#freejame

I know for a fact this isn't your first time on the board in the last three years. It is never ending.

We (the Sabres) are the long dead skelton. Through the powers of black magic, we have summoned just enough strength to flip off the Leafs and their fans before finally perishing

Thank God you stopped short of Cream City. I don't follow basketball whatsoever but ever since the introduction of the Cream City merch they've become my favorite team. Interesting fact about why Milwaukee is called the Cream City. Apparently the clay and mortar (?) used to construct the city during it's origin left a distinct cream color to all of the buildings. I prefer to imagine it's a town full of orgies with a basketball team fully onboard with the shenanigans. Regardless, Go Bucks! (are they still in it?)

Assuming she is an adult, she likely understands proper elevator etiquette as well. My Sabres fandom hangs by a thread so long as Rob Ray is still associated whatsoever. I think the best solution is to stop allowing South Buffalo to follow the Sabres and then there will be nobody left who likes Rob Ray.

I know @LGR4GM responded saying there are anecdotes, and while I can't provide any data, I'd say it's about 50/50, and that goes for all sports. My hypothesis is it goes both ways. On one hand you have young, dedicated players who love being GOOD at hockey and it is what makes them happiness who advance to older ages and have to continually push themselves to be better. On the other hand, it can also lead to an attitude of look at all of this talent I have, I don't need to put in the same amount of work to get the same results. How a rookie in the CHL responses to that likely plays a significant role in their long term development (see Alexi Kovalev for riding by on skill and Martin St. Louis who did everything right every day of the week to make it to the league. I got halfway through and realized I didn't answer your question at all, but it's too late now. However, since I can relate anything to baseball, age most definitely plays an impact then. International players are able to sign to big league organizations at 16 years old, play a season of development ball in the DR, and move on to professional low-level baseball before Americans are even eligible for the draft. To me, as it relates to both hockey and baseball, the earlier you are exposed to mature, developed players, the quicker and easier the transition will be.

Do you mean this in a negative way? Everything I've watched and seen on Chabot is pretty solid. His own zone play could be improved, but his skating, passing and breakout are all top-notch. He has spent his whole career in Ottawa and for the most part has flourished in the toughest minutes. Hell, if Dahlin is Chabot at this point I will be pleased. He's a top-5 defender on 25 and I'm not sure there is a ton of arguments against that. Having Chabot and Dahlin on the ice for 45 minutes a game with responsible defensemen rapidly turns us into one of the better d-corps. Was Dustin Brown not Marchand before Marchand becane Marchand? That's how I remember Marchand and Brown.

K'Andre Miller interests me more than Kakko and is only slightly behind LaFreniere (who may still only be all hype). I have zero interest in adding to a package to the Rags that only includes Miller, Kakko/Lafreniere, and say Chytill or Buchnevich. Even if the deal is Miller, LaFreniere, and Chytill/Buch I still don't think it touches some of the other offers. Slight sidebar: Outside of Miller, is there realistically a better defenseman we can get? Bjornfot is good but hes going to be a sharp 4/5. Miller to me projects 2/3. Drysdale obviously has top pairing potential, but Zegras fills a bigger need. I guess if we could somehow pull Byram out of COL he would be better, but to me it looks like our best bet at an impact D outside of the draft is Miller, once our other needs are considered. Major hypothetical: If NYR offered Miller, Chytil, and Buchnevich for Sam while LA simultaneously offered Byfield, Turcotte, and Kaliyev for Eichel, and we knew we had the first pick for Power, do you take those deals? On their own, I don't think it's enough. But combined, I think we are set up in a better position. Sign Danault for asking price to play one C, understand you're a lottery team with a deep top-line center pool, hire Donny G to keep progressing the kids for three years and then bring in the new coach to get us over the hump. 2021 Depth Chart Skinner (meh)--Danault--Cozens Buchnevich--Chytil--Olofsson Mitts--Byfield--Kaliyev Girgs--Turcotte--R2 It's not a playoff roster, and arguably four of the players might start in the AHL, but it frees up a bit of cap to quite literally bump any player down on the depth chart by bringing in a Coleman type to shore up our bottom six. Neither trade would be my ideal trade, but I think this roster make-up is about as close to what might be achievable on the trade market. Are we a better team because of it? Not immediately. Will we be? Likely. Package Tage and RIsto for the top RHD you can find and sign a goalie and this would be the most optimistic I would be about an 80 point season in years. K'Andre Miller is the real deal and had it not been for Fox's breakout everyone would be hearing significantly more about it. I would prefer he wasn't the main deal in an Eichel/Reinhart trade, but the dude has a lot of skill.

Shhhhh there’s a trope and I’ll be damned if I don’t play into.

Peyton Manning wouldn’t have won that game with that terrible, terrible, terrible play calling on both sides.

No doubt, but even after beating Baltimore in the playoffs the talking heads were saying that it’s a shame because Lamar would be the only quarterback to stand a chance against Mahomes.

This reads as someone who has not followed Josh Allen’s tenure in Buffalo. Allen has been getting ***** on since the moment he was drafted, by the media and Bills fans alike. The only difference is those who love Josh Allen LOVE Josh Allen and shout down those people (or slams them through tables).

Like I said, it take it with a grain of salt. I like him as a player anyway and the things you’ve mentioned play a large part in it. Would I draft him solely because he’s Quinn Hughes brother? No. Does it hurt? No. Does it move him up my rankings? No. Does his family’s comments make me more excited if we do draft him? Absolutely. Besides, what’s a greater feeling than the Sabres getting the wrong brother?

Just for fun I wanted to look at his OPS and OPS+ and compare it to the first two TTO hitters that came to mind—Joey Gallo and Joc Pederson. Kingman—.750 OPS / 115 OPS+ Gallo—lifetime BA .209 / 37.2K% / 14.4BB% / 6.4HR% / .819 OPS / 115 OPS+ / 60 TTO% Pederson—lifetime BA .231 / 24.3K% / 11.9BB% / 5.0HR% / .801 OPS / 115 OPS+ / 40.2 TTO% For reference, the aforementioned Mario Mendoza (that of the Mendoza line fame) batted .215 lifetime with an OPS+ of 45 and TTO of 18.6%. Oh, and Mike Trout has a TTO over 40% of the time, to go along with a .305 life BA and a 176 OPS+. Its easy to say TTO baseball is bad baseball, but all three of these players are outperforming league average hitting by a pretty decent clip. Also of note, while many teams have adapted TTO strategies, there is no data to support it showing leading to more wins. Strikeouts, for the most part, just do not matter anymore. Players used to feel shame from strikeouts, that does not exist anymore. I don’t remember the poster saying that analytics have had a negative impact on baseball, but if anything it’s shedding more light on who should and should not be a major leaguer. If you tell a scout someone has a 40%k rate they probably won’t take a second look. Then tell them their rate stats are all higher than league average and they are good for an .800 OPS every year and now all of a sudden they are an invaluable member of the organization. These are the types of things we are going to see in advanced hockey data. We’ll have someway say “Reinhart can’t skate for *****, he falls down 10 times a game.” And then we can point to the statcast and tracking data and say well yeah, but he spends a larger amount of time in the corners and in front of the net based on X and his top speed compared the the league is X and his average ice covered during a shift is X. You can take data and make immediate inferences from it or you can take data, analyze it, and then come to a more realistic conclusion.

I always love finding out how terrible I am at pronouncing names without having heard them before. This one is pretty bad. Happened with Eichel during his BU season as well.

Like Gretzky on the Blues with the two bolds—had it, lost it! It was, a good hockey goal. It wasn’t, at the time, a good NHL goal. If that goal happens in the second period, it gets reviewed and possibly overturned. It wasn’t even looked at, which for many is a large part of the issue.

It’s nonsense in my opinion if professional scouts are taking the word of family members into consideration, but for our intents and purposes I think it means something. I was (am) enamored by Matthew Tkachuk and both he and Keith swore up and down Brady would be the best Tkachuk to play. They haven’t been wrong about that either.

It’s also probably non-sense but when your two top-5 pick brothers all say it isn’t even close who the best player in the family is it just adds to his stature. A larger and allegedly faster Quinn Hughes sounds pretty amazing.

I believe you’re just confused. With the recent rash of no-no’s the league formally known as Major League Baseball is now known as the No Hitter League. It’s a recent change, I understand your confusion.

I am fully convinced Hughes will be the best player out of the draft.

None of those things matter. This is very vague and could be done with any player on any team in the NHL, regardless of their availability. Take Dylan Cozens for example. Nobody wants to trade him. But you can replace Eichel in the question and it’s still a fair question. All that is being asked is your perceived value of a player in relation to the rest of the league and what you believe the leagues perceived value of a player is.

My plan isn’t to copy @dudacek and what he’s got going do, but I would like to take whatever data comes out of this to show what kind of difference there will be between what we believe Eichel to be worth compared to what is actually believed to be fetched. I think it’ll be pretty eye-opening. My mistake in this is that I had a top-5 NHL prospect in every option, which is certainly no guarantee for what he will fetch.

Thank God someone mentioned the Senators. It must have started with Yashin but I can’t think of a team I’ve ever disliked as much as Ottawa. Maybe the Islanders but that’s it.

There’s maybe 25 pitchers tops in the league who have the ability to go through the order 3 times with regularity. Teams want to win. The differences in batting averages between the first trip through the order and the third trip through the order is astounding. wOBA goes up 26 points, k% go down, BABIP and hard hit balls all go up, velocity goes down, swing strike% goes down. Bad managing is bad managing and unless you’re a handful of guys, leaving someone in three times through is bad managing. If you’ve got the bullpen to come in, you do it every time (not counting Blake Snell in the WS, but managerial tactics and analytics play a significantly different role on post-season baseball). Montoya was some bad baseball the other day, no doubt about that. But man, how freaking good did Manoah look?!

Since this is a hockey board after all, there has been some recent studies/success on the impacts of pitch tunneling. For those that don’t know, pitch tunneling is where, regardless of what pitch or where you are aiming, you are releasing the ball from the same arm slot. The more proficient you are at tunneling, the longer time is takes to differentiate pitchers. Jacob Degrom last night is a great example. Alex Wood really started keying on of this a few years back and it really helped him rebound, especially after losing some velocity. My question as it pertains to hockey is, is there really any way to tunnel a shot? Obviously pucks don’t move nearly the way baseball do, but outside of looking off a target, what kind of advancements might be had and perfected in shot deception, if any? Regardless, I can’t wait for the new NHL statcast system. It’s been amazing for baseball. I can’t wait to see what it does for hockey.

There’s a lot of great articles on the baseball conspiracy that I plan to link once I’m on my computer because that’s really been the biggest change year over year on the quality of the game. Some of the changes (runner starting on second in the 10th, 7 inning double headers) have definitely lowered game times by a very minute amount but at the same time they are alienating actual baseball fans. The minor leagues use a pitch count and the MLB has always had rules in the book related to time between pitches. The only change baseball needs to make is enforce its own rule. Basically every player less than 25 has played under pitch clocks. I have never once noticed it at a minor league game nor saw a ball (or strike) called due to the time. I believe it is 20 seconds between pitches from the time the batter toes the rubber. Between 2007-2017 over 2.3 seconds were added between every pitches. The data I am looking at is from 2018 and has Pedro Baez clocking in at 31.2 seconds between pitches. I can’t find the data right this second but I believe Kennedy Jansen was clocking in close to forty seconds this last season. And quite frankly, what baseball does not want the outside world to know is that broadcast time has increased significantly as ad time increases. There’s twenty-two minutes of ad time during every local game and and 45.5 minutes of ads for nationally televised games. The MLB did recently take steps to shorten the time, but it still makes up a good portion of the broadcast.