LGR4GM

This is gonna be a fun season.

Go look at his defensive metrics. That "some" must be a really small group. He's an overpaid #5 defender trending down.

Dahlin out hit him last year. So did Clifton.

Benson is going to light it up.

Johnson is probably first but Novikov and Komarov can supplant him this year. Also, when you have Powe, Byram, and Dahlin, does it matter?

Perfect example. Connor Bedard, at 5v5 was 1.9 p/60 because he got a bunch of pp time to up his scoring Zach Benson is 1.8 p/60 at 5v5 but scored half as many points and no one outside Buffalo thinks much of him. It's actual points, not points for. Goals doesn't account for players who get pucks to dangerous areas like Benson. Also Goals are rare so they don't always tell your everything.

It normalizes scoring by ice time. Most production in any sport is based on opportunity. So Jack Quinn is someone that gets talked about with Peterka. Even last year when Quinn was coming back from injury, he outproduced Peterka relative his ice time. Benson was better than several guys relatives to the ice time.

How many points a player scores per 60 mins of ice time.

If you replace Krebs with Zegras it puts us from 1.54 to 1.62 and that is probably pretty good.

Depends on how we think Zegras does. Is he the 2.6 p/60 or the 1.7 p/60 which is him last year. If we think 2.6 more likely due to him recovering from injury than that is 1.1 above Greenway and 1.3 above Kubel. In Kubel's case Buffalo didn't add him for his points but his defense eating abilities.

19g, 28a for Benson

I don't think Buffalo has the best prospect pool even with Savoie. I would say we are top 5 though. Is our pool overrated? Not really, especially when other teams don't have their Benson's and Power's already graduated. Really instead of talking prospect pool, these places should talk u22 players and go from there because that is what matters. Either way, Buffalo has a good pool but not the best one IMPO.

I don't view lines as rigidly as this place. Quinn will play on the teams "2nd" line but produce at a 1st line rate. He'll probably be very much on Tuchs level.

Jack Quinn is the catalyst.

Jack Quinn might be the Sabres best forward. Zach Benson is the Sabres best 200ft player. My prediction from Benson is 19g and 28a. My Quinn prediction is 34g and 46a

Because Cozens, Thompson, Peterka and Tuch can't get injured for us to make the playoffs. There's no depth.

Yes.

I wouldn't trade Zach Benson for Ehlers even straight up.

No, the point is to win the Stanley Cup. Acting as though jack quinn is not the first line wing he produces at or that Zach Benson is just some normal rookie is wrong. Context matters.

Benson was 18. I wouldn't. What a horrendously terrible idea.

This is one of those ideas that is truly awful. I'd have no faith in anything if Buffalo were stupid enough to do this. Jack Quinn was the most productive forward Buffalo had last season. Zach Benson should be treated like the top 5 pick he should have been. I wouldn't trade either for anything short of Draisaitl.

Much has been brought up about Jeff Skinner exiting while basically not being replaced. By replaced I mean we can't really say "oh Jeff left but we got X" and this also applies in some ways to Mittelstadt although now we can point at McLeod. With that said I did a couple of things. First I went and looked at the Rangers current lineup to get a feel for what the very top of the conference looks like. They ended up as the best in the conference last year so we use them as the pinnacle of where we want to get to. Then I looked at the 2024 roster and used their previous years pts per 60 rates. Now yes we should probably average several years and I could spend my entire day doing that, but we are just trying to get a feel here. We don't know about the coaching and how it will help, so we are better to error on the side of caution. The NYR are about to ice a team that has 1.79p/60 as its scoring rate. If you don't want the average, it adds up to 37.6 but I think the overall scoring rate of 1.79 is more useful. Buffalo with its current 2024 roster is set to run at around 1.54 p/60 or roughly 14% below what the Rangers are at. Now what I found interesting is that the 2023 Sabres come out around 1.52 p/60 when you specifically sort by games played and take the top 21 (I did use Quinn though who falls below that threshold because it just made sense, sorry Robinson). On paper at least that means in the aggregate, Buffalo did replace Skinner and Mittelstadt's scoring rates. Rangers 24: 1.79 p/60 Sabres 24: 1.54 p/60 Sabres 23: 1.52 p/60 The point of the thread is what do you do here? We are 14% below the Rangers as the best in the East. There might be enough here to get into the playoffs but it will be close. In goals for, the Red Wings, Penguins, Devils outproduced the Sabres last year. Washington and the Islanders are the only 2 teams at or below Buffalo's goals for that made the playoffs. I did not pull and calculate all of their p/60s based on their current rosters but Buffalo is currently barely better in terms of scoring punch this season. Yes Lindy Ruff will impact that positively for a lot of players and Jack Quinn and 2nd yr Zach Benson will help the overall goals a bit, but the question is do they have enough? The answer right now on July 12th, seems to be not unless we see a jump in scoring from some key guys. We can have basically no injuries. A lot of this has already been said but I wanted to break it down. Buffalo is slightly better than last years team, but it is within the margin of error. We probably replaced Mitts and Skinner in the aggregate but it doesn't really push up much. We are a player short. You replace Peyton Krebs and his 1 p/60 with an average top 6 guy at 2.0 and Buffalo goes from 1.54 to 1.59 p/60 and truthfully, over a full season that is probably the extra cushion you need to get in. Otherwise you are relying on Kulich to come up and be useful in the top 6 which is possible but not what you wanna bet on.

I'll run it all in about 30 mins. I think we're short from last year.

McLeod and Zucker weren't on this poorly coached mess last year. I agree internal growth is needed but my point stands, on paper in July, Buffalo didn't add significant pts to the roster. I'd expect all outside projections to reflect that. Benson, Quinn and Cozens will make or break this season in the end. McLeod isn't as good as Mitts but Zucker is way better than Olofsson. It's gonna be close for the playoffs.