dudacek

It does not make sense if: A) you believe Skinner is a good fit within the type of roster/system the Sabres want to run this year under Ruff B) you believe the Sabres have no intention of using the cap savings this creates over the next two seasons. It makes sense if they are filling the cap and roster vacuum with a better fit. If the league’s longest playoff drought continues while the league’s longest playoff player drought ends in a Stanley Cup, you know the curse is real.

The gist of the post remains the ongoing willful blindness to a big part of Dahlin's game. I remain thankful.

Effectively trading Kane for Skinner is a big win in my books. As is Skinner playing a regular shift in Toronto.

The tea leaves don’t always point to where you think, but I’ve certainly noticed numerous signs that point to Skinner not being in their plans. Not so much a cancer as a symbol of the change that they think is needed. At the very least you move Quinn/Peterka/Benson up the depth chart and create roster space for “an addition who plays the right way”. Do you want Skinner on the top line or PP and if he’s not do you want him moping the way he has in Buffalo any time he’s been removed from that role? But the cap space could be huge if they actually have plans to spend it. Theoretically, it allows you to replace Skinner with a $7M player without affecting your plans elsewhere on your roster. To me - someone who’s not a Skinner fan - that’s big. Also fits with @tom webster’s report of Pegula needing to sign off on a big spend. @Flashsabre @nfreeman I think the Skinner tweet is worthy of its own thread and this conversation should be moved there.

Mostly fair? He says this: "And when I look at our forward group, I get excited because I think we have a core of guys that are at good ages. Now they’ve got some experience." But also this: "We’re spending a lot of time looking at (center) when you make a trade. As excited as you are about acquiring Bo, you lose a player like (Casey Mittelstadt), so how do you fill those positions?" I agree that Adams is very aware of the message he sends to the fan base and read his statements through that filter. But i have never considered him to be deceptive. When he's laid out his plans in the past, he's generally followed through: "not going to block", "we like our goalies" "we'd like to add some experience and PK to the blue line" "It's no secret we've been looking for a top 4 defenceman" "we want players who want to be here". So when he says he's trying to make the bottom 6 harder to play against, yes, I do take that at face value, and feel pretty comfortable about doing so. What are you skeptical of and why?

Not sure how much of this is new, but if you want an idea of the game plan, I don’t think Kevyn can spell it out any more plainly: Upgrade the bottom 6, add a centre, make sure there’s depth on D, give Lindy the situational tools he needs. https://buffalonews.com/sports/professional/nhl/sabres/buffalo-sabres-kevyn-adams-q-and-a-zemgus-girgensons-ukko-pekka-luukkonen/article_523767c2-2cac-11ef-9f0b-a31a30eb32c8.html Girgensons, Jokiharju, pick 11, it’s all touched on.

And this was very much the context of what he said. Interviewer asks what the priorities are over the next month, Lindy brings up toughness, interviewer follows up with question about tough guys, Lindy says it’s a tool he likes to have. Starts just after 23 minutes. Interesting interview overall.

Not sure who caught Lindy’s recent lengthy Buffalo TV interview, but he pretty much said he wants to add somebody who can chuck ‘em. Not in so many words, but in response to a question about it, he acknowledged he’s a coach who likes to have “tools” and said a young team can use somebody who makes them feel brave. Said he’s had many, many conversations with Kevyn about what the team needs.

Agree with this too. And the other variable of course is the youth of new group. How it matures (or get flipped as assets) matters. I really need to know how good a lot of the current players actually are.

I know this thread is about trades, but as @Thorny does a good job reminding us, it not really about winning trades and making great picks, as much as it's about the roster. This is what Adams has done in terms of transforming the roster Kept: Thompson, Skinner, Cozens, Dahlin, Jokiharju (Bryson?) Out: Eichel, Reinhart, Mittelstadt, Hall, Staal, Eakin, Asplund, Lazar, Sheahan, Reider, McCabe, Montour, Ristolainen, Miller, Ullmark, Hutton (Okposo, Girgensons, Olofsson?) In: Tuch, Quinn, Peterka, Benson, Greenway, Krebs, Power, Byram, Samuelsson, Clifton, Johnson, Luukkonen, Levi (???) I don't think there's any question the five or six best players who left are better right now than the 5 or 6 best players he replaced them with.

All I was really getting at was that I don't know if publicly available numbers reflect my perceptions or not but I'm not sure they'd have to because I expect the Sabres to be using different (and better) resources to collect data. But I think your last sentence reflects my perception of Yakemchuk's game too. And I think likely the Sabres priorities. Entries and exits are a far more important part of an NHL defenceman's game than goals and hits.

Flash got the nut of it. I think NHL teams don’t use the same analytics that we see widely quoted, but Yakemchuk strikes me as a “charges at windmills” type whose flawed details wouldn’t stand up well under that lens.

The difference is Cozens had a track record leading up to his breakout, which happened the year he turned 22. Joshua has no track record and his breakout happened at 27.

Agreed. He’s where type and need might intersect for the Sabres. I just don’t know if he’s skilled enough to be in play at 11.

Yakemchuk seems a needs fit, doesn't seem a type fit. I'm not being all "he's big and gets PMs and the the Sabres only take small offensive guys" here. The Sabres "type" under Adams/Forton/Ventura is better described as "plays fast, self-starter, hockey IQ, growth curve" with a good analytics base. Measurables and tools matter, but they aren't the first thing this group looks at. I'm no expert on his game, but Yakemchuk comes across as more uneven than the type I'd expect this executive team to hone in on with such a high pick, given some of the others around him. Out of Sliayev, Levshunov, Yakemchuk, Buium, Parekh, Dickinson, Iginla, Lidstrom, Sennecke, Helenius, Catton, I'm betting our war room is praying Iginla or Buium drop as two guys they rate higher than the average team. I also think Sennecke's rapid rise has caught their eye and I wonder what their analytics team has to say about Eiserman, who I suspect has been the subject of a deep dive. Helenius and Catton scream Sabre picks to me.

Last year’s team had 84 points, the team prior to the Eichel trade-off had a prorated 54. Hope we’re slightly better next season too.

Again, they play very different styles, but I see the similarities; smallish, smart, hard-working Swedish centres. Asplund played the game the right way in my opinion. He didn’t make it simply because he wasn’t talented enough to carry his strengths over at the NHL level. Östlund has the same diligent approach, but appears to be more talented than Asplund: better skater, better passer, harder shot. If he doesn’t make it it will be because he isn’t strong enough to carry his strengths over. Asplund wasn’t tall, but he was solid. Östlund is thicker than he was when we drafted him but he’s still pretty slight.

To me, “absolutely disagree” means you think the Sabres can be fixed by just a couple of prime free agents, but that’s not what the rest of your post talks about. You clearly think the Sabres need to make additions, which I clearly think and wrote as well. What exactly are we disagreeing about?

They’re both quick, but Noah Östlund plays a considerably different game to Ennis. Ennis was a one-on-one player who made plays stickhandling. Östlund is a give-and-go player who generally moves the puck as quickly as he gets it.

Agree with this. Jordan Greenway is responsible, not shy and his physical game is very effective. The question is about “dog” though and Greenway isn’t that guy.

You’re just being stubborn now 😁 If Kulich puts up 30 goals next year and pushes Jeff Skinner to the press box, Adams did not fail.

Not to interrupt the jokes about team toughness, but after seeing Josh Allen tower over the Sabres on the Bills sideline last fall, I got a chuckle over how when he met Lindy, the 60-something coach looked like he actually belonged.

I am the most long-standing Jack Quinn fan on this website. I’ve been in his corner since before we drafted him. Love his head, his hands and his heart and think he can still become a legitimate star. In terms of physical strength, he might be the weakest guy on the roster.

I would love to pick up a hardass player or two at the appropriate slot in the draft, and to play in our bottom 6. I have much higher hopes for #11. If we can't leverage it as part of a package for a better asset, I'm very happy adding any one of really good players likely to slide down to that spot.

Dog as defined "willingness and desire to engage" is clearly lacking overall. We've got little guys (Benson, Clifton, Quinn and Krebs) who have the dog but no teeth. And massive human beings (Tuch, Thompson, Greenway and Samuelsson) who too often leave their big dogs sleeping on the couch. Dahlin is the only big guy who consistently engages (16th in hits, 26 in PMs for NHL D). We've got two guy who are negative: Power (whose lack of engagement has been thoroughly discussed here) and Skinner (whose engagement outside a scoring chance usually consists of inconsequential sideshows behind the play) The rest (Cozens, Byram, Peterka, Jokiharju) are basically neutral. Adding two or three guys who are really good in this area will not only fill a need, it could also drag a few of the guys on the fence, like Cozens and Mule, more frequently into the battle.