dudacek

We are at that point in the off-season where the roster shuffle is mostly done, we’ve gotten over our initial disappointment about the moves, and if you squint you can see it all coming together. July - the best time to be a Sabre fan. 😁

The fancy stuff is good for perspective, but ultimately it’s the goals for and against that are the only things that matter.

Just thinking about this a little more. I don’t expect many goals from Malenstyn. But maybe his hitting causes a few pucks to be coughed up that get turned into goals that we weren’t getting from the guys who are gone. Maybe Byram joins the rush in way that Johnson and Johnson didn’t and more goals get created as a result. Maybe McLeod gets the puck out of our zone and up the ice quicker than Okposo ever did leading to more offensive zone time and more goals from those chances. There’s a lot more to consider than “this guy usually gets this many”. But I think there’s still merit to discussing whether or not we have enough finishers.

Well, I guess the nut of this is true - Casey’s playmaking certainly helped drive offence - but I wouldn’t call it smoke and mirrors. The discussion is about replacing goals so we are talking about goals. 🤷 Personally, I don’t think Quinn, Olofsson or Skinner’s goal totals last year were artificially inflated by Casey. Nor do I think not having him is going to cause a reduction in the totals we should expect this year from Quinn, Zucker or McLeod. Of course there are many other elements at play in the overall offensive potential of the team and Casey’s 33 assists are among them.

It's not they are untouchable, it's that it is really hard to think of a deal that provides the kind of certitude I need to abandon the promise these two offer. Yes, it's the old mystery box conundrum, but I've seen Nikolaj Ehlers. I like him, but I don't see him as bringing me to the promised land. (And to be clear, my promised land is a lengthy run of cup contention, not one year of playoffs) Unlike most here, I still cling to the idea that Adams' plan has not already failed. I feel like I'm too far up the mountain to stop the climb. I'd like to see the best of what these kids have to offer before I give up on them. Foolish maybe, but that's where I am.

This I agree with. I'd take that a step further and say the same would hold true for most coaches, because he works hard and pays attention to the little things. The only way he doesn't have the coach in his corner is if the coach is fixated on a size/strength/bullying game that virtually no plays any more. I think the question for Benson this year rest more with opportunity. As the roster sits right now, he's either got a spot in the top six, or on a 3rd line with a decent centre in McLeod. Under those circumstances, I expect his point totals to rise. If the Sabres add a top 6 winger though, he is the most likely candidate to see a resulting drop in opportunities. I absolutely love the way the kid plays hockey because he already plays like a reliable 3rd-line vet. I'm really curious how much offensive upside is there and how quickly it will emerge because we only caught glimpses of it last year.

No, I see a long-term contender if Adams is right about Thompson Quinn Peterka Cozens Power Byram Samuelsson and one of UPL/Levi. I’m comfortable I know who Dahlin and Tuch are, the rest are open questions. My point is the time for patience for most of these guys is past. This is the season where most of them have to stop being “really good some day” and show us who they are.

This is what the "no-blockng" thing in Granato's 1st 2 full seasons was all about: force-feeding the first wave (Dahlin, Thompson) the experience, setting them up to lead when the 2nd wave arrives. Which — according to the 200 games thing — should start happening right about now, assuming he was right about the players he's bet on. God, I hope he was right because I can't take another 4-year reset.

The 6 or 8 being Quinn, Peterka, Benson, Power, Samuelsson, Byram, and Krebs? Not if you actually buy in to the 200 games thing. If you do, Krebs is no different than Lafferty. Also, Byram and Samuelsson are shy in terms of games played because of injury, but these guys are entering their 5th year pro. They've been around. The 3rd or 4th year breakout is a real, demonstrable thing. To me, the fact we have 6 or 8 of these guys should not be cause for trepidation, it should be cause for hope. I pulled the roster of the 08/09 Chicago Blackhawks, the year where the Hawks moved from non-playoff team to contender. These are their top 15 scorers and their ages. Havlat 27 Kane 19 Toews 20 Versteeg 22 Campbell 29 Ladd 22 Bolland 22 Sharp 26 Keith 25 Barker 22 Byfuglien 23 Seabrook 23 Brouwer 23 Fraser 23 Eager 24 It can be done.

The "stars" of the Sabres system are Power, Quinn, Peterka, Benson and Levi and they're already here. The strength of the next group is not on the high end, it's the depth. Anyone waiting for our system to save us is going to be disappointed.

I read years ago that NHL executives see the 200-game mark as roughly the point where a player has enough NHL repetition to where he should be able to "get it", as in age stops being an excuse. My eye test agrees. Our core players Thompson, Tuch, Cozens and Dahlin are well past that. Peterka, Byram, Power, Samuelsson will be passing that mark this year. Support players like Zucker, Jokiharju, Laffery, Clifton, McLeod and Greenway are by and large veterans By mid-season, Benson and Quinn should be the only "kids" on the roster. The time for development is past for this team. It's time for this group to grow up and be what they can be.

Quinn and Cozens don't need a catalyst. I expect that line to be good regardless of its 3rd component. Over the course of a full season adding 20 to 25 goals is just a matter of each player scoring one more goal. Or Cozens, Thompson and Tuch splitting the difference between last year's totals and what they scored the year before. It's not that hard. As for your overall plan, agree wholeheartedly with adding a legitimate top 6 winger. And I'm not worried about the bumpdown, or clearing space. We're going to need 14 NHL forwards over the course of the season. Right now we have 13. Starting the season with Aube-Kubel and Krebs in the press box and having them available to rotate in as injury and performance demand is a good thing.

Personally, I'm not very high on Rosen, for the same reasons I'm not very high on Farabee. My point is not that Rosen is good therefore we don't need Farabee, it's that I don't like Farabee as a player for the same reasons I don't like Rosen as a prospect. He's not good enough to be a good top 6er and not complete enough to be good middle-sixer, at least given the players we already have and the type of roster I'd like to see them build.

Quinn played 27 games last year. In terms of roles, he's your most likely Skinner replacement and will have to score 24 to hold status quo. Last year he paced for 27 McLeod replaces Mittelstadt as the 3C but is unlikely to get his PP time. Mitts scored 14. Last year, McLeod scored 12. Olofsson was the spare offensive winger and mostly filled Quinn's role. Combined they scored 16. Their slots will be replaced by Zucker and (most likely as things stand) Kulich/Rosen. Zucker scored 14 last year. Replacing the 60 goals prime Skinner/Olofsson might score is probably not going to happen. Replacing last year's production shouldn't be that hard.

Farabee's obviously better now and Rosen may never reach those heights, but that's not really my point; I was just saying he's a similar kind of player with a similar ceiling and doesn't really fill a need. He might be better than Zucker this year. He might be better than Benson. Or he might not. But he is a middle six left-wing, so its likely one of those guys your trying to upgrade by bringing him. He might score more, but he probably won't defend or grind more. Bringing in a Zegras or Ehlers are different because they re top 6 left wings and clear upgrades, so those moves make sense to me.

McLeod sounded a lot more relaxed and chill in his session with Marty and Duffer.

Didn’t we just have a draft thread overflowing with “no more small, skilled, perimeter forwards? Isn’t Farabee just Isak Rosen 3 or 4 years later? What am I missing about this guy?

Who was the last Sabre to have a better hockey player smile than Ryan McLeod? There’s no chiclets left to spit.

I am as guilty of restarting this as anyone, but can we please move this discussion to its own thread?

Now is a good time to remind people that Jack Quinn, Jeff Skinner and Victor Olofsson combined for 40 goals last year. How many do we expect this year from Jack Quinn, Jason Zucker and, say, Kulich as the spare scoring winger? Personally would be shocked if Lindy has this group of players trapping all night long.

I have no idea if they were the youngest, but I posted links to 3 successful teams of similar form: where the bulk of the key players are in similar places career-wise to where the Sabres core is now.

The plan was very much to accelerate the development process of a select group of young talents so that they would all emerge at around the same time (theoretically, about now). They insulated those kids with a handful of old guys and eventually the young guys emerged as the backbone of a contender. Like these teams did: https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000331975.html https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000352009.html https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000552015.html Of course it doesn’t alway work as well as it did for the above teams, but when it works, the team is usually good for a long time. Are you just being rhetorical, because you’ve been arguing against it as unnecessary for quite a while?

The only ways they weren’t going to come in at or near where they are was by signing a bunch of Okposo-age players instead who they did, or by flipping a number of kids like Benson, Quinn, Peterka and Power for a considerably older group. That’s just the math of it all.

People need to keep in mind that this is partially a reflection of how young we were last year, and of old guys like Johnson and Okposo moving on. The youngest new guy expected to be on the roster is McLeod at 24. The rest are all in their prime years, or in Zucker’s case, beyond that.

I'm not so sure about this. There's been a lot of information and innuendo floated. This is my understanding: Eichel had made noises about his unhappiness with the team's progress well before Adams was hired. When Botterill was fired, Eichel made it clear he had no interest sticking around for any rebuild Krueger helped broker a plan with Pegula that the team would try to load up and make a run for the playoffs that year, which Adams then executed. Jack clearly arrived at camp with some kind of physical issue that was hindering him. The team got off to a terrible start and Jack was done after a hit 20-odd games into the season against the Islanders that either caused or aggravated his neck injury. With the season an abysmal failure and the Sabres historically bad, Adams went to Pegula with a plan to essentially hit the reset button and rebuild the team entirely. Pegula/team doctors (depending on who you believe) denied Jack his desired surgery, complicating a trade process that Jack clearly wanted regardless of injury, and Kevyn likely wanted as well despite playing the 'want to be here' card. It's possible Adams had decided it best to move on from Eichel even before he got the job. It's possible that Eichel had been passive-aggressively pushing for — or even outright asking for — a trade before then too. But Eichel was clearly injured before the well-publicized Florida trip where the teardown was approved, and he had clearly delivered his ultimatum well before the season had even started. Are you saying that Eichel would have been happy to stay after the disaster that was Krueger's last year if only Adams did what he was told? Or that Adams had tied his own hands by refusing to allow a player under contract to tell him how to manage the team?