Thorny

“GMs have headed to the cabin, we’ll have to wait for camp to see some moves” season appears to be wrapping up. We are now venturing into “Have to wait until training camp battles shake out before we see some movement” season

If they want to make a real statement, they should simply have Dahlin (or whoever) lead the team out onto the ice game 1 with the C on his shoulder. Right down to business: “watch the results.” What we will get, is a cozy, puff piece Sabres embedded special, we can certainly be sure of that. A vibes-based video on the eve of the season showcasing the big happy family

Ya I mean the bolded is what plenty have been saying, myself included. We really are trying to have our cake and eat it, too, attempting to make the playoffs with a self-inflicted boot on our car in the name of economic efficient effective. It can be done, but Ruff will definitely need to be the X-factor Imo he’s by far the lynch pin of any success we hope to find this year, the one component more key than any other UPL replicating his performance but this time for a full season a close second

"Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.“

Whenever our official social media account attempts to meme out it’s incredibly cringe. Just give @Doohickiethe job

There are guys like Wagner who, had they registered a hit, would have supplanted their original “first mlb hit” with a new one retroactively, as the game gets officially dated as a June game.

We used to do that with Eichel, no? When we had that old pp coach? Think he was on the wild at one point. Doesn’t he run the pp from below the goal line almost? Can’t remember the dude’s name Bob Woods maybe?

“I tried…couldn’t close…but at the end of the day we still *might* have what it takes to make it, if things break our way.” ^ frame it on the wall, as representative

Good Adams microcosm right here Lmao! Only because he had ventured to an advanced timeline already and seen the true result Universe won’t let anyone beat him

Well they played Nashville in the final and we have a Saros Or was it Rinne? We also have a Rinne

This was LA until Pittsburgh did it with speed and pace of play. If they sabres try to copy, the time it’ll take to catch up will leave then hilariously behind the trend anyways. Just build a balanced and talented team

Personally imo it’s far more useful than plus minus, but not to the extent traditional counting stats I DO care about lose value I see them as predictive: but while I might be cautious about the guy with 42 goals and surprisingly poor metrics being able to replicate that total going forward (see: predictive) they do *nothing* to tarnish what IS. Ie, that 42 goals is full value that season regardless of underlyings

Prospects are as subject to recency bias as much as anything, and more so than a lot Once you drive that prospect off the draft lot, it loses half its value - we all know that

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