dudacek

Treliving quit because he didn’t want to work with Sutter Sutter was fired because players weren’t interested in staying if he was there Players want to leave anyway. At least they have 55-point man Jonathan Huberdeau on the roster for another 8 years at $10.5 million. 😬

UPL also went 12/5/1 in December and January after the starters got hurt and the season looked like it might be over by Christmas again. You can't cherry pick one way and ignore the other. *** In a vacuum I would be much more comfortable this season with an Andersen/Levi combo than Devon with one of the others. Outside the vacuum, it needs to be said out loud that acquiring another goalie means you are giving up on UPL. Plain and simple, you re telling him he's not good enough and you are going to have to waive him or trade him. Sabrespace might be OK with that since most gave up on him at the same time they gave up on Casey Mittelstadt. But I'm not sure Adams has. Also, the acquisition cost of Andersen (or anyone else) is not a make-or-break, but it matters. One year $5 million for Freddie and trade UPL for a 2nd? All over that. 4 years at $5 for Freddie and waive UPL? I might be tempted to give UPL another shot. Context matters.

Which players are you talking about? They aren’t getting anything for the UFAs listed above. Do you mean trading the Carlos and Debrusk and Taylor Halls for cheaper players who can be just as effective?

Guess what I am saying is I would disagree with coming back with the same goalies we have, but that doesn’t mean the off-season was a failure if we do. It means Adams has more faith in them than I do. We can decide who was right when the season is over.

Not “comfortable” with any of them. But I am far more “comfortable” with the possibility that Levi can give us 50 good games next year than I should be, or than I would be with, say, Freddie Andersen or someone else of that level. And I can’t overlook the fact that the team went 17/11/4 with UPL last year, which is about as good as one can expect from a backup.

I would trade 13 or Rosen for Helle straight across even though I would have no intention of signing him to the suggested demand because I believe it puts us in contention this year while buying Levi the time he will need. I would do that because they are the pieces listed least likely to be part of the core moving forward, and are made expendable by the other names on the list. Side benefits of the deal are the possibility that we may be able to reach a more suitable deal with Hellebuyck because he finds he likes it here, and that his presence allows the rest of the roster to “power up” and grow into the role of perennial contender after he’s gone if that’s the path he takes.

Unlikely, but yes. Im not betting on the Sabres trio, but no one was betting on Georgiev or Brossoit last year. 12 months ago a lot of you were looking at Comrie as a good backup who paid his dues and was probably ready to make the jump. The development path UPL started when he was the 2nd goalie taken in the 2017 draft projected him to be arriving as a useful NHLer this year. Watching them play last year I say “no, can’t trust that”, but on paper it’s certainly possible. Watching Levi play last year I say “kid looks good enough to be the guy” even though on paper it shouldn’t be likely. We won’t know if sticking with these guys this off-season is a success or a failure until we see how well they play.

I think the Gavrikov LA deal kinda set the template for what Lance is referring to. There will be players who want to wait in order to open up bigger opportunities for themselves when more money is available.

Hmm, I always thought there was a good chance Moore was there at 13. Didn’t see him with more than an outside chance to be top 10. We must be reading different things. I was kinda looking at it like Bob has it, with Reinbacher and Leonard at the top of a group of 8-10 guys that could come off the board in a variety of ways and another half-dozen or so who might force their way into that group. Thats after the top 4 and the Michkov wild card. Think there will be a lot of variation in who teams have ranked 5-20, with my #9 being your #19 and vice versa.

Make @Buffalonillsmile and @PerreaultForever love the Sabres again.

From the Athletic's salary cap summer preview. We can only hope, right? 31. Boston Bruins 2023-24 salaries: $78,562,500 RFAs estimate: $6,439,000 LTIR candidates: None Dead money deals: None Notable unsigned UFAs: Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Dmitry Orlov, Tyler Bertuzzi, Garnet Hathaway, Nick Foligno, Tomas Nosek, Connor Clifton Problem contract: Derek Forbort Projected cap space: -$1,501,500 Is the number as ugly as you’d expected? Here, we’re anticipating an AAV of more than $4 million for RFA Jeremy Swayman and a new deal for Trent Frederic. Those would put the Bruins over the cap before figuring out what happens with their iconic first-line center and the guy who plays directly behind him. What Don Sweeney does to deal with this — or simply fill out a half-decent four lines — is anyone’s guess. What seems certain, though, is that paying more than $9 million combined for Swayman and Linus Ullmark isn’t a fit, and neither is carrying $3 million, bottom-pair defensemen. Just to confirm, after resigning Frederic and Swayman to fair deals, the Bruins should be about $1.5 million over the cap without Bergeron, Krejci, Orlov, Bertuzzi, Hathaway, Foligno, Nosek and Clifton.

I think this thread and the fact there are so many legitimate choices underscores the fact that the Sabres don't need to have a splashy off-season to get better. They just need to fill the holes.

Athletic did a piece on perfect trade fits: Buffalo's was Pesce. Price was Östlund and pick 39, assuming a fair contract extension was in place

I love me some Jack Quinn, but the answer has to be Owen Power. He's going to go from 'damn that kid's going to be so good,' to 'damn, that kid is good!"

You're even more right than you think: Girgensons and Okposo were on that team as well, even if Girgs blew his achilles (?) and was unavailable.

So one of the very best goalies in the league, so long as we can get him in a quantity deal that doesn’t include giving up an NHL player, or one of our best prospects, or us falling out the first round?

Skating, passing, scoring, stickhandling, hockey sense, forechecking, agitating, driving offence, tilting the ice, transitions… You really need to take off your “Sabres suck” filter sometimes. You just finished rolling your eyes at re-signing Girgensons and now you’re advocating signing Nosek, who is basically an older Girgensons with worse size, worse offence and worse possession skills? But hey, he can win faceoffs, even if he can do squat with the puck after winning them.

So, not really?

Krebs is the 3C of the future and will be better than Stepan or Nosek from day one this year.

The Sabres forward depth chart last year based on total ice time: Thompson Tuch Skinner Cozens Mitts Okposo Olofsson Peterka Quinn Girgensons Krebs Jost Hinostroza Asplund It’s really interesting to compare that to how it looked down the stretch: Skinner Cozens Mitts Krebs Quinn Thompson Okposo Tuch Girgensons Peterka Greenway Olofsson Jost Hinostroza The above is for the final 24 games and it’s twisted by Thompson missing 4 games to injury and Tuch and Greenway 7. If you do it by per game played it goes: Tuch Thompson Skinner Cozens Mitts Krebs Quinn Okposo Greenway Peterka Olofsson Hinostroza Girgensons Jost The most interesting thing to me is how much more Donnie leaned on Krebs down the stretch. Hinostroza only played 6 games. The Sabres went 11/10/3 over that period.

Better than Barrasso, better than Vernon and better than Turgeon. At least his omission is starting to get attention, unlike an even more glaring snub: Rick Martin, who was arguably the best left wing of his era.

I feel like I'm arguing against myself, but I have to give the counterpoint: I think you're giving too much credit Hill's relative NHL experience as significant when it really amounts to two seasons as a full-time NHL backup to Comrie's one. Regardless: Laurent Brossoit had a resume no better than Hill's: 106 pedestrian games as an NHL backup. And Logan Thompson was an undrafted prospect with 20 NHL and 50 AHL games to his name. For context, not one of them had ever had an NHL season as good as Comrie had in his last year in Winnipeg. At the start of the season, Hill wasn't a fallback, he was one 3 questionable goalies Vegas tossed into the deep end with their fingers crossed at least one could swim. I don't see much difference at all with what Adams did last year with Anderson, Comrie and UPL. At least this year he has Levi's talent to add to his hope chest. I'm not talking bang for your buck in terms of winning trades, I'm talking what the analytics say about investing your cap space or your resources heavily in "elite" or "proven" goalies rather than Adin HIlls and Devon Levis. Does the same logic that has stopped GMs from picking goalies high in the draft any more apply: the risk/reward is too variable?

To be clear, I agree with this. I am just starting to wonder if the facts are against us. There is nothing in the resume of Adin Hill prior to this season to suggest he was any more capable of winning the Stanley Cup than Eric Comrie. Jordan Binnington was just another Dustin Tokarski before he got hot. Stuart Skinner was (and maybe still is) Ukko Pekka Luukkonen. Hellebuyck, Vasilevskiy and Saros might be the 3 best goalies in hockey. They combined for 3 playoff wins and an .880 save percentage. As poor as Buffalo’s goaltending was last year, the missed the playoffs by one point, and that was with just three good NHL defencemen, two of which had played less than 60 NHL games. You don’t think our fancy analytics team has run the numbers on goalies and their actual bang for the buck? Maybe Kevyn knows something we don’t.

Agreed. He’ll be working with Fox, Trouba and Miller in New York. In front of Shesterkin.

Nobody has Morin anywhere near the top 13 but he is in the 2ndry tier of defencemen who might fit the “surprised no is talking about him higher” comment Forton made. Highly skeptical he’s the guy at 13. At 39, sure. I wonder what the other comment was that has Wawrow making that connection.