Thorner

The commentators on tv are significantly better than Dan and Ray, I’m sorry the are more informative about the Sabres, even, than our home town guys are. They seemed well versed, getting into tage’s injury concerns this year

How many former Sabres are over there? I count at least 4

The post where I explained what I meant, presumably? For those who like you incorrectly confuse “higher in scoring” with “most points”.

Fair enough my dude. I just legitimately believe in the case I feel the stats are presenting. But I’m not trying to take away from the hatred you feel in a sporting sense for the player, that’s the fuel of a fan, that makes the league go round as much as anything. Thank you for saying “all but literal” harm. This place got vile for a year or so.

This strikes too much of a nerve for you that’s why I’m trying to stick to that stats. “Wallow in garbage” etc. Your quote here sums it up fine: “I don't give one ***** if the Sabres did a bad job with the team while he was here” Yes, beyond being strictly relevant to production and this discussion, if that’s not a concern for you in general, we can digress, as the point of disagreement is very clear and irreconcilable

His 2 way play absolutely kicked in in 2019-20. I don’t really know what to say. All the stats, advanced or otherwise, are there. He definitively improved defensively. He was significantly better than Tage was defensively last year. I could get into anecdotal stuff and pull up the various statements on this board lauding Jack for that defensive work in 2019 but why bother. I can’t make you admit he was good defensively that year if you don’t want to Jack was a +5 that year on a team with a -22 goal differential lol

And finally, if we needed any more compelling, objective proof: As Jack was scoring 78 points, the *next closest on the team* was Sam Reinhart at 50 lol. 50. Tage had *4* players closer to him than that 28 point gap. His linemates had 12 less, and 15 less, respectably. COMBINED the gap isn’t as great as the 28 between Eichel and Reinhart It’s not a comparison. Eichel’s season was SIGNIFICANTLY better. One day people will actually admit how poorly we did by this kid. As if he hasn’t already been proven definitively right.

Jack had 78 points in 68 games before the WORLD STOPPED due to Covid. The season itself doesn’t get erased because it’s convenient for a narrative. Jack finished 10th in scoring league wide (his 2nd top 10 finish as a Sabre.) Tage finished 15th. It doesn’t matter if you score a kabillion jillion points, what matters is how many you are getting relative to your peers: scoring trends go up and down. Jack in fact scored more relative to the league than Tage did, he had the better season. And that’s JUST points! Jack finished 8th in MVP voting league wide: Tage finished 15th. How quickly we forget that the defensive improvement and fantastic 2-way play everyone finally admits Jack has actually started way back in 2019. Cause it did.

No, in a buffalo uniform

That’s incorrect. Jack finished higher in scoring and by way of the MVP vote 19-20 happened, regardless of whether we remember it or not lol

I’m not so sure

That’s good to hear.

Saw that. Issue more so is that we’d need to go 9-2-1 after that to keep pace 16-6-2 to finish above last year’s total

Difference between right and easy. You aren’t literally preventing anything by using the term but you are surrendering yourself to the idea that your verbiage is merely a symptom of the greater lack of awareness in society at large

Why would it? If they make the playoffs, absolutely

20 years? Jack was better

And Petterson is a year younger and was basically berthed into a league as a point per game player. When you consider you are paying for the whole player and not what’s so far much more of an outlier season where Tage is concern, it’s not hard to see the value gap between the two players Tage has a really swell contract tho so while I’d deal him for EP, it’s not close to defcon 1. He’s a good player to have, too

Ya, if your reaction is “oh id definitely do that”, it’s too light ..and there’s the reaction you’ll see accompany what the realistic trade would be

Very possible, but 92 made it last year. It could be the same this year

But what if you fly?

A good old fashioned hockey trade would be very fun we are hypothetically in a position where we could easily put together one of the best packages. Maybe we wouldn’t be offering the best NHLer but we have the luxury of being able to severely bump up our package due to our plethora of prospects, fighting to make an already young team we can be the ones to overpay and still win the war, easily

The math is bad but it becomes “realistically overcomable bad”, rather than us needing a historic pace bad, reasonably quickly if, to your point, we get an extravagant mathematical result over a small (therefore: doable) sample size beforehand. I understand it doesn’t all happen in this order but if we win our next 2 games, (one vs T-Bay) and the 2 we have in hand on Tampa, and Tampa mixes in a loss today (so, 5 results breaking our way), Tampa’s pace would actually be, after the two losses I spoke of, 69 points through 62 games and therefore 91 over 82. Washington the next best is only pacing for 90-91 currently, so Tampa losing their next 2 and the pace shifting to 91 is actually rather reasonably possible. If we march our current 3 gamer to a 7 game win streak, and are at 66 in 62 after, to get to 92 points we only need about a 107 point pace the remaining 20 games working in our favour there is that 20 games isn’t super extravagant and that sort of pace, while good, was something 9 teams in the nhl did last year over 82 games It’s strictly possible

Moneypuck has us at ~ 3 percent, the above is a good illustration as to why (but imo when you break down what you need it seems at least a little less scary) if we win today (50:50), Tampa loses (50:50), we beat Tampa (50:50), then win our two games in hand (50:50, 50:50) we will be a mere 3 points back from Tampa. Odds of that happening just in a ballpark sense is 1/2 x 5. So about 1/32 or ~ 3%. Seems tough, but it’s not unheard of to have 5 results break your way in a row

I mean.. I have the 6th most posts in the history of this great website and the 5 folks ahead of me arrived a decade earlier. I think it’s fair to say I’ve remained on brand as a talkazoid. It’s what it is.