DarthEbriate

If the Sabres as a team can get .904 sv% or higher, that ought to do it unless the offense is atrocious. They were .899 last season, but Comrie's disastrous .874 in 10 games dug their hole deeper than Luukkonen's great second half could elevate them.

Pronman just ranked the Sabres top 5 by height. 6-6, 6-1, 6-0, 5-11, 5-10. Power, Quinn, Peterka, Helenius, Benson. Easy peasy.

It's a whole 'nother year (of EEE). Ehrhoff gets money through 2027-28.

A mandate from the bench for Power: your stat line must include 1 or more recorded hit each game. Learn to correctly throw a body check, get used to it, and go from there.

You're desperate to know when Ehrhoff is completely off the Pegula ledger and the team is allowed to spend to the salary cap again?

--I saw a city hockey stadium by the lake. ++Mmm. A team's fans you have there. -- They were in pain! ++It is the future you see. --The future? Will they die make the playoffs? ++Difficult to see. ---- As to Skinner, last season was accountability. Other players out-earned him for playing time. HCDG learned just as HCRK and HC RB'A had learned before him. But this offseason was strictly accounting. ---- Accountability in the offseason would be the leadership of this team being leaders and announcing that yes, EEE is the sole guiding principle and not GMKA's assertion that's he free to spend as he feels fit, and certainly not that "the Buffalo Sabres' reason for existence will be to win a Stanley Cup."

Yes. The Laine, McGroarty, and Askarov deals mean the GMs are back to actual season preparation and communications. September starts on Sunday and then the prospect tournaments are less than 2 weeks out. The completely silent period has passed us by.

As an offseason, I'd agree this is true. Zucker isn't proven to be better than Benson, depending on which one of them gets top 6 minutes. Benson certainly has a vastly higher ceiling than anything Zucker ever had as a player or prospect. However, In continuing from the previous sentence (related to the top 6 because it's the same paragraph), this is incorrect. Skinner hadn't been in the top-6 since February based on average TOI. And his linemates, particularly after Mitts was dealt at the deadline, tell us exactly what HCDG thought of him: 3/7 Girgensons-Okposo; 3/12 Krebs-JJP; 4/5 Krebs-Rousek; 4/15 Krebs-Greenway. JJP and Benson were in the top 6, not Skinner, and it had been that way for about 30 games.

The ETA of an EEE AI scouting department is... 3 years?

Glibly, everything Sabres-related this past decade is about hoping. But rankings are fun. Objectively, you can compare them to their peers and past performers in their leagues, look at their physical tools and size, and areas to improve. Subjectively, you can throw in expectations vs. draft position and whether you like their play style, and where they might fit in a lineup in a few years. They're still a bunch of question marks, and it's up to their health, ability to adapt to new leagues/rink sizes/living abroad for European players, taking to new coaching, etc.

I like what Grier is doing to unwrap the Sharks from their 15-year run with the old core. On the Cheveldayoff front, I can't say he's done a great or poor job, but he's had one thing the Sabres haven't had since 2011 (Chevy hire date/Pegula purchase date): stability. For the last nine seasons, the Jets have had this little guy named Hellebuyck whose career average is .917 and has led the league in GP 4 times in those years, and paced for over 60 starts in each of the last 7 seasons. Since Pegula bought the team, the Sabres have had stretches of competent goaltending, often completely undone by backups (Comrie), or goalie-injury (Ullmark), or simply trading the goalie away because he was threatening the tank or draft lottery odds (Miller, Enroth, passing-through Halak). And the Jets have had one GM (4 coaches) in that time compared to the Pegula churn of 4 GMs, 7 coaches, sanctioned/forced tanking by ownership, and then operating by EEE and way under the salary cap each of the last four seasons. Comparing Chevy's run to Adams is kind of apples/oranges. Though I would argue it comes down to NHL-level goaltender decisions, which Adams has been abysmal at (until now?...).

I'd agree with this. Prospect ranking is who has the highest ceiling or will have a greater NHL-level impact. Readiness/Closest to the NHL is an organization-wide depth chart.

To me, the forward scoring is down to two things: power play and the RFAs. Will the power play have NHL-level pace, movement, and varied setups? Or will it just be the setup TNT show with the occasional other scripted play that works once/month? Will they be able to win PP faceoffs for immediate zone time, or will they spend the first 20 seconds retrieving and getting the puck back up ice to attack? That's where the majority of goals could come from. Individually, Peterka and Quinn have the ability, will get the minutes, and have contract motivation, to take their points to levels we've not seen from either. For Peterka, he'll get the chance at 1st line minutes, presumably with a healthy TNT (because he's not on PK1) and Tuch. In JJP's contract year, can he outscore a normal-Skinner year [not necessarily a Skinner's career year in 2022-23]? I think yes. Plus, he's taller than Skinner. JJP needs to balance out his streaks so he doesn't disappear from the score sheet in December and February as he did last season. For Quinn, he'll drive whichever line he's on. Will he take the initiative to shoot more? Or will Zucker or Cozens be able to get on hot streaks on their finishes of his playmaking? (or Benson, but I think he's bottom 6 this season.)

The outcome (thus far) of that 6th for a guaranteed-lower-6th swap is this: 2018 TOR drafted 156thOA: Pontus Holmberg. NHL 91 GP 12-18-30 +11, 75 hits and 36 PIM in 4th line minutes. This offseason, he is currently listed as Toronto's 3LW. 2019 BUF -- JBott deals that 177thOA plus a 7th to get back into the 5th round to take F Filip Cederqvist, who GMKA traded this season to Montreal for... future considerations. D'oh! Beat me buy a minute!

The concern going in with HCDG was there would be a time when the team needed to go experienced to take the next step. He got the forwards going; he was the anti-HCRK despite serving on his staff. Now, can Ruff be the playoff-experienced coach to take them to the next level? Yes, he should be. In two more seasons, how high is the next level will be the question.

Beautiful, beautiful Sabrepede. Would you believe that Joe Thornton picked up an assist on this? Would you also believe that the Sabres won the game in a shootout courtesy of Miller and Hodgson?

He is Buffalo's all-time leading goalie goal scorer.

This is a good contract for goalies. Saaros, Shesterkin, and Swayman (in UPL's same situation next summer, but with multiple seasons behind the Bruins D) are going to get paid. Last year, Luukkonen had .667% quality starts. That was in excellent company in the league (once you take out the folks who only dressed for a game or two). Tied with Hellebuyck, Ullmark, and Varlamov, and those three had the largest sample sizes. GM Sheevyn finally committed to a goalie. If Luukkonen stays consistent and we see the expected improvements in team defense as the core ages, this should work. Talking myself into it... it'll work.

Previous Sabres GMs would probably tell you they also drafted grinders, or at least bigger guys that could become grinders at the NHL level. They just haven't panned out. Picking out from those prior drafts: Bloom, Cederqvist, Pekar, Murray, Lemieux, Willman, Bailey, Kea, Jacobs. (And Malenstyn nearly stayed a career AHL-er, too. Until last season he'd played only 26 NHL games over 4 seasons.)

I really hope Malenstyn's entire argument for filing arbitration was: "Look at the money you threw at Girgensons the last 4 seasons!" (4 years, $9.1M. 199 GP, 28G 22A 50P)

I'm thinking that by the end of this season Quinn may very well be the 1W and Tuch the 2W, at least in terms of 5-on-5 ice time.

Ranking this high is of three things: 1) It's 98% pity. Awww, the Sabres won a game, even against my favorite team? Good for them. 2) Two seasons ago they were fun to watch. If you went to you home team's game and the Sabres were in town, you'd at least be entertained by an all-out press attack and an attempt to score 7. (Colorado is also very fun to watch the last few seasons.) 3) They don't have any rats/goons on their team since... JBott took over? They don't have individual players to dislike. (Colorado also fits this -- their Cup win was such a fast buzzsaw blur they didn't even get the chance to be called punks about it.)

He's going to have a Jesper Bratt-like season under Ruff. 25-35 goals; 40-50 assists. 73 points this season.

Yes. Give me the top goaltending and dangerously solid team defense. A 3-2 win is an exciting hockey game. The most exciting hockey I've seen was the dead-puck era Hasek Sabres. Chaos in their own end, Hasek makes one amazing save and it's a rush goal going the other way. Plus the hits, dust-ups, and speed that makes hockey fun. The constant tension was the race to 2 goals. In 98-99, the Sabres would have gotten the win or gone to OT by scoring just two goals in 57 of 82 games. To compare, the Bruins would have gotten the win or OT with two goals in 52 of 82 games in 2022-23 (65 wins). I'll bet that regular season was pretty exciting for Bruins fans.

Agreed on both accounts. Purely for fun I was matching up the players to their (somewhat) equivalents of past Ruff lineups. What I can really see with Ruff are those grinder-on-each line setups that may have us scratching our heads because so-and-so isn't a top 6, but it works on the ice. And the grinder gets no PP time and someone else (Briere/TNT) gets double-shifted so the TOI makes sense for the top forwards. Malenstyn-Cozens-Quinn, for example. Myself, I'd start the preseason with the admittedly boring lines that everyone else is already predicting: Peterka - Thompson - Tuch Zucker - Cozens - Quinn Benson - McLeod - Greenway Malenstyn - Lafferty - Aube-Kubel (Krebs)