LGR4GM

That site you link to is interesting. Haven't seen them before.

I got you covered

Reinhart is a good example. People still talk about him as being a bad skater when in reality, he's quite good. Jack Quinn is a great example of anchoring. He's barely spoken of in the calder discussion or in the circle of best young wingers because well, he was overdrafted and his first post draft year was meh (mainly because covid and injury). Btw, it is clear he was not overdrafted at this point, at least to me, and that Jack Quinn truly might be elite. Rossi gets lots of leeway because he had covid so of course his first year back won't be good... maybe that's true or maybe the Sabres were right and Quinn had a higher ceiling. Hard to say right here. Josh Allen is the poster child for anchoring. There are pundits to this day who say he isn't accurate. The Unicorn that is Josh Allen worked awfully hard to be more accurate and fix everything about his game, similar to Tage. Yet, Allen is still at times given less credit than he deserves. Again once you have that idea in your mind that a player is X and you anchor to it, it skews everything after. I am not saying Tage will be the Sabres Allen, that's a bridge too far for me... right now. Tage can absolutely build and be better this season, he might even come close to his sh%. If it was just business as usual last year and he did this I would be skeptical but you have the position change, the being healthy, the coaching change, and the constant talk from ppl like granato that Tage was working on his shot (we know tage went from a slapper allllllll the time to a wrist shot). Owen Power is an example of me anchoring. I watched him early and I felt he had limited skills and relied too much on a size advantage so I ranked him below some players that impressed me more. Right now, with the new information (granted I haven't watched most of the guys I ranked higher) I feel much better about Power being in an elite tier of prospect. Long way of saying everyone has bias (which is what anchoring is) and the national pundits and those outside of Buffalo have a great deal of bias towards a franchise that has made mistake after mistake after mistake. It's why we are ranked below Detroit to start the season or why ppl look at Tage and call it a fluke because of course it is, because Buffalo. I think Tage can be a reliable 30g scorer in this league if he keeps his shot rate up. But everyone outside of Buffalo needs to see the proof because right now, they view Buffalo as the 11 year playoff drought team that has drafted first overall twice since 2018 and who just traded away their franchise center. BTW, Idk if Eichel is better than Tage at this point due to injuries, I need to see that as opposed to everyone outside of Buffalo who is anchored to the idea that Eichel is a franchise defining player.

Personally I think JJP might end up back in Rochester for a little bit and Hinnestroza gets some time. When JJP comes up in December due to injuries and to see how he looks, he will stay up. At some point Bjork is getting waived or traded, there just isn't a spot for him.

Sabres on this list of "high shooting percentage, get the contract for all the money, and then revert back to your career sh%" Drew Stafford, Jeff Skinner, and the #1 player on this list, Ville Leino. Now I personally always believe in career sh%. After you hit about 150-200 games, your sh% is pretty much set and you hover around that average. Notable exceptions you say? Samson Reinhart in 2018/19 season rocked a 12.2% which was right around his average up to then. His average up to that point was 12.24% so it was reasonable to expect that to continue as we are talking 322 games played (note I am not including his 9 games when he went back to the WHL). Sam Reinhart since that season has had a 15.3%, 19.2%, and 17.7% shooting percentage which would be significantly more than his average. Those averages indicate that his new average for those 3 years of 17.39% which is wildly better than 12.24%. So there are players that have improved their shot and sustained a better sh%. What's the catch? The real catch isn't Tage's sh% but the fact he shot 253 times last season. Reinhart shot 186 for a comparison. Matthews, 348. So the real question isn't does Thompson manage to stay around 15% (he probably will not and I think that 11.6% average is more likely) but will Thompson continue to put up around 250 shots because if he doesn't, his sh% will matter a great deal less if we see a significant dropoff. The deal is a gamble. I want to have faith in Tage but we have been burned so often before.

He's better than Bryson most likely. But is he better than Jokiharju, idk haven't watched rangers hockey much.

Once they started talking about Tage as a winger and comparing him to Skinner, I just laughed. Then they compared him to Nylander who signed his deal several years ago and I laughed more. It was someone either unintelligent writing that, or lazy. Funny read though.

I looked at the comments too. I'm here for the Buffalo Sabres 2022 revenge tour... which wouldn't include the Leafs because we beat them anyway.

So trump stole top secret documents and his cult still defends. Don't worry liger, it won't be that bad. Yup, it keeps getting worse.

Ask and you shall receive

Yes

2 years

Lol faceoffs on a 1st time center is your breaking point. And you got his career sh% wrong. I already covered that.

How many of them were at 15% for multiple seasons is the question

Boston is at the cliff. Once Bergeron goes, it's all over.

Because they give up the middle of the field while nursing a lead because Edmunds isn't a good coverage linebacker and they are way too content to allow teams 15yrd free plays again and again because "what if they go over the top!?!?!?!" well, you have an all pro corner and two all pro safeties so... let them try.

As a friend of mine who is big into college football likes to say: if your team is good at something, make the other team prove they can stop it.

What has been interesting to me (maybe only me) the last few years is how the Sabres scout players and then translate that into drafting. For a few years it seemed that whatever Murray felt like in the moment or whatever non CHL player Botterill liked were going to get picked. It felt old-school where you watched a guy and if you liked the cut of his jib, you drafted him. It got us guys like Nylander but also guys like Samuelsson as Botterill started to seemingly incorporate some numbers and the like into the model. None of that really matters now because we are in the Adams era with Jerry Forton as head of amateur scouting and Sam Ventura head of analytics. Forton recently said this "The Sabres won’t draft a player in any round unless they have somewhere between 50 and 100 game reports on him through in-person viewings and video scouting." and it prompted the starting of this thread. We know that Ventura built out the draft models on the analytics side but now we see what goes into the more traditional scouting side. "Ventura and his staff blew Forton away with the volume of their coverage and the way they spot trends. As analytics have become more advanced, Ventura is now working with a bigger sample size of historical data. That helps him and his staff further recognize what is useful when they’re building models." The Sabres feed whatever data they use (I have some guesses here) into the model and compare it to a historical cohort (be still my heart). They watch 50-100 viewings of a guy. Finally they bring it all together to look at who the player actually is (I would guess intangibles come in here). Just found it interesting. Here is the full read if you are interested https://theathletic.com/3535709/2022/08/30/sabres-analytics-jerry-forton-scouting-department-video/?source=emp_shared_article

Either he breaks out and is the elite defender he can be, or Dahlin never does and we wait for Power to overtake him while Dahlin still contributes a bunch of points.

I am worried about Frazer. His inability to understand a soft zone is a useless trash defensive scheme in todays NHL directly resulted in Buffalo losing a playoff game. He continued to drop into the soft zone this preseason which is horrifying. Playing not to lose instead of playing to win.

John Wawrow's report

Zemgus has his uses and I'll take his 20pts. I don't think he plays center though.

I went heiskanen. PerreaultForever could be right but I see a steady 30ish point defenseman

He told a 17yr old girl he just slept with to get tested for chlamydia. Or you don't think the probably should be included? Unclear to me.