Thorner

5 goals away from 6th, and 5 from 17th Mind the full picture, Mr. Bombay There’s nothing simple about it, it’s wildly up in the air. You can squint and skew all you like, but the Sabres were actually 15th in even strength goals, mid pack. People tend to use 5v5 synonymously with even strength (ie move on to PP discussion after breaking down 5 V 5) but that’s not really a comprehensive analysis. Non-negligible portion of game is played at even strength NOT 5 V 5, not negligible in the sense the overall numbers clearly change when factored in, not to mention the fact we are clawing for every point we can get. We can play the “get everything to average and we’ll be fine” game, but it’s a dicey proposition as it doesn’t leave much room for error. It’s requiring a lot of improvement in deficiency areas just to match our high water marks which are only hovering around average to begin with You are right though, if we can improve by ~5 and move into the top 10, rather than decrease by 5 and move into the bottom 20, it’ll go a long way. In combination with improving special teams and in combination with maintaining goals against there’s no denying the PP represents massive opportunity for improvement. The more likely issue would appear to be, at least anecdotally to me after watching for so long, not so much improving areas that are lacking but rather maintaining the areas that aren’t as you do so. We saw the shell game in full demonstrable effect when comparing the switch from 22-23 to 23-24 did we change the PP coach? Actually asking

No, I frankly think it’s remarkable that you can’t see that your experience with the Sabres provides a blinding explanation to your questioning of the Chevy praise, that staring you right in the face. You are asking to see more success from the Jets before detailing Chevy’s moves as excellent, and what I’m telling you is that our experience with the Sabres has shown us that the sort of “excellence” he’s displaying is DEMONSTRABLY evidenced by the fact they’ve made the playoffs 7 times within a market situation perceived to be as bad or likely worse than ours. You seem to have an appreciation of the difficulty of KA’s task while not equally attributing those difficulties to another team. We don’t need the type of work Adams is providing. The type of aptitude Adams is attacking the roster with, that you continually find a way to construe as “not actually that bad” leads to 24th place, and that to get to our goal of making the playoffs, we do indeed need a level of excellence. At least, from time to time. The shocking contrast is their ability to do it 7 times and us not at all shows that we are *settling* for ineptitude, as fans, rather than acknowledging, when there are only 32 jobs, anything less than the excellence required to make the playoffs even once is simply unacceptable. Because it’s out there if we want it: everyone else has found it.

When you are in a market like Winnipeg or Buffalo, you have to show some excellence of expertise *just* to field a perennial playoff contender. Some prefer to sit and cry about it, woe is me. Using it as an excuse to defend 24th place finishes every year. Other franchises realize there’s only 32 jobs in the world with the power to shape an NHL team into a contender, and there’s no excuse for not employing the person who’ll find success

You are legitimately a superhero. SuperSabresman. If faster than, and unaffected by speeding bullets, how could the contrast between making the playoffs 7 times (and a conference final once) and our 13 years of missed playoffs, over the duration of the time period that the Jets have returned to Winnipeg, phase you at all? Living here, being witness to it, I can’t tell you what I would give to switch up on fortunes, even just a little. To be part of a frenzied playoff craze, even if just for a couple weeks..I’m broken, or you’ve forgotten, or both Or, more likely, you are SuperSabresman. Take off those nerdy glasses, you aren’t fooling anyone

Following this trade tree to its conclusion is our unspoken mandate

It was a funny trade my apologies

Nah, I’m not saying Savoie was top 6. I’m saying the connotation of “big trade” was a top 6 level player Coming back our way Arguing McLeod is a big trade because for us it’s big because we had no 3C is semantics You know what I mean. At least hopefully now that I’ve clarified

Remember when Botterill traded a 6th for a 6th the following draft haha

I could be wrong, but to me the unspoken (and often spoken) connotation of the “big trade” was cashing in a package of futures for a big time “now” player, the reverse of the ROR to STL trade. Mitts / Byram to me aspires to be a “hockey trade”. A realignment of current talent in the name of team building rather than a strict, severe increase in talent. i think the big trade was more so viewed as the one that added now at the expense of later. If any deal applies it’s probably McLeod and Savoie. The haul was just less than expected/projected/hoped for ala a top 6 level player

Didn’t you hear? We won the “big trade” because we didn’t make one The most important thing was not doing it

The opposition seemed to carry the balance of play when he was on the ice again, you know ME pretty well, I’m using “one of the worst”, “worst”, cause he flat out stunk on balance and it cheeses me off. I get the numbers can be construed to put him merely below average on a bad team but that only rankles further. The important thing for me is the convo necessarily is “was he really bad or just mediocre”? That’s a problem. I get what you are saying. I see the talent too. He wouldn’t be among my last picks when building a team among the players we have: I’m just pointing out his output was inarguably “not good”, and we traded “good” to get him. Perhaps we can agree on at least that. The book is far from written: he could return to the form his draft pedigree and some of his play in coloradoland indicated. But we need it RIGHT NOW. Perhaps in combination with what I quote next, you can understand where I’m coming from, even if for you, year 5 missing under this tenure is just a warm up That was supposed to merge but did not but my point remains: a lot of the potential benefit to Byram is to be found in what’s supposedly *to come*. None of that matters for me if it’s not this year. It is BEYOND time. Not everyone is going to be such a stickler for timeline but I’m comfortable drawing a personal line here is far from impatient This seems significant to me. With what we know about the generally limited impact of one player in a free flowing, play-25%-of-it -if-you-are-a-star game we know hockey to be. I struggle to even attribute a 3 shot difference per game between the 2 necessarily cause again that seems significant to me and that “we can’t lose with mvp samuelsson” stat should illustrate beyond recourse that there are myriad variables at play but ok, we got only a bit worse with Byram (I feel like that’s the terminology you might use contrary to my view it’s a significant swing) and because Byram is very talented that means the ground we need to make up by him returning to form is a little less than I thought and I should be more hopeful for it to happen - - - But if it doesn’t, it’s your a**. And I’m coming for ya

We keep having this same conversation. Me losing the battle you want to fight that he’s not actually our very worst player is fine by me and one I will continue baiting the line on when it only continuously results in your admirable posting breakdowns chock full of good stats (as per usual) about how inferior Byram was to Casey in their times here so far I don’t understand why you don’t just wait until Byram actually plays well. But you are doing the work for me so I can’t complain - - - Im also clearly not digging my feat in here in perpetuity: I buy the idea Byram has unrealized pedigree, I truly do. I’ve said just a couple posts ago that Byram could even end up better than Casey! I guess I just have more reluctance that most to claim something adept or efficient until it actually literally happens. I see no reason to claim Byram to be that player in Buffalo until we actually see it. If that makes me a negative Nancy, because I don’t purely want to rely on blind faith: so be it the fact of the matter, if those matter, is that one player was significantly better during their time here during 23-24, and the indicators as to which are indisputable

This is me, but substitute KA. They are part and parcel regardless in reality, in terms of strategy

The rub if that the guy we traded him for was 1st in almost all the categories that mattered. The degree of difficulty is so hard for you here because you have to argue that “see, he’s 15th!” Is some sort of benefit to the positive when we cashed in the greatest trade chip we had to get a player who played poorly. His advanced metrics definitely indicated he was our worst player defensively. Saying he was our worst overall is absolutely, admittedly hyperbole, but I did that on purpose: I knew you’d latch on to it because the name of your game is “see, it’s not THAT bad”. It’s never about what actually is relative to good - the fact you can only cling to Byram being “well not actually our worst player” is my whole point. It’s the intentionally placed low-hanging fruit of my post to engage the war I actually want to wage Time on ice isn’t a positive barometer in and of itself, when he’s spending that time locked in his own end - you are writing home about the fact (let’s see what the salient stat was that you buried in there): the team got outshot by 7 percent when he was on the ice. Good for 15th on the team. Sorry, did I say worst? He’s one of the worst. You win: we only trade Casey for one of our worst players he’s below team average (OUR team!) in half the non time on ice categories you mentioned, near the bottom for the most reflective ones (shot share, etc), and things like hits that don’t correlate to winning (he’s hitting because he’s chasing) and blocked shots (derp) are his biggest claim to fame Quick math in the name of bias (this is a joke)

That’s all well and good but the paper company that supplies the actual sheets in question has buffalo on their NMC (no mailing clause)

You are correct: it’s just a big part of the reason that’s the way it necessarily is, is because the names in question are Malenstyn, McLeod and Zucker

Apologies, meant to respond earlier - I think we need to see this roster approach matching last year’s roster before contemplating the step forward you mentioned. Byram wasn’t just “not the good Byram” he was probably our worst player after acquisition: he certainly was our worst defensively. And the cost was the player performing as our best forward at the time of the deal. The roster being improved over last year imo misses a substantial stair on the way up. Supplemtenting the bottom 6 and running back the rest is what established good teams do. I do agree on Ruff: that’s the biggest unknown variable that could swing pretty substantially in our favour re: the improvement metric. But the tired, “well the improvement is gonna have to come from what we have” end line there is just that - pretty tired. Of course that’s the case, because we didn’t make any top 6 or top 4 additions yet. Laying the entire burden on bounce backs (last year it was re-production of career years) is a choice, and not a good one (I understand you aren’t advocating for that strategy) this team getting into the playoffs this year saves Adams’ job. Key word there is “saves”. He’s well past the situation where merely making the playoffs proves any sort of skill or aptitude: that’s the expected goal of years gone by. This is year 5: making the playoffs is merely that bare minimum that avoids canning. The absolute least you can do to justify having a job. Adams has already proven he isn’t a good GM: now, we are simply waiting for the cookie to crumble our way. Just because you have a below average GM doesn’t mean things can’t go your way the odd time: with our expectations being so absurdly low this far in, with a little bit of luck, Adams can probably amount to an output less-bad enough from what we’ve seen to field the mediocre team required to make the playoffs (see: Washington) As I said, the entire fanbase does this franchise such an incredible solid by us all willingly lowering the bar of expectation time and time and time and time and time again. Playoffs remain reasonably possible: we just need Adams to amount to mediocrity, a vast, vast turn of favour compared to the historic ineptitude we’ve seen to this point

@GASabresIUFAN (and @LGR4GM, in not as many words) really have the heart of it

Exactly. The teams isn’t more “complete” at all. That’s literally a paper theory until he’s actually good on ice It’s like we have been down this road so long we can only value was “is to come”. Casey is better right now. By a lot. I’ll care about the amazing team building logistics of the swap when the actual on ice output is comparable like, in the NOW term. I’ll say Byram is better when he’s better. He’s worse right now.

I’m talking about Casey Mittelstadt, not the Sabres leaving Buffalo the Sabres aren’t leaving Buffalo. It’s like promo is having dinner parties I’m not on the invite list for

I’ve posted like 5 times in a month. To be frank: your posting in general gets old “Endless obsession” because I detailed the fact I liked Casey better in a couple paragraphs, because it was the question proposed, and it’s an “obsession” because you don’t like the answer “Sour grapes”…”endless obsession”…”you guys complained…” you have a vendetta against so many because you want everyone to just be happy with what we have. We are cursed, so hard done by and unlucky, whatever it is this week - - - like, you say it in your post: you literally want me to *not care about the return*, or the cost, merely because i advocated for as much help as we could get. What does that even mean? I didn’t advocate for trading Casey. Because I said Adams should be open to improving everywhere I need to “shut up” about dealing Mittelstadt for a guy who performed as our worst defenseman since acquisition? you just want to police dissatisfaction. In the midst of 13 years. this stinks. reading and emojis may be the way to go when it comes to this place “we have Byram and as such he should be supported” lol what are we even doing here

Option 2 was too accurate to turn down. If we are not viewing the b6 is isolation for this question

Fun series of questions, well done to @dudacek, a true icon of not just sabrespace, but message boards, and really the art of typing on the internet in general - - - Im sort of between 1 and 2 on this, but voted 1 B/c some of my other answers have have had to be on the more negative side and a bit more balance is in order I can’t say he’s a “fantastic” hire, but there isn’t someone i “wanted more”. I do know I really personally LIKE the hire so I’m comfortable going optimistic here and saying he’ll be a non-negligible addition to the improvement side of the ledger this offseason

Option 3. No tldr needed