dudacek

Cleveland had to win a play-in series first for the right to play the division winners.

Montreal and Ottawa aren’t proven pieces and I am not prepared to say they are on the verge of jumping up a tier yet. Apparently New Jersey is not much different. Neither are Columbus or Detroit Boston broke. PIttsburgh broke. The Islanders might be preparing a reset. Philly is in one. Tampa and the Rangers are declining. I have a feeling Washington just had one of those years. I think you’ve got three good teams in the East: Toronto, Florida and Carolina. It’s not about them, it’s about us. Stop making excuses. Make the right moves. Seize the opportunity.

Full disclosure: I've only watched him a handful of times this year. But isn't invisible kinda the point? You're not expecting hits and you're not expecting offence. If he succeeds, it will be as a Bill Hajt kinda player: calmly break up a play and move out the puck. Leone seems happy with him on that level and that's kinda what he showed the first 2 playoff games.

They’ve got Josh Anderson and Arber Xhekaj, I’ll give you that. Not really seeing Gallagher and Armia as upgrades on Okposo and Girgensons, or Laine and Dvorak as the type of vets that Sabres team was lacking. Savard’s retiring. I will say Nick Suzuki looks to be head and shoulders over Dylan Cozens and they are better coached. Their progress will be determined by how good guys like Slavkovsky, Demidov and Guhle can be, just like the Sabres has been by the progress or lack thereof of guys like Power, Peterka and Quinn

I wonder what a Rosen/Clifton or Quinn/Clifton pairing could get, in terms of an upgrade on Clifton. I've also wondered what overpaid but still useful veteran RHD a futures/Samuelsson pairing might fetch from a team looking to dump salary.

Montreal just had pretty much the same season the Sabres had 2 years ago, with a late surge to 91 points, young veterans having career years, a very promising crop of rookies and some holes to fill. It will be very interesting where they go from here.

Yes, but I think that still fits, despite the fact Ruff is clearly more qualified than Krueger. A big part of Dahlin's struggle was Krueger trying to change the way he played and all the mistakes were a factor of Ras trying to do things that didn't come naturally to him. I think there was definitely some of that going on with Power, who had never had an NHL coach besides Granato. Remember how much Byram struggled in his own zone when he first arrived? And then how he talked about being much more comfortable in Ruff's system, and it showed? Power went from +8 to -13 on a team that generally improved at 5-on-5 and was noticeably more mistake prone

When I look at ways to improve next year’s team, can’t think of a better bang for my buck than Owen replicating what Rasmus did in year 4 after a bad year 3. I still see the high-end potential and think the coaching staff/system change/contract got in his head this year.

I agree with both points. With the cap rising the way it is though, he’s going to want more. I think $5.5 this coming year equals $6.8 in year three. If he’s going to play hardball, I’d be tempted to let him go to arbitration, although the threat of an offer sheet looms over that. But it will buy us a year to make a decision on him and Power and leave us room to dump Samuelsson and slide in a $5-6M real RHD like a Pulock into his spot.

I believe the number GA quoted was something like that over 7 years. I want to say $7.3M maybe?

Honest question because I have yet to do any homework on Byram’s comparables: How many D 2 years away from UFA, with a career high of 38 points and stats that crater away from a stud like Dahlin have signed for anywhere near $8M? I mean besides Owen Power 😁? The Sabres don’t have to give him term. I can’t see him getting that kind of coin in arbitration with his numbers. I regards to your bigger question, the first thing I would do is dump Samuelsson, a much inferior player on a far worse contract. The second thing I would do is fix or trade Power, preferably fix, because the idea of those 3 D at their peak on the same team excites me. Like you, I’m not a GM either. That’s all I got.

Bottom line is you’ve avoided my central point. It’s not that Byram is great, or that he shouldn’t be traded, it’s that if you trade him, how are you replacing his minutes and making the defence better? Byram and Dahlin was THE MOST EFFECTIVE DEFENCE PAIRING IN THE NHL (sorry for the yelling, but it’s a fact that everyone chooses to ignore) Why not keep that and concentrate on the real problem: improving the 2nd and 3rd pairs?

He has to get a lot better to what? Earn a $50M contract? Agreed. To help the Sabres? He already does. Byram gave team a full season of 20+ minutes a night as a plus player against the other teams' best. I'm shocked at how many people seem to take that for granted. How many Sabres defencemen have done that over the past decade? Pretty sure there are 4, and people want to drive two of them to the nearest airport. The 3rd is Dahlin and the 4th is Brandon Montour, another skilled D this board stupidly wanted to get rid of. By all means, trade Byram. Just understand that even if you are replacing him with somebody different who can eat the same minutes, you still haven't made the team any better.

I’d be more interested in discussing this if I thought you’d actually watched him play.

Because he's the Sabres 2nd-best defenceman and at 23 with only 246 NHL games is likely to get better? (To be clear, I wasn't saying Byram should be signed to that contract, only that the math seems to fit, based on that $5.3M value this year GA posted.)

And yet... https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=120939

That's the real young kid who can skate, right? Remember thinking he had sleeper potential. Nice to see the progress.

Thought of @LGR4GM watching Konsta. In no way shape or form is that kid’s game “small”. Looks like he’s going to have that perfect fire hydrant hockey build and there’s no fear in his game at all.

I was like “wow Komarov is actually hanging in there against a monster”D then that happened. Overall, Amerks havent backed down an inch in the physical game despite the Crunch being very aware they need to play that way.

Aside from one 42-point blip, Foligno has been the same 25-point player for 8 years in Minny that he was in 5 with Buffalo.

Sorry for quoting myself, but I think this is sorta related to the Shadeur Sanders stuff going on right now at the NFL draft. Lots of kids yet to be drafted. Pretty much all of them because no NFL team had them #1 on their board when their turn came to pick. Few are losing their minds over any of them, but Sanders is breaking the internet. The only thing different about Sanders is the story that was built up around him.

It was interesting you talked about touches and who needs them. Norris came with the scouting report of being able to make a difference with just quick touches.

Fiddler-Schultz's goal was a nice snipe. The other four goals in the game were all of the greasier variety. The Amerks, even with all their youth, seem to be comfortable playing the kind of hockey the Sabres struggled at.

LOL. So you're expecting me to disprove my point by remembering the hits I said no one remembers 😜 (The goalie factor is definitely something that makes that one stand out more than, say the two we saw on Kulich this spring.)