Marvin

I like Zemgus.

I would ask Skinner to waive his NMC for the expansion draft. Then I would expose him and Ristolainen and dare Seattle to take either of them. IMHO, from their POV, Colin Miller or Zemgus Girgensons is the obvious choice.

When there are more data at the end of the season, I would like to see this again, but split between the coaches. Numerous players are having radically different seasons than before, Mittlestadt and Ristolainen being 2 of them.

Yikes. He makes Alexei Zhitnik look like a sharpshooter.

Thanks for all the great info, everyone. Please don't get drunk on all the beers which I have been handing out.

Realistically, we can catch 4 teams. It is remotely possible to catch 4 more. We are 5 point behind the next closest team, Ottawa, with 15 games remaining. For some perspective, according to an old ESPNNews article, there are exactly 6 teams that have made up 6 point deficits in the standings with 20 games left to make the playoffs since The Lockout; the Sabres have 2 of those and could have had 3 others. It is possible that multiple teams in front of us will collapse, but odds are against it. But passing Ottawa, Anaheim, New Jersey, and Detroit will not be easy. <rant>I hate losing. It is a habit we need to break. If the Sabres play DeLuca .500 hockey the rest of the way against the upcoming buzz saw, I will be thrilled because the team would finally be maturing. I opposed The Tank and I support a winning streak now.</rant> YMMV

Two. But still, a good game.

I could deal with watching this kind of hockey the rest of the season. I could feel like hope for next season is well-founded then.

Could it be that Staal and Hall could have got worse after their trades?

How does this team learn playoff-type hockey?

That is ****ing spectacular, PA! Favourite quote of his is from a Watergate documentary: "It was at that point that I suddenly remembered that the Solicitor General is the #3 man in the Justice Department."

Lady Stanley's bra.

Sadly, the bolded is wrong. The top engines are rated several hundred ELO points above top humans. The italicised makes sense: Baseball has easily defined segments which can be easily quantified and correlated. Hockey, as @pi2000 pointed out, is much more fluid and its only easily quantified numbers are goals and, to a lesser extent, shots. Hockey needs more hypothesis testing at sigma = 2+ standards. I feel more confident about the conclusions from the muon g-2 experiments than I am about many hockey advanced stats -- and I am a huge proponent of these kinds of expansions of the standard hockey statistics.

I want to believe you. What is your reasoning?

The Sabres are taking more chances. I would bet that they are worse under HCDG than XHCRK because the more aggressive mindset leads to a few more chances against. On the other hand, I bet if we measured the data more carefully than most current fancy stats, we would see that we are getting more shots which are open and in better position than before 5-on-5. I would love to see a spreadsheet of position, angle, "openness", etc. of shots before and after XHCRK. Always remember: models are an attempt to simulate reality; they are not reality itself. Things like how you feel about your system, how precisely you are executing it, etc. are notoriously hard to model. Those of you in Operations Research and Stochastic Modelling can attest to that.

Damn. I read that as "Stankonia". BOB could be his nickname, I guess.

We seem positively giddy compared to the sturm und drang of doom and gloom of yesterday. I would guess icing an almost legit NHL line-up has helped.

We can guarantee the underlined, can't we?

Just keep the Zamboni doors closed. What I am hoping is that having three line, centred by Reinhart, Cozens, and Mittlestadt, will give Boston problems. I hope that the depth will be more than illusory. Here is its first chance to shine.

Two things: 1. People forget that Darcy Regier made a lot of mistakes his first year here and and there was another GM, John Muckler, who pounced on them or used his influence to work against Regier just to spite the Sabres organisation. I still think that Mike Peca's initial ask for $4M at the start of 2000-1 was from him. 2. I don't see why holding on to Hall was such a brilliant idea. It seems to me that a reputation for making the best of a bad hand is better than cutting off your nose to spite your face. It sends a terrible message to players who are doing well who are still in the organisation. And I wanted him and his mindset out of the organisation immediately.

Here comes the gauntlet. Now we will see the real mettle of this team.

Even with no additions, this team looks better built for that kind of game than the ones which Botterill built. And the one which was closest, well, he refused to help it try and make the playoffs.

Something just hit me. Suppose the team continues its improvement, plays consistently well, and wins a few games from the division leaders. If you are Eichel, might that make you more interested in staying? You no longer have to do everything, so you can just take care of your business knowing that the team will still have a chance even if you have an off day. Might that, plus the hiring of a proven coach and some good AGMs, actually get you keyed up to play here?

You put the finger on the rub: Can he guide them towards that kind of team?

If that's his vision and he can guide people towards it, I will be ecstatic.