Thorner

Gotta let your air out a bit, or you’re going to go crazy- it’s going to be a quiet 2 months until camp. It’s like this every summer. Maybe there’ll be a surprise in which case a little found money but best to assume we’ve seen the lion’s share of Adams workload this offseason. History would suggest we have, calendar wise. Dahlin contract is a non-issue. It truly only matters if you are one of those folks who is going to claim “steal” or “overpay” based on 100k. He’s a long term Sabre at around double digits, any announcement is an anti-climax

I’m glad “third liner” is the lowest I ever went with for him, when it was getting nasty around here a couple seasons ago. He’s certainly proved me wrong but at least not to the extent where an egg will fry on my face. He’s really good

It’s not unrealistic. It’s very possible. The conflation arises because as soon as someone advocates for a slightly less overwhelmingly conservative approach, to perhaps increase that likelihood, it’s taken as a statement of a desire to 180 on Adams’ plan and betray every bit of logic that informs it. Merely suggest the idea of a singular, more aggressive move with an eye on winning specifically this coming season and John will consider your position as one that wants to make numerous “expedient” short sighted moves to the tune of effectively changing course entirely. It doesn’t need to be so stringently black and white, and so needlessly absolute: It seems we are being divided by posts like his into 2 camps: the “team Adams”, or “team Murray” - if you like the idea of a singular win now trade where the future of the pool is not compromised at all. Team Adams seems to take even the suggestion of such as a philosophical breaking point It’s actually possible to think we COULD make the playoffs next year doing little, yet WANT to make a future move with an eye for enhancing those chances, and yet STILL prioritize the fundamentals of the plan, overall. Ie, using a little future currency is totally ok because we are in a position to do so, a position of abundance Maybe Adams simply references a hard-line chart for every single transaction in perpetuity and calls it a day, but much more realistically the parameters for making decisions change depending on the context and timing. Evaluations change. Fluidity is a thing. Teams at different points in their competitive cycle behave in different ways: a good debate is where abouts in that cycle we are. The idea that Adams needs to be a robot isn’t, really.

Kyle and Zemgus will be gone? Based on what precedent? Hinostroza theory? I suppose I’ll believe it when I see it. Also, I highly doubt we move Mittelstadt. He’s our 5th best forward

Well, it is now

Ya I don’t really see the forward unit as some impregnable force. I’d have him easily as man 13, that’s 1 injury away. Other words, he’s likely playing. I might even have him above someone like Jost. Even if you sub Rousek for Quinn, that’s potentially the same 26 games for Hinostoza. They may have brought everyone back, but they didn’t add anyone new, either. I actually do think there’s room. To your point, maybe they’ll use any extra games to try and ease in rookies. Not what I would do but I could see them doing it

It’s true, there might be a few moves here and there but usually the league is pretty quiet from now till camp

Batman vs Superman bro

1 Thompson 2 Skinner 3 Tuch 4 Cozens 5 Mittestadt 6 Greenway 7 Peterka 8 Krebs - - - 9 Okposo 10 Girgensons 11 Jost 12 Olofsson 13 Rousek Hinostroza fits pretty well with the bottom grouping

Assuredly Well, 2 of Jost, Olofsson, and Rousek, at least. Camp surprises notwithstanding

Shouldn’t have snuck up on them like that. Pissed them off

I know we used to be higher...11th doesn’t seem so bad after 12 years of stacked futility

I liked him. Wouldn’t have minded him back as the 13th man

I understand the idea though so I deleted my post was thinking the context was offseason change for some reason. They mostly are running it back, with the couple D adds, at least so far it seems, ya. Could still see a move but not necessarily expecting much. We’ve built year over year for the last few in total points so hopefully the same team/process with only minor tweaks (The D adds) yields a similar result and it should be in the playoffs with ~ the same of injury luck as last year Playoffs are the judgment line, I haven’t seen anything this offseason that would make me think we aren’t in a spot where we can reasonably challenge for that goal, at least.

I’m not actually a proponent of doing it one way or the other, merely a proponent of the idea that it should be acknowledged as a notable consideration in team building.

This board sucks lol Literally policing

Wow who the heck is 54? Glorified shinny I get it but damn son lol

Looked ok to me. There could be gaps in the skater rankings* that make our placing in the goalie ranking not that relevant when determining overall rank. *Like, maybe even being only a few spots ahead of some teams in some of the skater ranks actually represents quite a large gap

Lot of options you listed there. Nearly through this week without a move, a move to address G probably becomes unlikely, in my estimation. At least to the point id be actively hoping for one. Comrie and UPL are poor at what they do so I can’t really come up with a criteria for how I think KA will choose between them. On the one hand UPL has more unrealized upside so maybe him. On the other hand, Comrie was his guy/signing, and maybe he wants to give whatever the voodoo analytics were that led to Comrie being brought in in the first place another shot to pan out. Comrie also has a lot of experience being unable to advance beyond the performance required of a back up goalie, so the higher KA is on Levi, I mean KA could easily be pencilling him in for 50 given KA’s m.o., the more likely we keep Comrie imo. There’s absolutely a reasonable chance the goaltending improves to the point we can make the playoffs in spite of it. Conservatively I can hope for Levi to up his numbers slightly, allowing him to replace Anderson, and by playing more games, get us those extra points If Levi improves so much and so quickly he even surpasses the output Anderson delivered, and handles the large workload he hasn’t been tested with yet admirably, we could actually have positive results from the position. Or if say UPL extrapolates that month he had over a larger time frame/emerges as a competent back up this season, that could allow for positive output as well

In the hypothetical situation where the entire established structure of, not only the NHL, but it’s vast array of development systems and leagues surrounding kids from basically birth we’re re-built from the ground up and the game tailored to kids/players learning to play both sides, and players learned to play that way from day 1, sure, maybe handedness on D would be irrelevant. But there’s actually a real world/league at play here, unfortunately, complete with mainstay executives and coaches, complete with their established personal biases: and with all its structures and with all the grandfathered training therein, it *is*, objectively, an easier pathway to play on your proper hand. There are exceptions, they are exceptions that prove the rule. The stats don’t lie: teams make focused attempts to roster their D on their “proper” hand. The data is overwhelming. - - - The sabres are right to strive for flexibility in their defenders being able to play both sides. It’s an advantage. At the end of the day, even while nearly leading the league in this category, even as an statistical outlier they *heavily* leaned towards “proper” handedness usage on D. Only Dahlin and Bryson really did it, only Dahlin with proficiency The Sabres believe in handedness flexibility to the extent they actively prepare/allow for it and engage in the practice more than other teams: what they don’t do is believe in handedness flexibility to the tune of it being irrelevant, to the tune of there literally being no preference given the choice. All else being equal it’s still factor, it’s just not definitive.

It’s good that we can default to the numbers

It’s a good point. There hasn’t been a time Ullmark has been brought up around these parts without the automatic “do you think he’d have been that guy in buffalo?!!1” response, should be applied both ways. Clifton addition makes sense for the same reason adding a good goalie from another team does: improvement is improvement, good need not be enemy of perfect. It’s ok to improve D by adding a good player to the D unit, it’s ok to add a better goalie to improve the goaltending unit. We don’t need to roster Shesterkin to improve the D, adding a reasonable defender worked too, and we don’t need to roster an all star D to fix goalie: we can add a competent second goalie considering you need 2

He means 164 I think

His numbers are better on the left but not by a ton. Ideally he’s on the left but if him being on the right allows us to roster a better player it’s worth it because of how proficient Dahlin is on his off hand, which, for most players, IS the wrong side. Dahlin makes it work because he’s Dahlin. Some can, most can’t Adams attention to ensuring almost all of his D played almost all their minutes on their “proper” hand illustrates the level of consideration