LGR4GM

No no, all the people projecting Benson to be either the same or in some cases worse in terms of points. That is what I think will be fun.

The other thing is let's say whoever Buffalo would have drafted makes the NHL. That wouldn't happen until 2028 maybe?

Man, this is gonna be fun. So much fun.

Benson had 19a as a rookie.

They will make the playoffs if they grow up over the summer and realize the NHL is hard and doesn't care about what you think you're entitled to.

Trading Benson is one of those truly stupid ideas. He won't need 3 years, he'll be g2g after this year.

Benson is better than Kulich and Rosen. Y'all need to realize Benson should have been a top 5 pick. The NHL just went full stupid that draft.

The bold won't happen for a very obvious reason, Ruff isn't going to have 3 forwards who all shoot right on the same line. Especially when he doesn't have to.

That bottom 6 is wrong. Benson - McLeod - Greenway Malenstyn - Rafferty - Kubel Kubel shoots right and a blackhole for opponents when it comes to offense.

The point of looking at scoring rates was to see if we have enough scoring to make the playoffs. The answer is maybe kinda. It isn't too say we will score x amount of goals. Coaching matters for these and injuries do too. You're 13th forward is playing half the games, so if you bump someone into that spot who's better that helps. Likewise, we aren't accounting for the other side of the equation. We might have enough scoring, but will we prevent enough goals against? That's part 2 of this and more difficult to predict. I suppose we could pull every players xga and average them and see where it goes. Either way, this team had just enough to get into the playoffs and technically is better than last years team, but just barely. Again, Lindy Ruff is the great unknown. He manages to impart a system that isn't crap and make the pp even average, Buffalo can make the playoffs. The board is set. The pieces are moving. The margins are thin.

No it doesn't. It tells the number of pts a player scored per 60 of ice time last year. Okay, what's the Sabres goals for this season? We have 5 new forwards in the top 12 and 1 forward who only got 20 something games due to injury. Again, tell me what the Sabres 2024 goals for and against will be? I simply looked to see if we had enough scoring compared to the best in our conference. Without improvement, we're about 14% below their ability to produce.

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.