Thorny

Par for the course re: my usual content

Hopefully this tradition stays in the past along with the tradition of missing the playoffs whenever that happy time comes to pass a joke being killed due to overuse is a thing. Never mind drastic overuse lol There hasn’t been an original “M W” in about 5 years haha

My gosh if we aren’t done with evaluation years at this point I need to evaluate my life choices the kids shouldn’t be under the impression spots are available. They should be under the impression a spot can be taken against the will of the incumbent getting this team ready to go, game 1, is absolutely the priority.

Excellent

We care, in a message board sense

Just some food for thought: Since the days when Pat Lafontiane skated for the Sabres in 1995, the team has had a total of 7 player seasons of 80+ points. 7 in 30 years. We’ve made the playoffs 9 times in that stretch. The last time a player as young as Quinn had 80, we have to go back to 2018/19 and Jack Eichel. Before him, to find the last player to be 23 or younger in a sabres sweeter and reach 80 we’d have to go back to Alexander Mogilny in 1992-1993. Since Pat: Briere, Vanek / Roy, Pominville / Eichel / Thompson, Tuch If Quinn does reach 80, it’ll be a Sabres season for the ages relatively. I’m here for it

I don’t really blame Krebs for asking for a bit more but in reality he’ll have to sign his QO, soundly defeat the likes of Aube-Kubel and Kulich for a roster spot, and have a good year on a balanced sabres team in earning a bigger deal next time. All of which are reasonable possibilities

I feel like Quinn could be a Reinhart with better pure athletic ability Not this season but reasonably soon That great hockey sense, the ability to win battles in a seemingly endless number of ways, the correlation with the ability to deflect the puck in close..I mention Mark Stone a lot but but that’s sort of how I see Reinhart too, but without as much of that raw ability that I believe Quinn has - - - I see him headed for something around 60 points this year But I mean if he has 60 goals by midway through I wouldn’t be shocked

You called me a d*ck unprompted, out of nowhere, and now you are just rambling Frankly you should have gotten a warning - - - The irony of you saying the place is full of “trash posters” (it isn’t), and apparently im the jerk U be posting unhinged. In honesty, you post as if you consider your content to be elevated from the pack, but in reality it’s not standing out in a positive way the Jeff Skinner of posters

Wasnt at all, but ok lol. But since you asked for it: Your endless posting about how Quinn is going to be “better than what everyone else but me” thinks is incredibly redundant. But more importantly see-though: you want to come back with some big “See? See! I called it!” when he comes back with a great season, and no one is picking up what you are putting down lol. Everyone thinks he’s really good: you aren’t ahead of the curve

Who is he going to shock? The 13 out of 14 who voted he’d have *at least* a solid top 6 season? Everyone thinks he’s awesome I guess MJD will be shocked

Baker has never met a prospect he didn’t like. I said that to him on Twitter once and he blocked me haha Random tangent, just thought it was kinda funny

Exactly

No, we don’t know. Ask 10 to post what the bottom 6 configuration is. Are all the answers going to be identical? Who’s is correct? Just yours? We don’t know, at all, that 4C would be a “waste” for Kulich, when we don’t know who he’d ultimately line up with and how the line might be used I’m not saying Kulich WILL be at 4C, I’m just not sure how well “he isn’t going to be there, move along” serves any discussion or conversation

We don’t even know what it is yet, though. Everyone is just assuming the additions are going where they think they are. @dudacekhas done an admirable job all summer suggesting that there are actually lots of different ways the lines may be configured

I’d play him at 4C, why not? Lindy does the 4 lines thing, right? I feel like he could work well with someone like Malenstyn. And could move up lineup if proving capable. I mean, it’s a prospects challenge game, we can draw almost nothing from it in the macro (already see people on twitter saying we’ve solved our top 6 addition problem lol) but we knew Kulich was already knocking on the door and dominating in a game he should dominate, as a pro, only reinforces the idea he’s ready for a real shot Peterka - Thompson - Tuch Benson - Cozens - Quinn Zucker - McLeod - Greenway Malenstyn - Kulich - Lafferty

I don’t think the last one is even on the radar comparatively it’s a prospects challenge game

his 3rd point. We really should expect him to stand out here so it’s good to see he’s following through

Have to think Kulich is the leading candidate for this

Dunleavy with us from the crack of dawn this season. As welcome as the crowing of a rooster at 6am is to the ears

https://www.nhl.com/sabres/video/buffalo-sabres-live-stream-6336966456112

Love that they have the feed, don’t get me wrong. It’s super dark though. What is this, the DC universe?

I suppose it’s primarily a function of picking high up SO many times in a row (combined with some drafting acumen), where things just mathematically have to pan out for you at some point because you’ve collected so much high level prospect talent, but sometimes I look at the young players on the team now in combination with the prospect backing (but mostly the on-roster youth) and can’t help but get a suspicious feeling the team IS going to be good, soon, despite our best efforts to not be in the immediate term through spending to the cap. Despite our best efforts to seemingly never win. Might it be that there’s just too much talent, too many players who don’t care very much about what the “priority” is, from on high? Is it bad form, am I setting myself up for disappointment in adjudging that with even *average* relative development among their likely supposed/projected ranges, among the youth on the roster, we’d be pretty good *this* year? Maybe if we peel back beyond the last 10 years, teams in the bottom 10 of payroll made the playoffs at a BIT higher of a clip? Maybe? Maybe someone can post some hopeful data on that. Anyways, I feel like I do this every September and end up regretting it, not only for getting my hopes up only to come crashing down, but also because worry I allow too much bias to sway me too much from the factors I’d usually point to, the ones I point to all the time. The factors that will lead all the outside experts to predict the Sabres finish 12th in the East. The same stuff that had me saying last week we had about a 35% chance of making the playoffs. But screw it. Today we spell redemption R-O-N: 51% likely, imo

Anything Tullio brings going forward to me is icing on the cake (not that I really expect anything.) I’m still a big fan of the Savoie trade - I think McLeod will be pretty good - but regardless, every time I look at the prospect pool in wake of forgetting if dealing Savoie dented it or not, I’m struck by the amount of names we have there that have a reasonable shot of making the NHL. Doesn’t look like a ton of blue-chip stuff imo but a lot of depth. There are still too many guys, not saying this in a detrimental way: I think some are going to hit by the strength of how many bullets we have in the chamber, and not only that, we can and still should move a few as currency and the odds of the pool striking gold probably wouldn’t materially change. I don’t know if it’s a Sabres thing or a league wide prospect trade thing but we often seem to go for the guys who have some sort of negative in their past we apparently feel represents potential gain going forward by way of fixing that negative. Negatives we’ve adjudged to be out of their control, like say this Tullio injury. I’m not sure if we are needing to “settle” for these guys where we are hoping for hidden value because we can’t get more of a sure thing, and we are just gassing them up. A lot of additions seem to be in that vein, ala Eric Comrie. With a prospect, though, I’d say while these hidden variables don’t usually pan out, they are more valuable when analyzing the asset than the variables that have established at the pro level (Comrie, lack of starts supposedly representing unlocked value).