 2nd 200 games than their first. Anecdotally, my imperfect research indicates that tends to be true I think the Sabres have a high number of players with 200 or less games. Therefore, I will not be surprised if a majority of those players outscore their career averages

Why would I take out the rookie year when my entire point was determining whether players are likely to score more in their second 200 games than their first 200 games? And the only reason I did the exercise in the first place was you telling me that they're not?

So I took a look at 10 prominent recent Sabres — which absolutely doesn't prove anything I just wanted to see where they trended. It seemed too much work to find and track their actual first and 2nd 200 games, so I proxied it. These are each player's average goal totals over their first 3 years as an NHL regular prorated over 82 games, followed by years 4 through 6 prorated over 82 games Eichel 29 32 Reinhart 22 28 Okposo 21 23 Skinner 28 28 Tuch 18 30 O’Reilly 14 22 Rodrigues 11 19 Girgensons 12 7 Larson 9 8 Dahlin 7 16

Never said you did. My theory is most do, and I posed a question.

My point was that I suspect their average over their second 200 games to be higher than their first 200 games. Byram and Power have played about 160 games each, Malenstyn 100. Krebs and McLeod just over 200

I sure hope Lindy puts together his starters relatively early in camp and focuses on getting them all on the same page together and with the system. It's pretty clear Donnie's development blender last September was a mistake. I can't recall a time when the roster was more set. They are basically deciding which two of Rousek, Gilbert, Bryson, Levi or Reimer goes down.

I'm curious to see what trends are historically when you compare career averages to averages over the first 200 or so games. I suspect guys like Cozens, Krebs, Benson, Peterka, Quinn, McLeod, Power, Byram and even Malenstyn are at a point in their careers where we should generally be expecting them to score over their career average.

This is thoughtful way of looking at what we should be expecting. The fact is that even though what you post is entirely reasonable, when the rubber hits centre ice dot, we really don't know what we are going to get. There are too many variables, especially with so much of the roster so early in their careers. From '22 to '23 the Sabres took a 62-goal jump without adding an impact player of any note. The last time the team made a similar leap was in '06, with 61 goals. Again, that came without any significant outside additions. I wonder if there was anything in the numbers the preceding season that suggested that was possible, let alone likely, in either case.

Not telling you what to be surprised at, but I didn't pull those numbers out of a hat. Cozens had 31, Tuch 36, Thompson 47, and Zucker 27, just 2 years ago I'm not saying we should expect those numbers (actually I was saying the opposite) but objectively they aren't utter fantasy

Can the Sabres turn Sabrespace into these guys for at least parts of the season? Is it too much to ask, Lindy?

I don't think anyone would be surprised if any of these guys hit these totals Tage 40 Tuch 30 Cozens 30 Peterka 30 Quinn 30 Zucker 20 Benson 15 McLeod 15 Dahlin 15 Byram 10 That's 235 goals from just 10 players. They've got it in them. What would be surprising is most of them hitting those numbers. Because I don't think anyone would surprised by any of this either: Tage 30 Tuch 20 Cozens 20 Peterka 20 Quinn 15 Zucker 15 Benson 10 McLeod 10 Dahlin 10 Byram 5 That's only 155. They've got that in them too.

That's about what they look like on paper. If the breakthrough happens, it will happen through growth. Belief in that strategy is on a bus somewhere near Medicine Hat, along with the a box full of junior hockey scouting reports and Kevin Devine's crushed coffee cup.

Full confession is I was extremely high on Byram in his draft year. I was also hyper-focused on Canada's COVID 2020/21 world junior team. It was one of my favourite teams of all time and I probably shouldn't be surprised they lost in the final because that's how my fandom rolls. Byram cemented my high opinion of him there as the captain and best defenceman in the tournament, going +13 in 7 games. I don't know if he was on for a goal against the entire tourney. I was extremely high on him in his cup run. And every time I watched him since, prior to Buffalo to picking him up, I've never seen anything to make me second-guess my opinion that he was going to be a good one. He's no Dahlin, but he's like Dahlin in the sense that he is all-in. He competes both ways and he goes for it hard both ways and he makes plays. The player I watched in Buffalo reminded me of Dahlin under Krueger; a kid who was second-guessing himself and thinking too much. I don't often go out on a limb like this, but I think Lindy is going to be perfect for him. He's going set his boundaries and tell him to for it within them. And Byram will respond He's got game and he will find it. I'll be surprised if it doesn't happen this year.

Unless my math continues to be bad, it worked out to being outshot about 19.5 to 17 per game. With Casey we outshot the opposition about 13.5 to 13.

Nope. That's my bad math. Still better, but negligibly. You know me too well. My red flag is definitely hyperbole. 😁 But I'm reading the answer my initial question is that you think he's one of our worst players mostly because of shot attempts?

The team went 9-8-1 with Byram, roughly a 95-point pace, or better than it did with Casey, so trading one of our best players for one of our worst didn't significantly affect team results. What particular thing is it that you and GA seem to be putting so much emphasis on? There must be some analytical metric that was Tweeted out somewhere and got burned into your brains. Since he was acquired, Byram's team rankings over 18 games were: Points: 9, tied for 7th Plus/minus: -1, 14th Shots: 21, 10th Time on Ice: 21:51, 3rd ES TOI: 18:56 3rd Hits: 34, 6th Blocked shots: 29 3rd Shot attempt percentage 46.5, 15th Giveaways: 6 13th Takeaways: 7 8th Penalties drawn: 3 6th Net penalties: -2 15th He was 7th in PP ice time and was on the ice for 3 PP goals He was 10th in SH ice time and wasn't on the ice for a goal against while killing a penalty Those certainly aren't the counting stats (all from NHL.com) of "probably our worst player." i pulled out his evolving Hockey numbers and his expected goals against there aren't good, but they're outweighed by his expected goals for. https://evolving-hockey.com/stats/players/?_inputs_&player="Bowen Byram" I know Ive seem some chart overflowing with red at some point, but I haven't been able to pull it up. It has to be pretty awful and pretty broad to back up the worst player on the team claim in the context of his regular numbers.

I so desperately want the team to justify jumping on his bandwagon. i want Malenstyn slamming guys through the end boards, UPL stoning Marner on a breakaway up a goal in the 3rd period, Krebs sticking Marchand after the whistle, Lindy up on the boards screaming at Jon Cooper, and Quinn sniping one from the left circle to tie things up with the goalie pulled. A year ago Vancouver fandom around here was a morgue, an absolute suicide watch. It was impossible not to be jealous as the team turned the fan base around. I want to be that guy. I just want the Sabres to be fun.

Aside from a few of the usual wedding/birth announcements, it’s been pretty quiet on the social media front. The Swiss camp where Power and Mule joined the Euros seemed to be the only noteworthy thing: the team seemed to have kept a pretty low profile over the summer. Vacation photos were sparse. Public events seemed kept to minimum. The new guys only did their required team zoom calls and I can’t recall a single holdover player giving an interview anywhere. Not even a Risto-style workout video to be found. I’d like that to mean they’ve been all business and focused on getting better. If that’s the case, leadership should be bringing the guys together relatively soon.

We’re about a month away from training camp, and if the past week is any indication, NHL GMs are back at work. Im wondering if anyone has heard or seen any news about players getting back to town, or skating together yet? Really curious about where their heads are as they approach the new season, after maybe being a little too full of themselves last year.

If Lindy is running his top PP out for 90 seconds each penalty, I really hope Thompson, Quinn, Byram and Dahlin are 4 of the guys on it. The unit desperately needs a left-handed pass/shoot/move option opposite Tage and Bo has that skill set.