Curt

He was part of Buffalo’s 2nd best line last season.

I wouldn’t be surprised exactly, but I wouldn’t call it likely either. The talent is there, but he hasn’t put it together yet. I think that depending upon that type of improvement is unwise. If Buffalo hopes to seriously be a playoff team, I don’t think you can go into the season expecting Mittelstadt (or Turris for that matter) to be the 2C. You could be right about that sort of being the end result though. It’s been a slow, conservative build so far. It very well may continue that way into next season.

Those are the only two things Buffalo has done, right? Haha

Casey had 9 goals and 6 assists at ES last season. 11:40 ES TOI. That’s pretty bad production. His shot share numbers were not good compared to other Sabres. 40% on FO’s. He wasn’t a good 3C last season. Girgensons and Okposo outproduced him at ES. He barely produced more than Larsson, Sobotka and TT at ES. That being said, I think he will improve. I hope that next season he can be a good 3C, and keep improving from there.

He had 24 pots at ES last season and his shot share numbers were not very good. I think he could be ok as a 3/4 C option. Doesn’t help the 2C situation though. I wouldn’t want to give up anything too significant or take on such a bad contract in order to acquire him.

It’s not impossible that it could work out well. Casey could take steps forward and having Reinhart with him should help. It’s a bad thing because we would like to have a more proven player at 2C. Casey was not good at all last season. Even if he is better next season, that still may not be good enough to be a quality 2C. I would much rather depend on him to be 3C than 2C.

Google says Baskisch, so yeah, probably right. Makes sense. Thanks.

Basque. Just FYI. It predates the the Indo-European languages in Europe.

He spoke with who? Ownership of this unknown team? I have no idea who Joey Vandetta is.

Source?

50mph in a 25mph zone. That’s bad obviously, but it’s not as if he was going 110mph. That fine is crazy. Didn’t realized they were scaled by income in some countries.

I think Vegas really needs Stastny in order to remain Cup contenders, so I doubt that they are considering moving him. Little could be a decent 2/3 C but that contract is BAD. $5+ for 4 more seasons, ages 32-35. He could crap out at any time. Roslovic would be nice get as part of a bigger trade. He isn’t proven at C though and I don’t know if he really would be a solution.

I doubt he would want to sign a contract with Buffalo. Worth a phone call though.

I like Dzingel, but he really is not a C. He has played almost zero C in the NHL. He is a winger. Bjugstad is an interesting option that I hadn’t thought of.

The OP never mentioned how many goals a particular line or the team as whole would score in this hypothetical lineup. You were trying to use the point totals outlined by the original poster to come up with the number of team goals scored, is that correct? I was honestly not even sure what you meant by your post with the numbers and was looking for clarification.

Yup, you are right. Cozens has a bump on his thumb.

I’ve never seen anyone try to extrapolate team goals from forward points like that. That’s not really how it works. You are not going to get anywhere close to an accurate estimation. Yes, and this. The defensemen probably add another 35-40 goals.

Buffalo should do something like this with Eichel, Reinhart, Skinner and Dahlin.

I think those numbers are a pretty good baseline and I totally agree that Buffalo literally had no 2nd line quality forwards. It wasn’t even because guys turned in seasons well below what was expected of them. Sheary was only a 53pt player when he was on the wing of Sidney Crosby. No one expected him to do that here. Okposo has not been the same since his serious head injury a couple years ago. I don’t expect him to return to the 50pt guy he was before. Mittelstadt, you could say was disappointing but he was a rookie and you can never be sure what to expect from them. I would love for the team to add a 2C, so Mitts will only need to be counted on to fill 3C duty. Olofsson looks like he could fill a 2LW role, but see what I said about Mitts. I would rather not have to depend on him to do so. To me Vesey looks like a good fit to possibly play 1RW, even though he is a 2/3 line player. He is a big body with speed who can go to the net and clean up loose pucks or recieve passes in dangerous areas. Hopefully he could score 20+ doing that. This would allow Reinhart to shift to 2RW, play with the new 2C and Sheary at LW. Then the 3rd line could be Olofsson-Mitts-ERod. 4th, Girgs-Lars-Okposo. Thats not an ideal forward group, but it shouldn’t get completely shut down outside of the 1st line like last years team. The team last season had glaring holes, you can’t put that on Housley. However, he did a lot of things wrong and could have gotten more out of the team than he did. I would agree with you that acquiring a quality 2C is a key to improving the lineup. If that can’t be done, acquiring a very good top-6 winger would help a lot too.

What is this?

Four day weekends. Kicked off by an Independence Day BBQ. ?

This is really fantastic. I appreciate all the time and energy you must have put into it. I think you hit the nail on the head. Good teams use coordinated movement to create space in dangerous areas and then fill that space with an attacking player. This is true of most team ball/puck sports; hockey, basketball, soccer, football. At their best, they all use movement to create space in dangerous areas that can be taken advantage of. You can see it whether you watch Barcelona FC, Golden State Warriors, New England Patriots, or Boston Bruins. Even though it needs to be executed in different ways, the idea is the same across many sports. The Buffalo Sabres need their coach to think of the game in these terms and players who are able to execute the type of coordinated movement that you have highlighted.

The Jake Gardiner, Canadiens, Jets, Sabres tweet was a big fake. Forget about that. https://twitter.com/TheChargingBUF/status/1146430720979668992?s=20

I am pretty sure that those RAMP Charts take into account quality of teammates and quality of competition.

Ah, ok, I see what you mean. It dilutes his value moving forward because other teams will feel that Buffalo NEEDS to make a move. I would say that they wouldn't need to make a trade immediately. The signing wouldn't put them over the cap. A Gardiner signing could mean that a Risto, or other D, trade is already well in the works and is imminent. Its all speculative right now anyway. We don't even know the reliability of this report that Buffalo is in on Gardiner. We'll see how things shake out.