Marvin

The only times I know of ensemble-related analytics were when the Red Wings did this when they put together The Russian Five, that Boston did some back when Boychuk broke Vanek's ankle, and I know someone who did it last season when he compared the LOG line to other 3rd and 4th lines last season.

Regardless of what his plan was, he should have adjusted it when his team showed it was potentially capable of more than expected. For two years running: 1. The roster had glaring flaws to start the off-season. 2. At least one glaring hole was left completely unfilled after the off-season; moreover, not enough pieces were added to ice an adequate team of 4 clear NHL centres, 8 functional NHL wingers, 3 competent pairs of NHL defencemen, and 2 passable NHL goaltenders when completely healthy. 3. The offence was compounded by not enhancing the roster in-season in a timely fashion; the help at the TDL was too little, too late. 4. There are not enough players in the system who, with ordinary luck for the Sabres, could be claimed would adequately fill all the roster issues with any kind of confidence. Exactly what evidence is there that this offseason would be different? I am a skeptic who wants to be convinced I am over-reacting. Addendum: the more I criticise JNot, the less inclined I am to be overly critical of either Housley or Kreuger. How sad is that?

Bias alert: I was on the Boot Botterill Bandwagon last season. I will concede that triumph_communes has a point in that we underestimate the effect of not having Reinhart transition to centre. However, at the very least, Botterill has been manifestly unable to fill in the roster with NHL players: 2017-8: Jordan Nolan, Seth Griffith, Jacob Josefson, Benoit Pouliot, Justin Falk, Nathan Beaulieu (not to mention Moulson, Bogosian, Ristolainen, and the goaltending) 2018-9: Remi Elie, Vladimir Sobotka, Tage Thompson, Casey Mittlestadt, Conor Sheary, Evan Rodrigues (and add Bogosian, Beaulieu, the Scandella-Ristolainen pairing, the holes at centre, and goaltending problems) 2019-20: Michael Frolik, Mittlestadt, Sobotka, Sheary, Rodrigues (plus the mis-constructed line-up overall with even more holes at centre and goaltending issues) Each season, even when fully healthy, the team iced at least one line of sub-NHL players that Botterill specifically brought in. (Note that Housley was dealt two particularly bad hands and that Kreuger was not done any favours.) Moreover, the Sabres haven't even had 4 experienced, NHL-quality, natural centres on a roster yet in his tenure. He also has failed to enhance the line-up when warranted. IMHO, you don't win 10 games in a row by accident. (Last season, I would have moved both extra firsts if need be for a 2C with term.) There were competent, inexpensive 2-3C's available in this past offseason which could have tided them over until Mittelstadt and/or Cozens is ready. 3C's are still being traded. Imagine all 12 forwards on the ice being NHL quality where Skinner has a real centre. Imagine a goaltender who does not remind you of the Gerry Desjardins in the 1975 Stanley Cup Finals.

Peter Laviolette likes the 11F-7D allocation, but he is decidedly the exception. Based on how often he switched to 12F-6D when possible, I don't think RK prefers it, but was stuck with it because of JNot's roster construction.

Fans' treatment of Lehner was flat out horrible because of the price GMTM paid to get him. It would not be healthy for either him or the fans. IMHO, you can also cross out any close friends he had among goaltenders around the league.

You do realise that this gesture was followed by the following dialogue, right? Countess: Be careful, my dear. He's not as stupid as he seems. Count: My dear, *nobody* could be as stupid as he seems. Nah. Mislaid them? Sure.

In all questions below, assume that Dominik Kahun does not become a centre and that none of Mittlestadt, Cozens, or a draft pick are ready to be an NHL centre next season or the season after in a 2C role. I am assuming that all 3 are NHL players by then, although you don't need to. 1. Thread cross-over question: How much does getting a competent 2C help our scoring? I am thinking of the bottom half of 2C's in the league. 2. In-thread question: How much does getting a defencive-minded 3C with a modicum of skill (think somewhere between Mike Peca and Stu Barnes) help our scoring? 3. In-thread question: how much does getting a highly skilled 3C with defencive flaws (think Cody Hodgson without the health problems and personal issues) help our scoring? 4. If you can only get a 3C with flaws, how do you build the Sabres to be a legitimate Cup threat?

After watching last night's highlights, I am more puzzled by NHL GM's than ever. The Sabres clearly looked invigourated by getting Simmonds. I can't believe there haven't been many "sideways" NHL trades from, say, New Year's Day or even the All Star Break to the Trade Deadline for years. Teams like the Sabres in the last 2 years could save a season by trading each other useful but marginal players at complementary positions. If the team had added Simmonds a month ago and played like that in the big home stand, they would be on the brink of the playoffs now.

My friends had it. There wasn't much else on channel 10 except stock trading and weather reports. It also carried network shows when games pre-empted them. If memory serves me right (for the _Iron Chef_ fans), we had 2, 4, 5 (6), 7, 9 (8), 11, 17 (3), 19 (12), and 29 (9). Channel 5 had HBO and Rangers games. I remember channel 19 very distinctly because _Doctor Who_ was on at a different time from Channel 17. I can't recall what was on 13.

He definitely said them more than once. I recall it was Bryan Lefley of the Kansas City Scouts that Gil Perreault deked right of his jockstrap. ("He's crawling around on the ice looking for it.") He used it again in 1986 when I was listening to a game while coming from Cleveland to go to a SF con. I recall the person driving the car started laughing and had to pull the car over. She asked me, "He said what? Who is this guy?" The other people in the car stared at the radio in disbelief.

One thing that puzzles me: Why does Hutton have such great stretches followed by such horrible ones? If we had some consistency out of him, it would be easier for the Sabres to deal with.

ESPN magazine had a list of the greatest amount of points made up after the All-Star break since 2005. It was 6 - by the 2010-1 Buffalo Sabres. Had they not had the injuries at the end of the season, the team to make up the most points after the TDL would have been 6 by the 2011-2 Buffalo Sabres; they were also 9 out after the ASB. 1 team was 5 out after the ASB and 1 team was 4 out after the TDL. Everyone else was closer. Aside: had either the 2007-8 or 2008-9 Sabres made the playoffs, they would have been on these lists as well. So I guess, buckle up?

I stand corrected. I thought of that as more of a "hold", but yeah, you're right.

This is just JNot's way of apologising for not buying last year. The potential good news is that it looks like JNot may be acknowledging the team's overall softness. Maybe.

In case nobody saw it: https://carolinaproshop.com/products/ayres-shirt?variant=31708318072880

If the NHL had any brains, they would schedule a Chicago Black Hawks - Carolina Hurricanes Winter Classic where Scott Foster and David Ayers perform the ceremonial opening face-off. They could even riff off of Eleven's post: "Foster accounts for Ayers resurfacing."

I actually wish UPL had played the entire year in the ECHL just to learn the geometry of NA ice surfaces. Then, next year, he could learn the speed of the AHL. However, maybe his career will be like Ryan Miller's in the NHL. Does anyone remember his first few disasters for the Sabres? Giving up on a 20 year old just seems overly pessimistic.

Oh, on the actual subject of this thread: It is extraordinarily unlikely that your flu shot would help you if you were infected with a coronavirus. Anti-viral vaccinations don't work like that. This is why you can get a flu shot for the proper strains at the beginning of the season, yet get the flu from a virus you were immunised for towards the end of the season -- it mutated. Coronavirus is even more different from influenza than influenza mutations are from the initial strain. Let me balance out the fear with some hope: SARS had a far greater morbidity rate than even the most pessimistic estimates for the coronavirus, but it was eventually successfully contained. The Communist Chinese government has the cities locked down and other around the world are working on protecting people and isolating cases, so we might have a chance. People are building on the experience from SARS, so no one is getting caught flat-footed this time.

Disclaimer: I am a Never Trump former-Republican. Please take my bias here into account. Whenever I want an evaluation of the quality of fact-checkers, I took the advice of those who know better than I do and go to realclearpolitics.com. It has a slight, but definite conservative bias. Their commentary is moderately conservative. Their news aggregation is mostly from the very liberal (Huffington Post, The Nation) through the "Main Stream Media" through the conservative to stuff bordering on alt-right. (Again, the slightly rightward bias shows through.) This is strongly recommended by the few active Washington-level politicos I know. If you want neutral news reports, I strongly recommend the Christian Science Monitor. Everyone I know who is politically active, from hard-core conservatives to quasi-socialists, agrees that their reporting is top-notch. On the evaluation of PJMedia, I think the evaluation SDS posted is accurate.

Be very careful of PJMedia. It is like The Young Turks on the right, except with more experience and connections.

The Buffalo Sabres' inability to finish scoring chances reminds me of this exchange from the 1966 Batman film: Catwoman: Riddler, you fool! Penguin must have finished them (Batman and Robin) by now! Riddler: Why, that stupid waddling mountebank of a bird! He couldn't finish a bag of popcorn!

One of the reasons I wanted Eichel and Skinner on the same line while Olofsson was out is that each one of them could get the other off the schneid because they are both so dangerous.

Game Report 1. I finally settled on "DVAENGNH" for "Duane" - V for U as in Latin, AE ligature from Gaelic, and NGNH from Sanskrit. People who noticed it looked at me funnily until I explained it. Interestingly, the PSE employees were cool with it. A couple even had a laugh. My impression is that they know some tipping point has been reached - fans apparently can vent freely. The arena was about 2/3 full and was mostly lifeless. A few season ticket holders I know said that attendance is steadily declining and the arena sometimes verges on the toxic. 2. I have been to 4 games this year -- and all 4 have been an indictment of JNot's roster construction. In all 4 games, either Montour or Miller has played LD while the other played RD in their games. They are noticeably worse on the left: their angles were off; they regularly hesitated; their anticipation was non-existent; they routinely misread plays. Conversely, wow, Mojo looks way more comfortable on the wing with a natural centre. Whodathunkit? Skinner did lots of things right. However, he does not trust his linemates to do anything coherent, was hesitant making plays, and sometimes made inferior plays because he is trying too hard. Maybe a natural centre and someone other than Frolik on the other wing would be good for him. Nah, can't be. Speaking of Frolik, he definitely can slow down the game when the team needs it and can kill penalties. Nothing that helps Skinner, though. Of course, if helping Skinner mattered to Botterill, there would be another centre at least as good as Lazar available for Krueger. And that's aside from wondering why Krueger didn't play Skinner much with Eichel while Olofsson was out. 3. Aside from the obvious candidates, this team can't string together three consecutive clean, crisp passes. IMHO, Kruegers version of the possession game is great for Eichel, Reinhart, Olofsson, Skinner, Johansson, Dahlin, Jokiharu, and eventually Pilut. It occasionally works for other players, but IMHO, those lesser players need a simpler possession structure to function. Because executing some of the passes designed for within the system is beyond have the skaters' ken, this team has sloppier passing than the "Failed Rochester Core."` On the other hand, at least the system isn't as dumb as Bylsma's; I and others around me at the game laughed at the system far too often because the players routinely passed up superior plays for ones that were "safe verging on paranoid." 4. Hutton played well. A couple of his saves really lifted the team in the first period. If he could have played this way for the last 3 months, the Sabres would be within reach of the playoffs. 5. I saw more spirit and grit in the team the last few games. The scrum after the boarding call was a welcome surprise to the entire arena. I don't know how much it matters.

Going to the game in a red, white, and blue tie-dyed turban and wearing a name sticker with "Dh'waengnh". I liked the Sanskrit letters "dh" and the full-tongued "n" mixed with the Gaelic ae ligature. It is a fun way to misspell "Duane" as people suggested.

I hope to evolve into one from further down the evolutionary tree. I am still working on it.