dudacek

The number of posters who are sick of the Sabres just not being good enough, yet are OK with Skinner remains baffling. On the bright side, he has increased his output by 50 % since Ralph was fired. If two goals to three floats your boat. He sure makes a difference.

People have been saying that for the duration of his two-year drought. His shots aren't helping the Sabres much.

This is kinda silly, but it makes me feel a lot better to look at the Sabres on Capfriendly and see a full slate of picks instead of the gaps that were there two weeks ago. Hopefully a few more are on the way. Bad teams need a pipeline.

Let's not overrate what Skinner has/is doing. He had a couple games where the eye test said he reverted to his 2018/19 jump and style. That's it.

I would be absolutely stunned if the agreement included "staying away;" what owner would agree to that? I would suspect the deal is more "you set the budget, I decide how to spend it," with some level of input welcome in either direction for big picture decisions, and very limited input from the Pegulas in day-to-day operations.

And this might be why the news is leaking: a little more pressure on Terry to do the right thing. Of course, from what we know of Terry, there is an equal chance of that backfiring as well. Agreed. Adams has talked this talk since day one, but until now we have seen no evidence of it.

We're tired of excuses so we haven't put much stock in it, but there is truth in the COVID thing marking the start of this season's fall into the pit. Lot of new players, and it lulled the team's ability to jell. Affected enough of them physically that it slowed their overall game. Couple that with the fact they weren't talented enough and were incredibly fragile mentally given the team's history. Add in their franchise centre, their top defensive defenceman and their only competent goalie all pulling up lame and the snowball turned into an avalanche. Good teams survive, but this team isn't strong enough to deal with regular adversity, let alone what they faced this year.

This really looks to me like this is something Adams has engineered, rather than had handed to him. It also seems like Karmanos would be his assistant and Rutherford his advisor, so any overrruling would be coming from Kevyn. Twitter as a venue seems designed to bring out the worst in people. My initial exposures to Chad rubbed me the wrong way because his style struck me as "I'm smart, you're not, analytics duh" The more I've seen, the more that has faded. I don't think there is any doubt he is connected, and I think he has become the best media source for Sabres news.

The stuff I've read seems to indicate he was forced to fire him. My reading between the lines, is that it was a big straw for Jim in Pittsburgh, and the final straw was request to trade a core player, likely Letang. You may come to different conclusions, but that was mine after reading these article on top of other bits and pieces. https://theathletic.com/2454397/2021/03/16/former-penguins-gm-jim-rutherford-on-his-disappointing-departure-marc-andre-fleury-phil-kessel-and-more/?article_source=search&search_query=Jim rutherford https://theathletic.com/2414297/2021/02/26/jim-rutherford-nhl-penguins/?article_source=search&search_query=Jim rutherford https://theathletic.com/2269142/2021/01/08/pittsburgh-penguins-gm-jim-rutherford-covid-19/?article_source=search&search_query=Jim rutherford https://theathletic.com/2163244/2020/10/27/jason-karmanos-fired-pittsburgh-penguins-news/?article_source=search&search_query=karmanos

That's the one I was remembering. I guess Ottawa radio is a little bit bigger than I thought, but it is the only report I've ever seen of this.

Sam anticipates and cuts off the hard-around on the half wall. Hesitates to open the lane and finds Miller on the opposite point. Miller unleashes the bomb, it hits a defender's skate and skips to Cozens off to the side who buries it. Jokiharju wins a puck in our corner, reverse pivots with his head up, and lobs a Hail Mary to Skinner exiting the zone early. Skinner gets caught and cut off by the defender who angles him away from the slot, but he gets off a limp backhand. The goalie tries to kick it to the corner, but doesn't get it clean. Lazar beats his backchecker and whacks it in. There is no way Sam and Joki did any less on either of those goals than the other four guys. I'd argue they did more. I agree there are a lot of cheap assists awarded, but they aren't always the 2nd ones.

What I like about this is that it seems you've taken a stat and applied the eye test to a particular player to see the why of it. This I can get behind. Without that element, the distinction isn't going to move the needle for me.

Not disagreeing with your post here at all. (Looks like I actually quoted the wrong post) But I wanted to ask you about why you frequently rely on primary/secondary assists so heavily. I don't see a strong correlation that the primary guy does more creating than the secondary guy, or at least not enough to sway my opinion much. I see the 2ndry guy often the one making the great breakout pass, or the dirty work work along the wall that was actually most responsible for the goal. I have seen this posted as fact many times. I have never seen it sourced, or repeated by a big-name media guy. The only media guy I've ever seen reporting it was a local smaller-market CHL reporter I had never heard of.

This one looks like it has legs: Karmanos, and someone more interesting than Karmanos on the way, with an expanded scouting staff coming as well. At least one of the moves being announced soon. It really feels like Adams got approval for a plan that started with Krueger's firing and he is in the process of knocking down the moves one-by-one.

Did you guys see the Athletic article where they ran a bunch of trade scenarios past real hockey executives for their opinion? https://theathletic.com/2464702/2021/03/21/who-says-no-nhl-executives-evaluate-your-trade-proposals-for-eichel-mantha-dumba-and-others/ There is a whole Jack Eichel section: 10. Buffalo Sabres send Jack Eichel to the Avalanche for defenseman Bowen Byram, Alex Newhook, 2021 second-round pick, unprotected 2022 first-round pick. — @got2bleaf 11. Columbus sends Seth Jones and Emil Bemstrom to the Sabres for Jack Eichel. — @iamTwiggy 12. Sabres send Jack Eichel to the Rangers for Nils Lundkvist, Pavel Buchnevich, Ryan Strome, 2021 first and Braden Schneider. — @vikesfan47 13. Sabres send Jack Eichel to the Minnesota Wild for Kevin Fiala, Matt Dumba and one of the Wild first-round picks… Buffalo gets a decent haul and gets Eichel out of the Eastern Conference. — @ABobeck94 14. Sabres send Jack Eichel to the Kings for Quinton Byfield, Alex Turcotte, Adrian Kempe, 2022 first-round pick, 2023 first-round pick, 2022 second-round pick. — @RangerRob13 The verdict was that the Kings deal is the only one the Sabres would take, and only if the owner authorized a blow-up. He also thought the Kings would say no as is, but that there is a deal to be made there with tweaking. "The one thing one executive kept stressing is that an Eichel deal only makes sense for Buffalo if it’s getting something close to a comparable player back rather than deals built around futures. Even good futures like these." Exec also said a 3rd would be a "home run" for Staal (prior to the actual trade), Nashville would turn down Skinner for Duchene, and that a first with an expiring contract coming back is the right price for Hall. Another nugget given this board's interest in Sam Bennett: "Bennett is a good player, but at that cap hit probably doesn’t get a qualifying offer, so he is just a rental."

You're talking about the return on Eric Staal, the career resume. The return on Eric Staal, the Buffalo Sabre would have been a flat zero. Who trades anything for someone that slow, soft and unproductive? Montreal paid what they did hoping he gets "re-motivated by the chance at winning and playing in the playoffs and be fine." I'd be really curious to see how many times a 35-year-old, -20, 3-goal scorer garnered a 2nd-rounder at the deadline. Regardless of what you and I think, Adams shopped him around and took the best offer. Isn't that what he should have done?

What is the deal with Tage Thompson? i know he was supposedly sick this week, but he's played seven times in this 17-game streak, 10 or 11 minutes each time. They've got this guy signed for two more years, the season is lost. Shouldn't they be doing with him what they are doing with Mittelstadt, playing him a lot and seeing what he can do? it's bad enough that guys like Eakin and Okposo are/were playing over him, but Fogarty, Dea, CJ Smith? *** I have all the same questions about Artuu Ruotsalainen as well. Guess I need to be patient, deadline is coming.

It's interesting Casey is getting a more prominent role between the two. I suspect it might be a development thing, where they are protecting Dylan a bit, but have decided to see what Casey can do. Casey is definitely a better hockey player than he was a year ago. He's showing some effort and burst; he's in the play more, instead of always being behind it. Still a big question as to what kind of role he can carve for himself. He has looked better, but he hasn't produced. Thing about Dylan for me is not so much that he's making things happen, it's just that he does the right things so often. He's actually performing like a real good bottom six player right now: speed, effort, discipline and he doesn't hurt you. I'm not sure the skill level is there to be a top-line player, but, as we have seen many times development is hardly linear.

So Staal goes out and Ullmark goes in; two of the things I cringe at most disappear. And we get one of the most watchable games of the past month or so. Baby steps. *** What do people think of Mittelstadt recently? Career high 17:40 played yesterday. He's been well over 15 minutes in five of the past 6.

What do you mean, I'm as handsome as ever, no matter how Ralph treated me. 😜

I Iook at it like this: there might be a few outliers but let's say 25 teams have every one of those players ranked between 70-75 on a 100 scale. Quinn averaged a 71 and Rossi a 74, meaning Rossi was a "consensus" #5 pick and Quinn was a consensus #10 in this particular draft. But Quinn was the only 75 on the Sabres list, so they pick him. Scouts: "real good player, we liked him a lot, we just liked a couple guys a bit better." Internet: "Why did they pick the #10 guy when the #5 guy was still on the board."

To revisit my bad analogies, it can be like every teen rom-com ever made. Although I suspect a majority of teams, at least the ones with strong leadership, are sticking to their guns.

If they called for Jack, Dahlin, and Dylan, I'd say "be prepared to pay more than you want to, or there's no point in talking." I'd add Sam, Linus and Jake to that list if I knew they were going to re-sign. There are others I'm fine with keeping, but I would trade any player on this team for the right return.

You want to talk any of Raymond, Sanderson, Drysdale, Holtz, Quinn, Rossi, Perfetti and Lundell, that was probably the case for 75 per cent of the teams as well. Sabrespace has been watching Sam Reinhart for six years and has a consensus that he's a good player, but there is a huge variation on how good.

Not disagreeing with your point, just saying that history has shown it's not that important. Patrick/Hischier might have been a toss-up for consensus #1, but the real money picks were Heiskanen at 3, Makar at 4 and Petersson at 5, who weren't in the conversation going by consensus, but were for real NHL teams. Hockey Twitter would have burned if Petersson went #1, but I doubt NHL scouting would have. NHL reaction probably would have been "real good player, we liked him a lot, we just liked a couple guys a bit better." The internet seems to think there is a much firmer pecking order than I think really exists.