BullBuchanan

Statistical analysis of NHL players says their peak is at 26. If that holds true, Tage's best years are already behind him. Add in the injury and it doesn't help. He may certainly bounce back to a better player than we saw in 2023, but it's unlikely he gets close to 47 goals again. Mid 30 goals with high 60s points is probably his ceiling at this point.

It's a well known statistical fact that NHL players peak before 26. Tuch will be 31 in 3 years. He'll be far past his prime. Thompson will be 30, and looking at the same fate. Benson is just a prospect at this point with 30 points to his name. That's not helping us win a cup in the next 3 years. We need to either get someone who can score 100 points, or we need a ton of guys in the 60+ range. Florida had 4 above 70 each of the last 2 years. Vegas had 6 at 50+. We had 6 at 50+ 2 years ago, but sent two of those guys packing (Mitts, Skinner). This year we had just 4 over 50 with the top end at 59. Thompson is the only guy on the roster capable of getting up into the 90s and he may well have already peaked at nearly 27 years old. Praying that guys like Quinn and Benson will hit that level is not my preferred strategy. We shouldn't be building a team to make the last seed of the playoffs. we should be building a team to make a cup run. Otherwise, there's no point. Just tear it down and start over.

Ok. That's 3 years from now. By then Thompson will be on the back end of his prime, Tuch will be done and the entire roster will probably look different. I'd rather trade Benson in a package for a guy that can play on our top line right now and still be there 3 years from now that we replace with a guy like Helenius down the road We shouldn't be advocating for that now, but on a Stanley Cup contender, Tuch is a 2nd line player, not the 2nd best forward on the team.

Why? I figure his ceiling is a reliable middle-six talent and he likely won't hit that level for at least 2 years.

I would absolutely move Benson/Kulich or any other prospect for a Top 6 player. Those kids are years away from peak production, and it makes sense to get that production now with an older more established player. I'd be less excited about moving Quinn as I think he has top 6 potential as early as this season, but it wouldn't be off the table for a serious upgrade. We're going to have a steady stream of prospects for a few years and Ideally we'll be turning the corner into a winner long before they're ready to play serious roles. If that's not the plan, then you might as well trade the established prospects we already have and the older vets to get younger prospects and picks. Of course, there's no way this is the plan, but it should be all-in or all-out at this point.

14g 26a

This part should be more of a massive concern than a penciled in assumption. With the injury history he's had so far, he very well may be a player that is never reliably healthy. I absolutely don't wish it on him, but repeated leg injuries on a young player are never good. Peterka has actually been available, and as a result is way ahead of Quinn so far.

I'm not opposed to KA making moves, but I am opposed to the idea though that this team is somehow going to be better with worse players. Who's the guy that takes us to the next level? Zucker? The guy with 3 names? Lafferty? It seems like he's gotten the worse end of the trade on every deal. In addition, all we've done is improve the bottom of our roster. Was the Sabres fatal flaw last year really our 4th line? Was not having enough Jordan Greenway's really why we aren't in the playoffs? I really don't think so. Our top 6 is objectively less skilled than it was a month ago, and we needed to inject it with more talent then. When I look at the rosters of teams that have been in the Stanley Cup for the last decade+, none of them look like ours. Who are our stars now? Dahlin and... ? Thompson? maybe? Is this the 1999 plan where you're gonna build the team around a bunch of overachievers and the greatest goalie of all time? If so, great, just gotta find that goalie I guess. I won't be floored if Lindy can sneak us into the playoffs this year, but We're absolutely at least super star away from being able to be a threat to anybody. We've dumped 30-40 goals in Skinner, who we won't be able to replace. We dump Girgensons for what seems like a downgrade in Malenstyn. and then added a bunch of career jobbers on 1 year deals. What exactly is the vision for this team? I don't see it.

Are you judging the GM on the talent we have in the system or on the wins we have? He's only responsible for one of those things.

I'm not sure how anyone concludes that Adams has done anything but a top-tier job. We have talent from the sabres first line all the way down through the bottom of the Amerks and through to Juniors. Our organization is stacked. We might have the best pipeline in the NHL right now. We're just extremely young at the NHL level and we needed better coaching.

Did you miss where I said that already?

Of course longevity means something, but you don't measure longevity in aggregate if you want to know if a coach was good. You do what I just did measure winning percentage against games and you find out that the coach with the 5th most wins coached the 4th most games and was the 9th most successful coach of coaches with the top 10 games coached.

How is that obvious? You've never worked with people terrible at their jobs with 30-50 years of experience? You must be truly blessed. Sports especialy are riddled with retreads that get job after job despite disappointing results. Jeff fisher coached for 22 years and made the playoffs 6 times. Lindy made 11 playoffs in 23 seasons. Barry Trotz made 14 playoffs in 23 years and won a cup Quenneville made 20 out of 25 Hitchcock is 14 out of 22 Tortorella is 12 out of 22 The list goes on. Lindy has the 2nd lowest winning percentage behind Paul Maurice of coaches in the top 10 games coached (Lindy is 4th in total games). I just don't see how you can get amped about a guy who has only had 2 seasons with a winning record out of the last 8 years. once he was fired from the Stars they've become a perennial playoff team and are a cup favorite this year.

I absolutely did. Total wins is NEVER an appropriate or valuable statistic to use. I already mentioned why. It's what we call a "vanity metric". Winning percentage is infinitely more valuable and applying winning percentage over X games gives you an apples to apples comparison against peer groups.

Kinda, yea. Total wins in any sport in never a judgment of success but just doing a thing for a long time. Kinda like people that complain when they get left behind for younger more talented people with the justification that "I've been doing this for 35 years!", forgetting that quality always trumps quantity. Jeff Fisher is 11th all time in NFL wins for the same reason.