Thorner

Rasmus Dahlin has points in 24 games this season. Of his 32 played. That’s 75%. He’s not an elite scorer who sometimes puts us over the top, and sometimes by a lot. He’s a foundational player who the Sabres much more often than not rely on his offence and play driving to actively put their side of the scoreboard *over the edge* in the name of winning, in games, on a daily basis. Yes, while other good offensive players are also producing. It’s been so long. You need to remember - you don’t just need more offence to win than the Sabres have shown for a decade to win: you need a LOT more. We can’t afford to lose what Dahlin provides, night in, night out, offensively, and certainly not in a one game scenario. And he’s still really good on D

I don’t believe in a scenario where there’s a guy on my team I’d rather have in than the team mvp, for one game. How the heck could the guy be imo the mvp if there’s a guy I’d rather have in, in a must win scenario? Even if you have Dahlin second as MVP to Thompson, i’m not taking out the second most valuable player for someone less valuable for one game, ever. Dahlin is the most valuable, or he’s not. Dahlin showing us he’s the mvp or secondary mvp over a full season and for some reason over one game we impose different results? I just philosophically disagree. If a guy is our mvp, that’s the guy I want in. If we could, through the strength/balance of our team as a whole, overcome the loss of Dahlin for one game he wouldn’t be fulfilling such an impactful role for us, game in, game out he does that out of necessity. Not to be nice.

Owen Power has 12 points. He’s closer to Samuelsson’s dearth of offensive production by a significant margin than he is Dahlin’s. To suggest he can replace or “fill in” for Dahlin / that we could sooner replace Dahlin makes no sense to me. He’s our MVP, he drives play in a way Samuelsson, a valuable player, doesn’t come close to doing. Apologies to Samuelsson Most likely of the two in the comp I was saying

Dahlin has 37 points. And 10 goals - Samuelsson has 2 points, and 1 goal. An exponential gap on the offensive side. D is tougher to measure with a number but Dahlin is plus 17 to Samuelsson’s plus 15. Do we think the defensive gap is AS BIG as the chasm on the offensive side? Dahlin is actually really good on D too. I dunno how even for one game, for any amount of time the answer couldn’t be Dahlin. This is like “the streak” all over again where way too much value is being placed on a non representative stretch. The Sabres aren’t really an 8 loss in a row team w/o Samuelsson and presidents trophy* with him*: it was a bad streak. *well, we might be, THAT, with him, and he’s a big part, but the early season streak wasn’t representative of the Sabres we’d see over the course of a full season sans Samuelsson. A big factor in the slump was Dahlin and power playing the same pair rather than being separated: a coaching decision. This is also as a big Samuelsson fan. I think I listed him 3rd or 4th for overall value on team earlier in another thread, him or Cozens 3rd and 4th

Dahlin is the player you want if you fall behind. He’s also the guy most likely to get you the lead. I’m prioritizing getting it before protecting it, when if I lose it Dahlin helps me get it back. Its one game and 30 minutes of Rasmus freaking Norris level Dahlin or solid Samuelsson. I don’t think this is particularly close and think it’s losing the plot a bit tbh ymmv

Do you believe Dahlin is legitimately deserving of a Norris nomination? You just said you believe Samuelsson to be more valuable to us than Dahlin, presumably you are also casting a Norris vote for Samuelsson, as well? Should he win it? If Samuelsson is legitimately more valuable to our team than Dahlin right now and the player we’d less want to remove from the lineup, the player we’d sooner choose to keep in if we can only keep one, I don’t see how that could possibly be congruent with the idea that person falls behind Dahlin in being deserving of the what Norris theoretically represents I understand it’s often a points awards for d men but that’s not what I’m getting at - presumably it’s supposed to be for all around value and not just offence, as usually awarded. But we see Samuelsson’s value so can bypass this “The James Norris Memorial Trophy, or simply the Norris Trophy, is awarded annually to the National Hockey League's top "defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position". It is named after James E. Norris, the longtime owner of the Detroit Red Wings.” Ability. If what Samuelsson is able to do is translating to the most, in your view, indispensable player re: winning in our lineup I don’t see how he’s not both our Norris / Hart nominee. Its how I feel about Dahlin

One game to win the cup right now, have to take out one. Who do you take out? Dahlin or Samuelsson. Who sits?

Power can replace him and then we can just finish last and get another Power

I agree. Samuelsson is actually the more valuable guy. 2 point stay at home d men who are really good defensively can’t be found outside round 2, if we traded Dahlin or Power we could just go get another and you only need 1 anyways

I’m not saying it’s good without Samuelsson. I’m saying it would be just as bad but likely worse without Dahlin Your theory about “we have others who can sooner do what Dahlin does” is very flawed because it’s actually the skills and talents Dahlin provides that are significantly more difficult to find and acquire. It would be much, much easier to find another Samuelsson than another Dahlin. Power doesn’t replace any of Dahlin - once we fill in a “Dahlin” on pair one we still need plenty of talent on the other pairs.

There isn’t data to suggest Samuelsson is “more important”, this is what I am talking about. You have half the data. Dahlin has been there, as well, for every one of those Samuelsson games. It’s doesn’t stand to suggest we could sooner remove Dahlin than Samuelson simply because we haven’t seen them do it, yet. It being proven that Samuelsson is incredibly valuable doesn’t say anything about Dahlin’s value. This is like those problems they teach you in school where they ask you how much info can be derived from limited data that’s missing key variables

Samuelsson staying healthy is huge, ya, but I’d imagine we can say the same about a couple of other players, too. The only reason we haven’t seen how much the team would suffer without a player like, say, Dahlin, is because we thankfully haven’t had to, yet.

Ya, we should enjoy it while it lasts as I can’t imagine we’ll see it for much longer. And if all goes to plan, once it goes away it may be a long time before we see it again

You can type this a hundred times, I already looked it up and posted the number haha

Could just be an “old habits die hard” thing until they finally say, “enough”. - - - Ran through the games quickly (yes this took a good while): by my count we’ve got the opponent’s backup 20 times on 32 games.

Ya I agree, it has been pretty odd. Harrington has been tweeting about it for a while now. You’d think teams would have caught on by now. Oh well, too bad for them, for now

I actually meant to type “majority” of games which I believe to be the case, definitely. We’ve seen more backups than starters by a decent margin I believe. If someone has the actual numbers / can correct me that’d be swell - only basing this off memory From what I can see it’s actually a significant majority

I still think we’ll need goaltending help at some point. In my mind I see it as sort of a ticking time bomb issue: as long as we are seeing backups nearly every game, our disadvantage at the position is basically nullified. More less a “prevent defence” like affect we are seeing, on our offence, getting to face more back ups than starters. But as soon as teams wise up and we start getting their starters, our lack of such becomes a more concrete disadvantage. Whether we make it this year may just come down to how much runway we get from the league, before that very adjustment. If the adjustment is made before we’ve got a spot secured, it may be that we are close but just miss, and that proper supplementation of the goalie position this summer allows us to get the rest of the way, next season

It’s good to see that most, to a person seem to think the time to cash-in on some of that prospect/pick/cap asset available is upon us. If we are still very much in the hunt come the deadline, see if there’s a move that can help us right now - getting in and getting some experience would be a boon. If not, make your moves in the summer and set the clock at “playoffs” in 2024.

And not soon enough, it is Sign me up

Woke up to a message about the Sabres from my wife, an unusual occurrence. But it was this and it’s checked out given she loves that show 😂

The Austrian goalie he’s shooting on is more less the level of goalie we’ve been seeing day in and out at the nhl level so...why not 😉

No Sabres on Canada, right? Unless I missed one? I feel like we’ve been spoiled by a stream of Sabres on that team recently

Adams tried to get Murray, right? I like to think/hope he’s still at least open on HIS end to making an upgrade at the position of a more proven variety, I’m not saying he can definitely succeed in making the move but if it can be had, the opportunity cost of doing nothing if the roster really is shaping up is probably greater than the price of acquisition. Like I said I hope Murray points to the fact he is willing to pay and it just needs to be a good deal and then accepted on the other end, but the key thing there was addressing the position was a priority. From the perspective of now I don’t think we’ve seen enough to say, “mission accomplished”. I understand if Comrie getting a two year deal means they are giving him two full years to earn it, him or UPL, but again IF neither does by season’s end I hope it changes from being “open to” and it being a priority to look to add. UPL and Levi can start in Rochester if we did get another, more proven guy to complement our ready to go roster

Well the GT hasn’t stopped us from improving but improvement isn’t just measured on a yes or no scale. Plenty to suggest we’d be significantly better WITH good goaltending and, if the rest of the team is good enough, what are we waiting for?