LGR4GM

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.

Krebs btw, 1.0 p60 He's .7 p60 below McLeod so idk what buffalo's plan for him is. Rafferty, 1.5 p60 Kubel 1.3 Malenstyn 1.1

Looking at line 3 to start last season, Mittelstadt was better than McLeod. However olofsson was worse. Greenway stays the same. The question then is how much does Benson or Zucker make up the Mitts difference. It's roughly .5pts per60 between Mitts and McLeod. Zucker however comes in at only .3 below Mitts. Benson is a WildCard cuz his scoring rate will increase. So let's say we have to replace Benson and Mitts on line 3 at 2.1 and 1.7 points per 60min. That's 3.8 p/60 and we ignore Greenway cuz he's the same. McLeod gives us 1.6 or 1.7, I'll lean with the higher. Zucker at 1.8. That's 3.5 total. In theory then, Buffalo lost about .3 p60 by swapping McLeod and Mitts. However, if we argue we're replacing Mitts and Olofsson on the 3rd with McLeod and Zucker, that's only a .1 p60 difference. The issue is that in pts, we didn't improve. We are ignoring Skinner who is essentially replaced by Benson. Skinner is a 2.3 p60 so Benson has ground to make up but this all ignored defense attributes. I think it's still valid because Buffalo has to up its scoring AND reduce goals against to be a playoff team. My over all point is unless Benson and McLeod improve, we took a step back. Quinn probably covers Skinners lost production but the 3rd line is less and Benson becomes the wild card to balance everything. Quinn btw, 2.7 p60... that's why everyone is projecting a good year from him. The margins are thin, Buffalo probably only improved by a couple wins overall without internal growth.

There are no NHL teams currently below the cap floor according to what is on puckpedia. Everyone is above 65 million.

VO scored 7g last year and was on pace for only 11.48goals in a full 82 game season. We aren't losing anything by him being gone.

So if Rafferty is as good as Dowd defensively, we should have a reasonably good shutdown line. I also like the fact there is 3 or so players in the bottom of the lineup who all hit a lot.

Big fan of Picasso's pizza which is Buffalo style.

I put us at an 87 point team.

47 brand had a coyotes sweater on sale right after the team moved, I purchased it and kinda love it.

FTR Elite Prospects has an agreement with Puckpedia (they had one with Capfriendly) to add salary info right onto a players NHL player page. Currently links back to their contract on Puckpedia as well: https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/310545/rasmus-dahlin

Here's another kinda off-season report card https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5626787/2024/07/10/nhl-teams-offseason-2024/

Interestingly the account or person who managed the depth charts on capfriendly (something that somehow managed to be accurate and also get players positions right) is actually building a new site for depth charts. So that will be useful when it is up and running.

We still would have lost access anyways. Also Pegula is cheap.