dudacek

I disagree. It was 3 high-profile gaffes in 2 games that led to goals that had multiple posters saying he should be benched or sent down to the minors, ignoring the fact that overall he had been and continues to be the team’s best defenceman. It was a big-time over-reaction to the confluence of a handful of sloppy plays, that continues to jaundice the views of many as to what his overall effectiveness is and has been.

Riffing off @Taro T’s 2003 reference, here’s some food for thought. When Ryan Miller was Devon Levi’s age he was putting up similarly extraordinary numbers in college When Marty Biron was UPL’s age he was just emerging as a regular NHL player filling in for a faltering Hasek When Hank Tallinder was Owen Power’s age he was playing his first year in the SEL and was 5 years away from being an NHL top 4 D When Brian Campbell was Rasmus Dahlin’s age he was an AHL rookie, 5 years away from his 1st NHL 40 point season When Jay Mckee was Matthias Samuelsson’s age he was playing his last games in the AHL and emerging as an NHL regular When Dimitri Kalinin was Henri Jokiharju’s age he was showing promise in his 3rd NHL season When Tim Connolly was Casey Mittelstadt’s age he was facing big questions about his future after following up a 45-point season with just 25 points in 80 games When JP Dumont was Alex Tuch’s age he was in the midst of his 2nd 20 goal season When Danny Briere was Tage Thompson’s age he was smashing his previous NHL high of 15 points by scoring 60 in 78 games. When Derek Roy was Peyton Krebs age he was putting up 19 points in 49 games as an NHL rookie, after starting the year as a point-a-game player in Rochester. When Chris Drury was Dylan Cozens age he was dominating college hockey, two years away from a 44-point rookie NHL season When Thomas Vanek was Jack Quinn’s age he was putting up 68 points in 74 games in Rochester When Max Afinogenov was JJ Peterka’s age has was putting up 21 points in 38 games in his last year in Russia When Jochen Hecht was Rasmus Asplund’s age he was a 40-point 2nd year NHLer When Jason Pominville was Isak Rosen’s age he hadn’t been drafted yet and was 5 years away from the NHL

This is where I’m at as well. So much depends on how much the kids improve and how fast. There is a critical mass factor at play, where adding enough good players makes all the other good players better. Donnie talked about how plugging Mittelstadt and Tuch into the lineup not only makes the team better because they are better than the players they replace, but they can move Cozens and Thompson into better situations because they give those guys better linemates or weaker opponents. And they give the Hinostrozas and Caggiulas incentive because they now have to be better more often to hang on to their roster spots. And they mean Dahlin is spending less time on the ice with Eakin and Bjork and more with forwards who can take better advantage of his skills. Then if Krebs and Quinn and Power start playing at the level of Tuch and Mittelstadt and Dahlin, you add another layer to the same formula. Add some well-timed saves, limit goalie whiffs and you boost the confidence of everyone. Things snowball. It’s incremental, it’s slow, and it comes with no guarantees, but the theory is sound. It’s what powered the last good Sabres teams. The players just have to be good enough and you have to have enough of them. With so many Sabres pieces, we don’t yet know what we have.

New year is a great time to update my personal prospect list to see whose stock is rising and falling. ⬆️ 1) Owen Power: he’s put up NCAA numbers that haven’t been recorded by a teenager in 30 years. He’s the best player on the best team in college hockey, looked dominant in a brief showing in the WJC, and he’s got the Olympic team knocking. He seems to have improved in every facet of his game. Big defencemen take a while to develop in the NHL usually, but he looks to have what it takes to be a top pairing NHL defencemen for 15 years and he makes the game look easy. He’s not only the Sabres best prospect, he’s probably the best drafted prospect in the world. ⬆️ 2) Jack Quinn: his production as an AHL rookie is almost as remarkable as Power’s as an NCAA teen. He was leading the entire league in goals and points before being slowed by mono. He is a natural goal scorer who demands the puck and expects to finish. But what makes his game more impressive is he is also a puck hound and an excellent passer, who cares about defence too. He still needs to work on his strength, but has the versatility to slot anywhere in the top 9, with 1st-line winger upside. ⬆️ 3) Devon Levi: I know I’ll get pushback on this, but I am all in on Levi. This kid is special and has proven it all year, first as a junior and now in college. He’s yet to have a bad game and he has had many, many great, even perfect ones - 10 shutouts in 26 games. He is single-handedly making Northeastern relevant. His athleticism, tracking, technique and focus are all superb. The only thing stopping him from getting more hype is his size and the general NHL reluctance not to consider goalies under 6’2”. That may stop him from NHL success, but it sure hasn’t been an issue anywhere else. He’s a boom or bust who’s still got a few more doors to smash and is a few years away, but I’m not among the doubters, He’s got that “it” factor. 🔄 4) Peyton Krebs: I don’t ever see Krebs being an all-star but I do see him having a long distinguished NHL career, with much of it playing in the top 6 and being a big part of his team’s leadership group. I’m a sucker for competitive, smart, responsible players, and that is Krebs to a “T”. Add that to excellent quickness and passing skills and you have a guy you can lean on in all situations. I don’t think he will score many goals, or take the NHL by storm, but instead develop from a role player to a core player along a slow and steady path. He doesn’t play like Drury, but he projects as a player with that utility and that stature. ⬆️ 5) JJ Peterka: Explosive speed, boundless enthusiasm and excellent offensive vision have made Peterka into a frontline AHL player at 19. He’s not just good for a rookie, he’s just plain good and has shown rapid improvement since he was drafted. He’s fearless, with the perfect hockey player’s lower body and is a lock to play in the NHL. His ability to downshift and find the nuance to complement his high gear will determine whether he becomes a Conor Sheary or a Jake Guentzel. ⬆️ 6) Matthias Samuelsson: He’s been a #1 for Rochester this year, adding some offensive instincts and some transition skating to his dominant one-on-one defence, strength and solid positioning. He’s as reliable as the tide and will be at minimum a good 3rd-pairing D and top-pairing penalty killer in the NHL, with an upside of being able to match up against top lines. I’m a big fan. ⬆️ 7) Ukko-Pekka Luukkonnen: How one month can turn an arrow around. UPL has been remarkably consistent so far for an undermanned Sabres squad after a shaky start in Rochester. He’s got size, plays calm and has shown excellent technique in tight, despite some issues on long shots. He’ll have to sustain this for a while longer however to shake off the doubters that developed post hip surgery. 🔄 8) Ryan Johnson: Johnson continues to be a very effective 2-way college defenceman and a beautiful skater who should make the NHL on that skill alone. He’s very good at evading forecheckers and breaking out of his zone and has 2nd-pair upside, but needs to cement an identity and show he can defend against NHL strength. Hopefully he signs this spring and gets a look to finish the season. ⬇️ 9) Prokhor Poltapov: after a good start, he has faded while bouncing between leagues and getting limited ice time in the KHL. Love his combination of skill and compete and see him as being very well-suited to the smaller ice and the aggressive attacking game the Sabres are wanting to build. He signed a 3-year deal in Russia and will have plenty of time to percolate before he comes over here. ⬇️ 10) Isak Rosen: with so many Sabre prospects breaking out this fall, Rosen is the exception that proves the rule. He’s been stapled to the bench in the Swedish men’s league with very little production or chance to develop. We hear he’s got top 6 speed and talent, but we’ve yet to see it. He gets this spot on draft pedigree and memories of his outstanding U18s last summer. Another player who is at least 3 years away. 🔄 11) Erik Portillo: Portillo had a lot of hype for a player who had such limited playing time over the past few years, but he’s largely justified it. He’s been good anchoring the crease for a loaded Michigan side. He’s got prototypical size and some #1 upside, but is a long-term project who still needs a lot of reps. ⬆️ 12) Brett Murray: Despite entering the season well down the prospect chart, Murray has had as much NHL ice time as any Sabres prospect. His size and the fact he’s sometimes willing to use it makes him intriguing and he didn’t look out of place in the NHL. I’m still not clear if he’s either skilled enough or belligerent enough to be an NHL 3rd liner. ⬇️ 13) Aleksander Kisakov: an undersized talent, Kisakov’s stock has dropped a bit because his numbers have dropped off in the Russian junior league he dominated in his draft year. I’m not overly concerned at this point, because of the long-term nature of the prospect and the weird way they handle kids over there ⬇️ 14) Artuu Ruotsalainen: R2 played the best game Ive seen him play all year tonight as the 1C in Rochester, but the 20 games he played in Buffalo made me doubt he has the skill to play a top 6 role in the NHL or the specialization to play in the bottom 6. Like the player, but he’s looking an awful lot like your prototypical tweener. ⬆️ 15) Nikita Novikov: this is my out-of-nowhere pick. 18-year-olds don’t play on Russia’s WJC team, or regularly in the KHL as a rule, but this late pick is doing both. He’s a hard-nosed rock of a stay-at-home D - something lacking in the system and a long shot player to watch. ⬆️ 16) Casey Fitzgerald: Fitzgerald doesn’t do anything really well, but he is pretty OK at most things and he competes and carries himself like he belongs. He didn’t look horribly out of place in his brief stint in Buffalo this year. He shouldn’t make it, but his attitude makes me want to leave the door slightly open. ⬆️ 17) Josh Bloom: NHL size and NHL wheels, Bloom has really surprised with some excellent production and leadership for a weaker Saginaw team this year. He’s got a chance to move up and make the scouts look like geniuses for picking him, despite the fact he didn’t play a game last year. ⬆️ 18) Olivier Nadeau: another long shot who is outperforming his draft status after an unpredictable pandemic year. He will have to overcome skating issues, but has good size and skill in close quarters and is lighting up the Q. 🔄 19) Linus Weissbach: an undersized winger with NHL speed, but not enough skill to play a top six NHL role, or enough grit or defence to play in the bottom 6. Fun to watch in Rochester though. ⬇️ 20) Oskari Laaksonen: I see some people projecting him as an NHLer and I wonder if they watch him, or just see his numbers. He’s a decent skater and a pretty good PP QB at the AHL level. But he’ll never run an NHL PP and his d-zone and transition games aren’t good.

You speak of the first bolded like it is a switch that can just be turned on, and of the 2nd bolded as if the plan isn’t obvious. Management has consistently preached an identity: play fast, be fearless, don’t quit. And a plan: form a young core that cares for each other and grows and develops together into something that can be good long term. They haven’t deviated from that and by and large the players seem to be bought in. The plan is to build a deep centre spine featuring three of Krebs, Cozens, Mittelstadt and Thompson and 2 strong defence pairs anchored by Power and Dahlin. Short-term they will be supported on the wings by Tuch, Olofsson, Skinner, Okposo, Asplund and Girgensons, supplemented and/or replaced by Quinn, Peterka, Rosen, Poltapov and one of the guys currently listed at centre, with Bryson, Jokiharju, Samuelsson and Johnson providing similar support now and for the future on defence. In goal, they think UPL can be the guy, and they have Levi and Portillo as insurance. They know they can’t count on all those guys to hit, so they have covered their bases with 4 1sts and 4 2nds over the next two drafts, including at least 1 more top 10 pick. And they have maximized the amount of cap space they have available over the next few years so they have the ability to lock up the hits, replace the misses, and acquire pieces to fill in the gaps. They have also overhauled their scouting, development and analytics teams in order to make sure they get the most out of their assets. You complain about the constant changing of plans yet you seem ready to toss this one out before it is even a half-season deep, or most of its major components have yet to hit their 22nd birthday. You might not like it, but there absolutely is a plan. It’s going to take at least 2 or 3 years to get any sense of whether it is a good plan, or if Adams has the chops to pull it off, or if Terry has the patience to let him.

Nothing on JJ? He missed a number of shifts on either side of the intermission, came back for one, and disappeared for the rest of the night.

This whole conversation started because I said that we are a better team than our record shows. That's all. Loosely speaking, there are three levels of NHL players: Elite players who can drive play and need to be accounted for every shift. Solid players who can play with, or hold their own against the above. Role players capable of helping in limited situations. Of course they need to add better players to the ones that compiled this record. The difference between us seems to be that I see upgrades in the system. I count Power, Tuch and Mittelstadt among those players because i see them as 2nd-level players who have not played for us this year and will be replacing 3rd-level players. I have my fingers crossed UPL is not a mirage and can also be a 2nd-level player who will be replacing a 3rd-level player, or worse I don't think it is unreasonable to think some of Krebs, Quinn, Peterka and Samuelsson can upgrade the JAGs on our 3rd level. These players have not been on the team that has compiled our current record, I stand by them being enough to make us a better team. Why you seem to be reading that as me thinking that bringing them in is all that needs to be done I'm not sure.

Never mind the injuries, never mind the kids who aren't here yet. We have had NHL goaltending (from an unproven prospect and a past-his-prime veteran) for exactly 14 games. In those games, we are 6/6/2.

I don't know what you've been watching if you aren't seeing a significant drop-off when Prow is in for Bryson or Dell for Anderson, or an obvious boost when Jokiharju came in for Butcher or Tuch for Bjork. Interchangeable is Bjork for Caggiula

I don't know why you keep coming back to this. All teams deal with injury troubles. Most teams do not have multiple key players hurt the entire year. It's not the same thing.

What about Mittelstadt and Tuch scoring 40 instead of Murray and Eakin's 15? What about Luukkonen's .915 SP over Tokarksi's .900? Krebs, Quinn and Peterka's talent in depth roles, or more over Bjork, Hayden and Jankowski? Samuelsson's physicality over Butcher's butchering? Cozens? Dahlin? I see so many opportunities for in-house improvement.

@Thorny, what you aren't acknowledging is that I'm not talking about 2 players right now, I'm talking about 10 players next year. And those players have not been missing a handful of games. With the exception of Jokiharju's 1/2-season, they've been absent virtually the entire season. I did a quick scan of the division and found 2 teams with key players missing for the majority of the season: Kucherov and Price. One team has collapsed, the other is the Stanley Cup champ. Boston and Toronto can't get their "two players of choice" back the same way the Sabres would because they haven't been missing them the same way. If your argument is we will be a better team with those 10 players in the lineup but not enough to be anything more than the bottom 5 team we are now, that's a fair argument. I disagree, but I understand it. I think there is an avenue of improvement by plugging the majority of those 10 players into the majority of next year's games. Some won't be upgrades over the guys they replace, some might be 10 per cent upgrades. An average of 2 per cent per player over 10 players, to my mind, could add up to a significant improvement.

I disagree. There is a huge gap between Mittelstadt and Eakin, Tuch and Murray, Jokiharju and Fitzgerald and Anderson and Dell. Also, when you have 10 'real' NHLers, losing 4 or 5 of them affects you more than when you have 16 or 18.

What teams have been without 3 of their projected 1st-liners virtually the entire year, a 4th for half the year, and has had a 5th obviously limited for most of the year by injury?

Did I mention COVID? I'd be surprised if there are 5 teams that have a group of players coming as good as the 6 I cited. We don't have any idea on the impact of the rookies. Craig Anderson has a .922 SV%. We spent 6 weeks after he went down with Tokarksi's .903, Subban's .876 and Dell's .872. Is that enough context? Was Casey Mittelstadt projected to be the team's #1 centre this year, or not? Do you not think upgrading 10 players is significant talent boost? Mitts > Eakin Tuch > Murray Jokiharju > Fitzgerald Anderson > Subban Luukkonen > Dell Power > Butcher Samuelsson > Prow Krebs > Jankowski Quinn > Hayden Peterka > Bjork We both agree the Sabres aren't good now, we should agree there are better players coming. What exactly are you arguing?

I'm not making excuses or suggesting the following players are lifesavers, but we haven't seen anything close to next year's roster together in Buffalo this year: The Sabres have played 34 games Luukkonen 8 Anderson 6 Jokiharju 18 Tuch 3 Mittelstadt 4 Power 0 Samuelsson 0 Krebs 3 Quinn 0 Peterka 2 We've been missing our projected 1G, 1C, 1RW, and 1RD for most of the year, as well as watching our 1LW struggle with an injury that has robbed him of his shot. And we've got 5 prospects who are tearing it up at lower levels and look very close. We have more talent than we've seen.

Prow may have had the worst 4 shifts to start a game by a Sabre D since MA Gragnani, and Donnie was not happy. No surprise there. Murray is interesting. Is this just to help the Amerks out over the weekend, or is it more permanent with a many as 5 fresh forwards (Krebs, Tuch, Bjork, Okposo, Caggiula) available for Tuesday's game? Murray wasn't good last night and seemed to be a prime example of the hesitancy Donnie was so upset with.

Who do you want, Schuldt? As of yesterday, Samuelsson and Davidson were still out.

Kaese (with a K) is my age and is from my part of the world. Next high school over. I remember thinking it was a such a huge deal when I was teen and he got drafted by the Sabres. Ended up building and operating a golf course not 10 minutes from where I grew up.

A fantastic effort tonight, squandered in a mediocre Sabre performance, and virtually unnoticed by a jaded fan base. Donnie at least appreciated what he brought, and has been bringing. https://www.nhl.com/sabres/news/buffalo-sabres-san-jose-sharks-recap-highlights-rasmus-dahling/c-329539882

I don’t think the perception many have that Dahlin is soft, stupid and lacking passion is anything close to being correct.

Nick Ritchie is slow, lazy and not that smart. Not a player I have any interest in.

Yes, I saw that. I am sure that Morreale's report is exactly what Michigan told him. It is entirely possible that none of these reports are contradictory. A) A source from Power's camp told Friedman that Power will go if they want him B) A source from Hockey Canada told Friedman that they want him. C) Power and Michigan have talked about whether or not he can go D) Hockey Canada has not asked Power to go yet, but intends to and expects to, and that he will say yes. It is also possible that Friedman's information is more up-to-date on the situation than Morreale's or that Friedman is making things up. We will find out soon.

No, Dreger and Wheeler did. And they specified that it was the long list of players Team Canada was considering as opposed to players who were going. Not aimed at you specifically, and not forgiving shoddy reporting, but I think part of the issue people have with media is the telephone game that occurs after something gets reported. Friedman’s exact quote for reference check when the future announcement comes down. ”After the Channel One Cup in Russia last month, Canadians Jason Demers and Eric Fehr signed KHL contracts. So assume they will be part of the Olympic team if they wish. Include those on AHL-only contracts like Devan Dubnyk, Cody Franson and Josh Ho-Sang. There is some question about whether or not players on two-way deals will be allowed to go. Others to watch: I’m betting a request goes out for Mason McTavish to gauge his interest. Same for Eric Staal and Cole Perfetti. I wondered about Patrick Marleau, but have heard he is not on the long list as a possibility. Owen Power is going.” https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/32-thoughts-nhl-faces-tight-scheduling-finish-season-time/ And the Athletic: Owen Power will join Team Canada's Olympic men's hockey team for the upcoming games in Beijing, China, The Athletic's Corey Pronman has confirmed. Power is the first name announced to Team Canada's roster since the NHL said it would be pulling out of the Olympics on Dec. 22 https://theathletic.com/news/owen-power-to-join-canadas-olympic-team-cole-perfetti-eric-staal-among-those-on-long-list-source/dNZEmWE0Buvw/

I thought the Amerks looked bad and Quinn was worse. Frustrating game. The fight was the product of Quinn targeted all game. Whacked and pushed and scraped from every faceoff even before the puck was dropped. Glad he didn’t back down from it. Disappointed no one made the Crunch back off 2 periods earlier.