dudacek

No one has fully laid claim to that status. Not one player. Dahlin is on the verge, Tuch and Thompson have shown some signs. Mittelstadt, Luukkonnen and Peterka could be, though I think it's unlikely. Most of Levi, Cozens, Krebs, Quinn, Power and this year's 1st pick need to be or we're *****.

What a god awful mess that was. The good players looked like *****, the ***** players looked like *****. Burn the tape.

Apologize for misreading your initial post. My take was simply that the only scenario I see where both Cozens and Krebs end up on the wing long-term is one where we have 3 legitimate centres forcing them there.

I think we’ve established that the Sabres can use more centres in the system. But the reason is they don’t have many who aren’t already on the team, not because we might need both Cozens and Krebs on the wing.

I don’t see this as anything other than putting your top 6 most talented players in your top 6 because of extreme circumstances. We literally have all 4 middle 6 wingers (Okposo, Girgensons, Olofsson Hinostroza) plus our best wing prospect (Quinn) out.

Effectively, trading Olofsson, cap space and futures for a guy who adds some of the elements the top 9 most lacks - experience, battle, 2-way play - Andrew Copp, maybe?

I think next year Adams is kinda committed to 10 forwards: Thompson, Mittelstadt, Cozens and Krebs as his top 6 centre hopefuls the odd men out of the above, plus Skinner, Tuch and Quinn in his top 9. Asplund, Girgensons and Okposo in the bottom 6 So I’m really interested in how he plans on filling the the last few spots, and how Olofsson and Peterka fit. Skinner Thompson Tuch Cozens Mitts Okposo Krebs Quinn ??? Cozens Mitts Okposo Krebs Quinn ??? Asplund Girgenson Okposo ??? I wonder if they aren’t best off giving Olofson’s role to Quinn and spending a big chunk on bringing in a warrior/matchup type to the middle-six, kinda an approximation to Chris Drury.

What about trading him for a 2022 version of 2019 Jokiharju?

I’m wondering if we will ever get to a point where we will dress something even close to our optimal lineup. This is my loose ranking of our most useful forwards and the amount of games they’ve missed: Tuch 32 Thompson 4 Skinner 2 Mitts 42 Okposo 5 Olofsson 9 Cozens 3 Girgensons 17 Hinostroza 15 Asplund 2 Krebs 34 Quinn 49 Caggiula 33 Yes, Krebs/Quinn is partly by choice, but that’s 5 of the top 13 forwards absent for about 2/3 of the games and another 2 out for 1/3, and Mitts and Olofsson being hampered for a lot of the games they’ve played. I’m not saying that our record would be significantly better, but adding that to having a third-string goalie or worse starting over half of our games, it’s been extraordinarily frustrating as a fan to have to watch. I mean all of Bjork, Eakin and Hayden have played pretty much every single night, when none of the three should ever be in the healthy starting roster.

Neither is on PP1, but it sure leaves PP2 in shambles: Joki Mitts Cozens Asplund...Matt Ellis?

It wasn't that long ago a lot of people were done with Okposo and Girgensons, but my god does the bottom of the lineup look terrible without them. Lot of pressure on the Mitts line to give the Thompson line some help.

He’s not. He is, however, better than Dell and Tokarski, and should be more capable of playing 40 games than Craig Anderson. Adams appears to be shopping in a Venn Diagram of “available” “OK with Buffalo” “affordable cap hit” “affordable acquisition cost” “not going to block UPL” and “doesn’t have term” I hope we do better, but Georgiev is one of a very small group of goalies who fits.

And it’s not even new. 7th most productive player in the league over the past 5 seasons and no one ever talks about him. Statistically, his peers are Panarin, Kane, Ovechkin and Crosby. He gets 1/10th the hype. https://www.nhl.com/stats/skaters?reportType=game&dateFrom=2017-08-12&dateTo=2022-02-22&gameType=2&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=points,goals,assists&page=0&pageSize=50

Funniest thing about dealing Olofsson is how closely he fits the profile of the type of player I’ve been advocating the Sabres should be trading for. Not on the ice, but just in terms of being an underperforming buy-low opportunity on the market mostly for contract reasons. Assuming he could be had for a 2ndish and signed at about 4/4.

RD Schnieder would be the ideal target, don’t see the Rangers sacrificing that chip on Olofsson. G Georgiev, F Chytil and Kravtsov are players the Rangers might move that the Sabres might have interest in. Rangers also have a late 1st and 2 2nds. RD Lundkvist might be the sweet spot. Miller, Anderson and Olofsson for Georgiev and Lundkvist, with the Sabres retaining?

Yep, and showing the troops down there that they will be rewarded for strong play. I see Biro’s logical spot as stepping for Eakin, given his game. But he is a natural winger and Bjork has been terrible, so… Dont see him getting ice in the top 9.

To me, Granato is starting to shift in that direction in his pressers.

Not disagreeing per se, but firmly believe this is what good GMs do. Miro Satan, Danny Briere, Stu Barnes, Toni Lydman, Chris Drury, Rhett Warrener...none of those trades looked significant or lopsided at the times they were made, all of them worked out very well for Buffalo.

Florida traded a 2nd-round pick and an Aleksandr Kisakov/Josh Bloom level prospect for 25-year-old Sam Bennett, then signed him to a 4-year, $4.2 million cap hit. The Panthers identified Bennett as a still-young player with unrealized potential who might benefit from a change of scenery (kinda like the Sabres identified Alex Tuch) and pounced. These are the kind of trades the Sabres are well-positioned to make, and should make. It is my hope that is what they have positioned themselves to do, and that they are patiently waiting to move when a buy-low opportunity presents itself.

People terrified of the Murray approach tend to ignore what the team would have looked like if we had Grigorenko, Zadorov, Compher, Samsonov, Roslovic, Myers, Armia and Stafford instead of Kane, Bogosian, O'Reilly and Lehner.

Absolutely. The way I see it, the Sabres window is open for the duration of Power/Dahlin's prime. The focus should be on investing our assets on developing/getting/keeping players who support that. The big picture cost is relevant, the means is not.

Three best forwards and best defensive pair, as well as starting goalie. Didn’t replace any of them until Tuch showed up at Christmas. It was as thorough a roster tank as any.

Very happy Sam is in a position now where the rest of the league can appreciate what he brings and he can be rewarded for it. Yes, he did do this here.

Where? The biggest outlier season for the Sabres over the past 25 years is Danny Briere’s 95 points, which is 23 points more than his 2nd best season. But that is a bit misleading since Danny was pacing for close to 90 the previous year before injuries cut that short. Two more outliers - Sam Reinhart (+15, 65 points) and Max Afinogenov (+12, 73 points) - aren’t really outliers at all when you see each had multiple seasons of similar point/per game that were cut short by COVID or injury. The only real “one-year-wonder” I found was Al Kotalik’s 62 point season, which was 19 better than anything else he did. Goalwise, Drew Stafford’s 31 in 62 games stands out as another outlier. His 2nd best was 21 and that was over a full season. But history generally shows that if Tage puts up 60 points this year, it’s pretty likely he has multiple 50-point seasons in his future.

He’s not riding a hot streak or getting carried by a star, he’s legitimately driving play and creating his own success. And he’s doing it against the opposition’s best players. He wants the puck and he expects to be a difference maker. We take his length for granted, but combined with his skill level and newfound assertiveness, that’s a pretty tough, dare I say unique, package to defend. I’d feel comfortable betting on @Brawndo‘s contract. It’s one of those gambles that contenders take and win.