Thorner

It’s a huge positive the ~8th place teams are struggling mightily this year. Generally around this time of year, to find ourselves 1 point back of the team on the final playoff pace, we’d need to have ~3 more points right now than we do. It may not seem like a lot, but it’s the difference between pacing for 77 points like we are now and 91 points instead. we should capitalize

I somehow quoted a post from the future

He’s only hired 3 GMs in 14 years. By far the most likely scenario is they just aren’t good GMs He’s not the GM. He’s not micromanaging the roster He’s handcuffing Adams with a self-imposed cap And they almost all meddle Such is why we can find the votes by way of the empty seats, instead I agree. He’s staffing under qualified candidates, and failing to maximize their chances by limiting their budget. Of course the buck always stops at the top What we can reject is that he’s some sort of devil behind the curtain, sabotaging these amazing teams the GMs would be building if he just f*cked off (which, again, almost no owners do) People are trying way, way too hard to find reasons/evidence for some sort of bizarre behind the scenes strong arming. Occam’s razor is a term literally invented for these moments: teams that don’t spend don’t make the playoffs. Teams that are really young don’t make the playoffs. We are both. We don’t need to invent anything beyond those handcuffs. This is the strategy Adams *signed up for* that he said he could use to mold a championship team. They are part and parcel. The new Finkle and Einhorn

Have you even seen me and Idemo Buffalo post at the same time

more like this, I think: Roy and Pominville did that in a suped-up AHL during the 05 lockout when Roy was too good for the A he put up 20 points in 8 games the following year

It is sort of an odd choice of term based on the layout of the chart, I agree

It’s not so much about how the move helps Levi: we’ve been missing the mark on that front since day 1. This move is merely the inevitable whiplash to the reason Levi was up here so soon in the first place (Buffalo was never the best place for his development, not if he didn’t have the requisite ability necessary to start the games at this level necessary to facilitate said development). No, Levi was up here because Adams thought it best for the team. The importance of this move today, the impetus behind it, is removing a player who’s performing absolutely awful from the roster in the name of what best serves the team: the mindset we shouldn’t have been neglecting from the beginning Whether or not Levi develops *at all* in Rochester is a distant secondary concern to how Levi being removed from the team helps develop our pursuit of the playoffs this season There’s no room for non-NHL players. Sabres aren’t a farm team. Aside from being run like one most of the time I think development, tweaking one’s game, is something that ebbs and flows for a lot longer of a time period than some think. Particularly in goal. I’d even draw a comparison in some ways to Golf: over time the swings for even the greats often undergo full-scale changes and revamps over the course of their career, adjusting to various circumstances that change over time. Or a pitcher. Maybe a baseball pitcher is a better comp. It’s not just about raw development with a pitcher, golfer or goalie: a pitcher can fine tune his repertoire, win a cy young, and the league “catch on” to his stuff the following year requiring new skill development. Goalie are much the same way: I don’t think a 20 whatever year old could possibly be beyond learning at the AHL level at this stage. He had a season with good numbers, sure. Let’s see him replicate it as shooters adjust And that’s just square 1. Free your mind of the idea Levi is pre-ordained for anything. He’s not above the AHL, not if he’s performing as among the worst goalies in the nhl

Imo this (finally) ends phase 1 of the Levi experiment. The “don’t be afraid to believe in the hype: this guy is following in Hasek’s wake” (not-hyperbole) stage. The “it doesn’t matter that he’s tiny and that goalies are almost never ready for full NHL workloads at his age - if anyone can do it, it’s Levi. He likes Star Wars.” stage. The cold-sweat-inducing factor is Adams had Levi pencilled in *last* year. Yes, an all-time narrative sales job on a player, probably the most expansive I’ve seen for a Sabre, but the rub is that the *GM* bought in, and in fact planned it. It’s time for a more level headed and realistic, divorced from KA fantasy phase 2: a good goalie prospect developing in the minors until such a time as he’s ready for a consistent nhl workload, if ever

I’m not sure there’s a compelling argument to be made quite yet that we “finally” have depth, at all. Is there a better reference point than record? Team average point total per 82, Kevyn Adams’ teams, his previous 4 seasons as GM: 76 points Team current point pace, Adams year 5: 77 points Serious question: how big does the sample size need to get before we adjudge 76 points per season to be Adams’s wheelhouse? I struggle to see how the record this year, so far, is indicative of improved depth. Are we hoping the record is unrepresentative thus far, this year, and coincidentally just looks nearly identical to the previous 4 seasons through almost a quarter of the year now? Yes I suppose that’s the hope

I agree. I think he likely has to get the team in this year

To be clear: I don’t use it as an excuse at all. I just point blame in a different direction: the players do not control whether they are young, or old. Inexperienced or experienced, or whether or not all the cap space has been spent. When we can demonstrably say teams “deficient” in these areas *supremely*, statistically struggle to even make the playoffs, what logic is there in saying you gotta go to war with who you’ve got when you are no longer asking them to be fare well by a 50/50, half-the-teams-make-it set of circumstances, but rather match the hurricanes and caps as the the only 2 playoffs teams out of the last 160 to spend in the range we did and make the playoffs, AND join the ranks of “youngest teams in hockey” who made the playoffs which is ALSO unlikely. They are willingly stacking the deck against themselves in their pursuit of fielding a playoff team, before they even play game 1/82. - - - As for expectations, Cup or playoffs, it’s not a matter of what, it’s a matter of when: if the expectation was Stanley cup, THIS year, the team wouldn’t look the way it does. By prioritizing future currency for so long the priority indeed seemed to be Stanley Cup: but one we’d have to wait for. Likewise: a team with the goal of making the playoffs, this season wouldn’t ordinarily be constructed in the way we are (youngest team, low cap), and would generally fare better *this* year than a team with future aspirations. Which, contrary to what they say, really seems to be more of what we are

DeLuca .500 has been muddled so much being asked to stand up as a tool to predict the playoffs: it’s real function was always about telling you if you truly are “good” or not: because, you are right, .500 in todays nhl no longer represents “average” / something to be using as any kind of benchmark

The difference? Depth. Playmaking. 05-06 was roll-4-lines era. Not to mention talent (see: actual current ability 2-ways at both ends of the ice) within other parts of the roster like the defensive unit and in net. But, you raise a lot of good points with your excellent post. I do think things like urgency and accountability are a factor at times, too. I posted just the other day that that’s a functional error of the GM: no one claims the drought. They’ve been, year after year, levied with almost no expectations for each season. Not until this year, apparently. I’m sure the players saw the lack of spending as evidence it really was about playoffs this year, right? Where I disagree is the idea a “leader” would have the ability to siphon that mindset out of the rest of the team through sheer force of will. The Peca teams and the Briere teams weren’t the “youngest team in hockey”, were they? Or even close to? You can’t just look at the leader; you have to look at who you are asking them to lead. We would benefit a lot from a more veteran captain mostly because that player would provide the right mindset within his minutes. We know the TALENT of a single player like Jack Eichel can’t elevate an entire team, there’s no reason to think the leadership quotient of one player could fare better. I don’t need to even argue that talent is more important than a sense of accountability: just that it’s as important. The youngest team in the league, statistically, doesn’t make the playoffs. Bottom 10 spenders almost never make the playoffs. (Side note: You *don’t* think spending less than everyone would bear out, in most cases, in having less talent? Adams is so good that he’s equaling the talent of others teams with less money? That doesn’t pass the smell test.) We are both. Low spending and too young. Those teams don’t make the playoffs. Every one of those teams had a poor leader? Classic correlation / causation disagreement

I think I’d feel pretty safe greenlighting Adams to make more prospects-for-players moves. A) McLeod trade looks swell and B) We don’t need prospects. Fledgling players aren’t going to help this franchise

It’s not that shocking when we consider it’s hard for a player to drop off from somewhere they never actually got on. Putting up good *metrics* in small sample sizes and then projecting that over a full 82 game season in *actual production* is a fools errand. It’s ok we do stuff like that on this website as fans: as a GM it’s abhorrent. i’m honestly more surprised people think stats work that way. It’s an entirely different animal when you expect projected results from a small sample to extrapolate over a much larger frame where much more is expected of the player. Call it the Comrie effect. A *frequent* misstep and characterization of Adams’ tenure is projecting out best case scenario development before it happens. His strategy essentially IS counting on maybes, for things to happen that we haven’t actually seen yet

Maybe because he’s lacking the greatest goalie of all time that Peca had, and the best overall roster I’ve ever seen the Sabres assemble, that Drury had. Maybe we should reckon with those (quite sizeable) variables in the equation before jumping to a mystic intangible? the closer one gets to pinning the issues on one player, they further they get from a salient reading of the situation. We’ve been there so many times recently with so many good players im surprised we still go there

This exactly

It’s been 13 years and Terry Pegula is STILL the viceroy of the Sabres federation

Why build a playoff team now when you can map out a championship team for in a few years, amirite? We are the Buffalo Sabres, we are above such trivial concerns: our sole purpose is to win the Stanley cup. Let the dregs of the league set goals as lowly and embarrassing as merely scratching out an honest playoff berth every two years and seeing what happens

I’d wager it’s far closer to “inconsequential” than “big”.

This just *feels* like a Kevyn Adams move

Salient, when it comes to how poor Byram has been at actually playing defence up until the last few games