Marvin

FYI: I am not of this school. But if you lurk where I do, the majority of posts are like this. Dahlin will want out. Tuch will not be resigned. And so on. Here is the complete state of the deadline had these people had their way... In: Chychrun, Jeannot, Meier. Out: 2023 1st, 3 x 2023 2nd, 2024 1st, 2024 2nd, Rosen, Savoie, Kulich, Östlund (basically, the initial ask x 3).

Which brings up a question from other boards: are the Sabres the Arizona Coyotes of the east? The argument runs as follows: Cap floor team. Rookie GM. Rookie Coach. No big FA signings. No trading futures for immediate help. Still problems in goal, on defence, and with overall depth. "Players who want to be here" is an excuse to cut payroll to the bone. Two years running looks like a long-term trend.

Gulf? Yawning chasm would be my guess.

That depends. Does Guy Lafleur show up to the rink late because he was engaged all night and then smoke during intermission? Do the 1980's players get to train in the off-season instead of working summer jobs? Do they still have faux-leather skates and wooden sticks? Does their goaltending equipment still absorb water so that each pad weighs 10 pounds more after the game? I don't think people realise how different pro sports are now compared to then.

Well, I was wrong. Thankfully.

We really need to beat the teams around us in the East. Those 4 point games are huge. And welcome to the board!

And then McNab.

Dare I say it: the Sabres won a playoff-type game.

This is the best ensemble defence I have seen from Toronto since 1999.

I hate to tell you this, but there is a sizable minority of fans who will flatly contradict you on every paragraph above. For instance, I can think of several on HFBoards off the top of my head who view retaining Savoie and Kulich instead of getting Chychrun as a fire-able offence. SabreNoise et al. have posters who think that the failure to empty the cupboard for Meier and Jeannot as a similar failure.

Backstage at the Frozen Four selection committee, we see some guys chatting quietly. "So how does this go again?" "Lung Oisland, Florida, Ottawa, Detroit, Washington, and Pittsburgh said that if we give Northeastern a favourable draw and screw the Sabres, then we all get one million dollars."

The young whipper-snappers here don't remember Jim Schoenfeld and Mike Ramsey routinely missing the odd game or odd week to recover from blocking a shot or from a cheap shot as payback for a particularly violent check. With a player such as Samuelsson, missing 10-15 games a season has to be accepted as part of the deal -- which is why the Sabres need more and better defencive depth.

That's one of the "Road" movies, right?

That is in said person's opinion. For instance, on Sabres Fan on HFBoards thought that a fair price for Chychrun was 2023 1st, Savoie, and Kulich because GMKA is required to pay the piper as penance for not overpaying for defencemen in the summer or something like that. Another fan on another Sabres board recommends a 6x$6M deal for Gavrikov. YMMV. Although it is an imperfect system, I look at average salaries every 60 defencemen +/- 5 players to establish the minimum and maximum salaries for a given pairing level, rescaled by the season in which the contracts were signed. I also look at the approximate performance curves by age and correlate them against trends from the players' 3 years previous to their contract year so that I can estimate how the players' quality will deteriorate over the lifetime of the contract. I also evaluate the type of game each player plays. I do this all in my head by eyeing the data, by making quick-and-dirty estimates, and by overall feel of trends rather than what I would like to do, which is actually grind out the numbers. I evaluate prospects by what fans of other teams said about them before they were drafted or acquired. I double check these against some very knowledgeable friends.

That sound you heard was me laughing at the idea that the NHL's DoPS would actually be concerned about the players' safety. Department of Players Eluding Safety (DoPES) is more like it.

Who are some players we could try to acquire in the off-season who are either UFAs or reasonably priced in a trade? If by trade, what would the price be? If UFA, what would be an acceptable contract? My shopping list includes a #4D and others who are at least decent 3rd pairing players. I want the Bryson, Pilut, and Clague quality defencemen to be no higher than #9D if at all possible.

I think he would need to wear the full face shield, which Pat LaFontaine wore.

The latter. That is obvious, isn't it?

Reinbacher it is.

The necessity of a #4D, a few D in the system, and some veterans where Lyubushkin is the minimum performer at #7 just became very stark.

Next man up?

Yes. They need to grow up as hockey players.

You hit on the logical flaw in the argument: you can't know what would have happen on The Road Not Taken. Some do use the examples of great two-way veterans who were defencively clueless as youths: Joe Sakic, Steve Yzerman, Doug Gilmour, Marcel Dionne, etc. Heck, Gil Perreault had the worst team-adjusted +/- in the league from 1970-2, but jumped to +10 in 1972-3 to become the defencive conscience of "The Dream Line", Perreault-Gretzky-LaFleur. I mentally scream "correlation is not causality" every time I hear this argument.

Are parts of my problem that 2 of the 25 best winning percentage jumps since WWII were the Buffalo Sabres in their first 5 seasons plus 2 others in the top 50 (1996-7 and 2005-6) and that the Sabres have the 2 biggest recoveries in winning percentage after the All-Star break since the 1992 strike and would have a third at #1 had they not lost the last 2 games of 2011-2? I think I expect the jumps to be normal instead of being as rare as they are.

Sure. First, it is typical that most offencively gifted players in College or Juniors have at best a minimal idea of how to play team defence because, frankly, they could be very effective without it. When they get to the pros, they find out that most of their tricks and moves don't work. If the coaching and management emphasise team defence at the expense of offence, then the player never learns what he can do offencively in the pros. As an example, take Zemgus Girgensons. He was drafted as a scorer who could play physically. During his first season in the NHL, Ted Nolan used him for both PP and PK and gave him the freedom to experiment on offence. He made moves and plays as a rookie on seasoned veterans that we have not seen from him since. After getting berated and benched by Abysmal Bylsma, his game was a mess. Only when Housley put him with Larsson and Okposo did he find a way to be effective again. Even with his simplified game and unfavourable match-ups, he scored at the rate of 15G and 15A per 82 games for a few years. I keep thinking if he had been allowed to develop, he would have become the ideal #3C: defencively responsible with some offencive touch.