Thorner

Oops

Well said. “No” to the question about Comrie though

Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. We’re only about half way through the season - we’ll see where we are after the full 12k

“Tear it down to the studs” Rivet and Peters? Well that settles it. Botterill must have begged to trade him

I don’t believe it’s ever been confirmed that Botterill didn’t want to move ROR - in fact I think it’s the opposite. @Brawndowould definitely know but I believe there were rumours Botterill had at least been entertaining the idea for a while. Regardless, I don’t believe it was ever convincingly stated that Pegula was the impetus behind the move overall: we merely know he was firm on it being done *before* the bonus. But that could easily be under the prism of it necessarily needing to be done as decided by the GM. Ie, “Fine, trade him, but I’m sure as heck not paying that dude his bonus if he isn’t even on my team. …now how about another foot rub, Kev.”

I don’t know this means. I’m just having fun arguing my case on an interesting topic - I thought that’s what this place was for. Your question is “I have no idea why you are obsessed with this.” I don’t need to engage with you if these are the types of reactions I’m triggering by discussing it. I digress

If they made the trade without any regards to competitiveness in the moment and purely in an effort to ditch ROR, it was even worse lol It’s like they can’t make a bad trade- either you don’t care that the aims were a dereliction of duty (we were indeed trying to win at the time, in the macro) or you admit the aim was to win and that the trade pushed back the talent 6 years on that front and you just don’t care And then, you’ve deemed the situation unsalvageable therefore nothing we did mattered anyways therefore any deal was inconsequential therefore the deal wasn’t bad You understand that the exact logic of your argument could be applied to, and defend, trading Tage Thompson right now for a 1st round pick, should that pick turn into a player of equal ability in 6 years? It proves your argument faulty by way of example: 1) we need to wait for talent to develop when futures are involved, ie, we need to see what that pick becomes before we compare talent in / talent out 2)You explained that it didn’t matter if the ROR trade didn’t result in winning because the aim was namely to ditch a sad sack. Presumably as long as current results aren’t important to the GM, then, and our aims in dealing Thompson, or whoever you want to use in the example, is purely to be rid of the asset, mission accomplished 3)If the aim is to win, and you accept that, trading Thompson away for a pick and an old vet in a deal that DOESN’T result in winning *still doesn’t matter* because we weren’t winning when we had him, anyways

Both trades of choice, I agree It doesn’t mean both were trades made with the same goal in mind, with the same intent. Your argument seems based on removing as much context as possible whereas I’m simply pointing out that the ROR trade failed by the prism of what it was attempting to accomplish

B2B SO 6K

Hawks were up 1-0 late in the third vs the league’s best team by record when I was in attendance last week up here. Few results today would be truly surprising. Statistically speaking

I’ll say this for the 50th time, it *wasn’t a futures trade*. You can only disregard the time component willingly if you are MAKING A FUTURES TRADE ie time isn’t a consideration because the aim is to trade now, for later. That’s what you are conflating. I still agree we can and should wait to see how the talent unfolds over time as part of our analysis: but that’s not at the expense of the time factor no longer being a key variable Trading Eichel was still a choice. Yet another factor of context you are willingly choosing to ignore: Eichel demanded a trade under the prism of Adams wanting to rebuild. The rebuild was a choice. It was still a choice to trade Eichel

On a run of favourable scheduling here and it honestly doesn’t really end until February. We knew for a while now January is where we’d need to make hay to keep playoffs within reach. 3 of the final 5 to wrap up the month are against non-current playoff teams and in fact all 3 are below 26th in the standings which is where Buffalo sits. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think taking 4 of the next 5 is the sort of math we’d be looking for if we want to keep calling this possible. We’d be at 50 points in 49 games. To get to 94*, we’d need 44 over final 33, which is a 109 point pace. Quite unlikely, still. But, 7 teams played at a 109 point pace or better last season: maybe we can do it for a couple months (hope springs external). At least it’s 7 teams: at our current record (42 points in 44 games) right now we need to play at a 112 point pace rest of way to get to 94: something only *1* team did last year. It’s kinda funny that winning 4 of our next 5 only bumps down the pace we need to play at by 3 (112 >> 109), but I guess optically it just seems more achievable (however unlikely) from that point. Sabres are 4-2 in January, taking 66% of points so far. 80% over the final 5 is what I’m looking for. Coincidentally, 4-2 is a 109 point pace. Bumping that up a bit over the final 5 makes sense because we’d want to be playing at level above a 109-point pace vs the bad teams if we want to maintain that 109 pace over the longer, more difficult stretch that comes after. Finishing January with an 8-3 record overall would be a 119 point pace committed to record, for the month. That sort of output over one month would at least keep visions of something similar over the next 2 dancing on the fringes of the imagination

No

Intent, and desired result.

I liked it because I’m seemingly ever fighting on behalf of the fanbase to keep the expectations beyond non-existent. The injury excuse is just *sitting* there for one inclined to disregard league relativeness. You can almost hear the GM utilizing it as excuse to run it back. “Everyone has injuries” dismisses away with that excuse and it’s completely apt I don’t need insight. I’ve got it. I need people to at least agree on the base facts so common ground can be argued and insight can be achieved as a collective

That doesn’t mean the time component doesn’t remain a factor. You are disregarding it almost completely. If talent in=talent out, we might break even on that singular front. But having to wait 5 years for it to materialize is a massive negative, especially considering *we weren’t looking to punt back 5 years*. And even in this scenario, the aim of the trade was to field a winning hockey team and that hasn’t happened. The fact one can completely disregard the fact that as a means to an end (the point of any trade) the trade has spectacularly failed thus far, and it *still* be bad is a testament to its badness it’s unequivocally bad merely because we unintentionally punted the talent on the team back 5 seasons - don’t really need to go beyond that. Perhaps that doesn’t argue to the level of “worst ever” - fine. But it’s indisputably bad. I’m fine arguing to that standard and leaving it at that, thread title notwithstanding

I liked this from Lance tbh Part of the normal rigours of trying to win in the national league

ask Brawndo. He’s the twitter announcement guy I’m just his house elf

We need a little more Mike Tomlin. “The Standard is the Standard.” There’s no reason we don’t have enough to work with any given year if we believe in the personnel we’ve assembled to field a playoff roster.

Ya I agree, I’ve posted almost not at all about the latter two’s failings this year (relative to last season, you know what I mean) - because this was a predictable benefit of the contracts they signed, that we specifically mentioned at the time. Not so much with Dylan, but Tage is STILL well paid just on what he’s doing right now. And like you say, there’s upside. Of course I’d prefer they were playing better but A)I think it’s hard for a roster to live up to the sum of its parts / for individual players within that sum to be maximized if it/they are working to plug holes elsewhere. Ie I expect production improvement with better roster supplementation which we NEED to do anyways to win, so and B)they are still really good - not only is there obviously more upside, they are good enough as is for a skilled GM to bridge the gap the rest of the way to playoff roster, which is my only expectation

It doesn’t handicap them, but it does make moving him pretty unlikely. If we commit to Mittelstadt long term, it probably means another key roster spot included in our core solidified. Not that he couldn’t be moved, it just wouldn’t reasonably be very likely, at least until towards the end of the deal. I only mention this because, as I’ve alluded to before, Casey will absolutely be worth what he gets paid, it’s not so much a fear of him living up to it in a vacuum: but rather I think there’s an interesting question at play that should at least be considered, whether the particular combination of talent we have in the core is a good one re: winning.

“So you want to..” ”No! Not want! Not about want. Do, or do not.” The analysis is based on precedent