GASabresIUFAN

It is with Jerry Douglas and Union Station. I’ve seen them before with Tony Rice. Also have seen Alison with Robert Plant. She’s great.

Heading to Allison Krauss tonight. Then off to see a Cure cover band tomorrow in Athens gA

What is #3 $. The Athletic said he gave us $5.3 mill worth of value last season. They gave Power a $4.7 mill valuation. Cap wages estimates 7 years at 7.277 for Byram. That is a non-starter for me if the Sabres retain Power. I do agree we need 3 new defensemen in our top 6. Dahlin, JBD and one of Power or Byram, plus 3 new guys who can actually player defense or are accomplished two way players like an Orlov or Gavrikov.

I’ll be honest and say I’m not enamored with either player. Since I know the Sabres are keeping one of the two, I’d prefer Byram because he does play with some physicality, and unlike Power, he does make an effort on defense. Still the stats are what they are and they show that neither player is very good defensively away from Dahlin. I also believe that if we’d get more value and save more cap $ if we trade Power. I know this is not a popular opinion, but such is life. PS you did say you want to bring both Byram and Power back next year in your proposal earlier in this thread. I just don’t think it makes sense with the $ required to re-sign Byram.

The redundancy is Byram to Power or Power to Byram. We need two offensive D, not 3. We have Dahlin as No. 1. The Sabres need to make a choice of Power or Byram, not both. From your list, I haven’t studied the in zone D play of most of those guys. I can say that Hughes is not a good in zone defender and Karlsson has never been good defensively. Those two for sure would be redundant in Buffalo if they were our 3rd puck moving D and we needed to pay them $7 mill to stay. By way Clifton/Byram xGF was 44%. Having a GF of 53% in 15 games seems more like luck. The pairing had 11 GF vs 10 against, but was demolished in scoring chances (42%) and HDC (42.35%). To put those numbers in context, that pairing allowed 116 scoring chances in 15 games while only creating 84 for the Sabres. The high danger chances were just as bad; HDCF 36 vs HDCA 49. Looks to like Reimer often bailed then out.

Just ask Power.

Defensive liability means he gets beat on transition, he is positionally lousy in the D zone and makes bad decisions with the puck. This isn’t just my opinion but Ruff’s as well. You mention he was a net positive player. That’s only true when he played with Dahlin. Ultimately my biggest issue with both Power and Byram is that the Sabres need one of them to be able to anchor their own pairing and be effective. Right now neither player can do it, and until they can play decently in the D Zone they won’t be able to anchor a pair successfully. I don’t want to pay 7 mill or more for a young partner for Dahlin if they can’t stand on their own. Why? The answer is simple. When Dahlin got hurt the team lost 13 straight. One of the main factors in the losing streak was that the other 6 D weren’t good enough defensively. We can no longer afford Power and Byram’s on the job training. Adams gave Power the dumbest contract in the NHL. His offense is worth about $5 mill a season, his defense $-1 mill or more making his contract a net negative to the Sabres of about 4.5 million. Byram’s new contract should be $4 million max, but it won’t be based on the projections. So do we really want to hand out a $7 million contract to basically Power 2.0; an all offense no defense blueliner? Remember Byram gets almost no PP time. Power poorly QB’d the 2nd PP. If we want to max Byram’s offensive value he needs PP time. I think Power and Byram are redundant players. They are offensively talented, defensively a work in progress (I’m being generous here), and only one of the two gets PP time. We need to move on from one of them so that we can reallocate cap resources to defenders who can actually defend. PS: If your name is Power, show some and knock someone on their butt once in a while. He had 26 hits last season. That’s about one hit every 3 games. Byram had 75.

Constantly repeating that they were the "most effective" doesn't change the fact that Byram is a defensive liability just like Power. Remember I want to keep Byram over Power. Byram with Dahlin had a solid expected goals of 54.58%. Byram with every other defender on the Sabres his XGF was 44.58% or worse. Samuelsson with Dahlin had an expected goals of 51.49%. Mattias with every other defender except Joki was 41% or worse. Power with Dahlin had an expected goals of 69.92%. Unfortunately with his 3 most common pairings he had an expected GF of 40.93 with Samuelsson, 44.44% with Byram and 46.09% with Joki. The good news is when he played with the defensively aware JBD at the end of the season he had a xGF of 53.51% For additional context Dahlin had an XGF% with Clifton of 53.57%, and 52.99% with Joki. The common denominator is Dahlin. He is a superstar and can carry anyone and make them look good. Unfortunately, when you put the rest of the D group with anyone else they stink and the stats clearly show that to be true. In fact, of the 10 most common pairings last season, the only 4 with a 50% or better XGF% were the 4 pairings involving Dahlin. The rest of our returning D (except maybe JBD) all stink defensively and most need to go. Spending $15 mill to keep both Byram and Power is a flat out waste of resources. https://www.naturalstattrick.com/pairings.php?fromseason=20242025&thruseason=20242025&stype=2&sit=5v5&score=all&rate=n&team=BUF&loc=B&toi=0&gpfilt=none&fd=&td=&tgp=410

He lost me by bringing back both Power and Byram. Re-signing Byram will likely cost 6.5 to 7 per season. Do we really wants to lock up over 15 mill in two LHD offensive D who can't play a lick of defense and then have both in our top 4 D?

Absolutely. It’s a 3 step process. First you’d try to trade him even if you have to retain to get a deal done. If no trade, then waive him and see if someone will take him, when that fails you buy him out and move on. I utilized the buyout in the example as it’s a clean move with a specific low $ amount. I do think someone might trade for him if we retain some of his deal. The question is how much do you have to retain before the buyout, which is less than 800k becomes a better option.

That goes to the heart or my question. I grant that keeping the status quo coaches and management offers little hope for the franchise today. However, would you gain hope if Adams is able to pull off an offseason similar to what I described which adds a playmaker to the offense, while improving the goaltending and defensive skillset of the D group?

The exact move was less important than the concept of the move, which is subtracting a redundant offensive blueliner and possibly expensive to re-sign D for a playmaking forward under contract and control.

But if you buy him out you save nearly $4 mill immediately and free up money to sign or acquire actual good players.

I’m going play devil’s advocate for a minute. What if Adams and the coaches stay, but Adams gets aggressive this summer and does the following (or something like it)? 1) trades UPL and other assets (Wahlberg?) to Van for Demko 2) Signs Orlov and acquires another proven D (Fabbro, Ceci, Perbix?) 3) Buyout of Samuelsson and trades Quinn. 4) Trades Byram for Zegras Would these moves change your opinion on lack of management changes? I agree there is no reason to believe that Adams can or will be that aggressive or that he could convince any of the FAs to come here. However, he has been more aggressive lately whether we liked the moves or not. Since March of 24, slightly over a year ago, he has traded Mitts for Byram, Savoie+ for McLeod, Cozens+ for Norris and JBD, a 2nd for Malenstyn, signed Zucker, re-signed Zucker and Greenway. That’s two young “core” forward pieces and a top 10 draftee traded away. He also finally dumped Joki opening up a slot for JBD which was a net positive. He talked about the poor defense and goaltending at his end of year presser and despite a vote of confidence in UPL rumors persist that he is on the trading block. If Terry puts him squarely on the hot seat, could we get the changes we want and need even with Adams remaining? Granted no one here trusts him to make good decisions, but last offseason’s McLeod and Zucker moves have been the best of his tenure.

Aren't we paying Power 8+ and his metrics are terrible with anyone but Dahlin.