Thorny

Right but while Adams may bank on better luck on the injury front as a means to improvement i don’t personally find that to be a smart tact (and one should balance the injury playing field when comparing year over year, anyways) I get that’s not the mindset you’d have should you actually be responsible for building the club thankfully but tbh I don’t even feel comfortable projecting better overall health even as a thought exercise considering, as mentioned, injuries are a guaranteed part of every year. It’s been 3 seasons since neither of Dahlin or Tage missed at least 10 games, and Tuch nearly missed double digits that year team is break even at best on paper

Team is maybe break even, never mind 4 extra wins

You’d think so, wouldn’t you

Haha y

It’s past the point where one can deny they are a sucker for caring

Being an NHLer insider literally the easiest gig lol most obvious statement ever

Doing nothing far uglier

Later prime for D men, and lasts longer. I’m sort of past wanting to formulate an argument, here, after all we’ve seen lately with high picks, don’t really need to take this fight up, but…Owen Power is going to be a really good player. It’s not that surprising people are tired of waiting on the development aspects Very much the Reinhart of D

“The circumstances” are already afoot

JUST long enough to claim inability to use cap space

Wait hold on, so the Buffalo Sabres…..*actually aren’t* going to improve their hockey team? Every day when I get around to thinking about it it surprises me again. I refuse to let myself become desensitized to the otherworldly ineptitude of this team A shocking offseason thus far

Yes I do think he could be the 2C on a team that qualifies for the playoffs Wouldn’t be my first choice but definitely possible

I didn’t say Stanley Cup contending 2C But, as with any conversation re: Sabres, I thought it was implied that when I say he could hack it as a playoff 2C that it meant we could qualify to be a playoff team with him in that role apologies if that was unclear I’ll worry about the playoffs if we ever get there

Well, ya Need a F sans injuries just to get back to break even. We need 2 sans injuries to improve upon a team that sat in last place most of the year

People want to put hard line labels on them as if we don’t KNOW hockey is a free flowing back and forth game where one player, say, a superstar, can’t make all the difference on their own. We should know by now that roles are entirely dependant on all the pieces around them. you are right, McLeod isn’t definitively 2nd or 3rd line: he can be either

He’ll prob be our best C in that scenario I think he could hack it as a playoff 2C if the depth was there and the top line wasn’t 2/3rds children and then Tage Peterka was a good playmaker too Something which we lack you are right we place a lot of focus on players who snipe

Also, again, fantastic overall and in depth write up - - - The overall weakness of the F does stand out, partially could be due to the transition period as you say

Great list. One caveat There’s a lot of games that say, “this guy isn’t an NHLer, period” re: Levi. Would always take otherworldly skill to be able to be a mainstay tender at his size and I’d say the likelihood he becomes a good nhl goalie at all is less than 50%. Ranking by nhl liklihood and not utter ceiling I’d bump him down a fair bit there are games where the reason he doesn’t stop the puck in Rochester is because the shooters are too good. If this is happening at the AHL level, at all, it bodes horribly for his prospects against nhl shooters who increasingly pick corners for breakfast. He doesn’t get beat for experience reasons, when he does: it’s because it’s simply beyond him. There’s no defence for a perfect shot and when you are tiny there’s a lot more area that qualifies. Shooters are better than ever.

Could have traded him, signed him way earlier (from Ullmark’s own account he was negotiating with the team in good faith for a long time before changing his mind), convinced him to stay, or, failing all of that, do the bare minimum as a GM and understand where your player’s head is at if he truly wasn’t interested in staying, and then not back yourself into a corner by leaving yourself literally no other options and having no backup plan to Ullmark if that didn’t work out. But this is Adams’ documented MO: he doesn’t have a pulse on his players. He blamed them coming into camp “too overconfident” 2 seasons ago and last year he blamed them coming in “out of shape”. He’s always surprised by where his roster is at because, professionally, he’s a buffoon “Given the circumstances.”’ Yes, Adams let the Ullmark situation slowly slip away through inaction, found himself in a corner, and did the “best he could”. How many times do we wanna see it eh

Sabres also don’t have the luxury of pretending they can address their roster with the urgency the teams who haven’t missed the playoffs for 14 years show. Their results are a statistically documented, historical outlier. Their approach to fix it has to be relative. He also thinks “ppg forward” means “power play guy forward” lmao edit: Harrington, that is

Adams has provided poor goaltending relative to the rest of the league. That’s it: that’s the equation No one has to be a professional online to prove Adams wrong. No one has to be as good of a hockey player as Casey Mittelstadt to evaluate him relative to his peers. Adams has demonstrably addressed and assembled the position over the course of half a decade in worse fashion than the vast majority of other teams that’s what actually happened: regardless of how hard you describe it to be, or how much magic you think needs to be worked into it

Welcome to the club. Just so you know, I get royalties when someone says that.

Crazy pills, man. 2023 was an absurd time. The Hasek comparisons..easily the most overhyped sabres prospect of all time

Remember this? This is when I struggled most with my peers