Jorcus

It's one thing I miss about Peterka. He is an on stick off stick shooter. Too many of our guys try to pick the spots.

He is not playing very well in Rochester right now. Elevating a slumping goalie is no answer.

I feel like a broken record after these losses but again it comes down to converting chances. Most teams are going to lose only scoring 2 goals. This is another night where pucks that should be in the net are not going in. Doan could of had a hat trick last night but nothing worked out. Tuch, Thompson, Norris all not converting good chances. I don't know why. A lot of wide shots last night. Yes there were other problems, coverage, goaltending, and coaching. This team gets enough good chances that they should be able to outscore those issues on most nights.

Well that may change. With the return of Brady Tkachuck he is bumped to PP2. If you watch highlight videos of Cozens most of his goals come from skating with speed toward the net. He can score from distance but its the open rush shot where he puts them in. He is not very good at net front scrum hockey. He is willing, just not effective.

With the return of Norris he is not going to be on PP 1 anymore and for the life of my I have no idea why he was playing on the point. He really can't cover for Dahlin. It reminded me of the Skinner days. If he is on a PP he should be down on the wing.

Yes I ment to say Cozens. I do feel that he is the same player that left here. He is scoring a bit more this year. The only thing I would point out is Ottawa's goaltending is worse than ours is this year and it's costing them a lot of money.

It's funny though as much as Adams may have made lemonade out of a lemon situation there still seems to be a perception that that if you trade with the Sabres you are going to get the better player. I was watching Ottawa play Montreal last night and the announcers were talking about Cousins and how players improve when the leave the Sabres. Just as they were saying that Cousins got blasted off his skates by a Canadian.

But you know what happened to Ray McKigney.

Looking at the schedule they have a shot although they are a number of games on the road. Last two are the Wild and Utah they could be tougher. Never know what Islanders team shows up. That is next.

It only gets difficult when Justin Danforth comes back assuming all others are healthy. Not sure why they signed this Amerk blocker to a 2 year 1.8 AAV contract. If this was Jarmo's doing it's a bad look. Not sure where they intended to slot him into the lineup in the first place. With that contract he is going to be difficult to get rid of this year. I am not worried about losing Dunn but this guy could cost us Kozak.

There is a narrative by many that UPL has only played well in a stretch of 40 or so games under that last year of Granato. Statistically that may be true but some way or somehow the Sabres seem to win games with him in the net. His over all record is 163 starts 75 wins 68 losses and 16 OTL's. Not great but not bad. What caught my eye was the 22-23 season. His rookie stat line was 33 starts 17 wins 11 loses and 4 OTL's. Very respectable stat line, but the underling numbers were not. His goals against average was 3.61 and save percentage was .891. So what was the situation? The season starts out with Eric Comrie and the aging Craig Anderson in the net. What could go wrong? It went bad early. Sabres go on an 8 game slide in November and Comrie gets hurt. UPL comes up from the Amerks and after losing his first game plays pretty well though December and January. Comrie comes back in late January and UPL starts to sputter. The 3 headed goalie monster kicks in and the Sabres go on a losing streak in March that kind of dooms them until Levi shows up and makes it close finishing the season 5 and 2. Obviously the wins in this season were all driven by offense. The question is how did they any games at all with the defense they had. 79 Games from the 20 year old Owen Power. 78 Games from the 22 year old Dahlin who Granato had to defend to the press about his play in the first part of the season. 68 Games from the steady if unspectacular Lybushkin. 60 Games from 23 year old Jokiharju 55 Games from 22 year old Samuelesson. 59 Games from 25 year old Bryson who was -24 The rest were made up with an odd mix of the injured Stilman, Klage, pilut and others. But then there is the forward group lacking 2 way players, Skinner, Olofsson, Cozens, Quinn, Peterka. You had a few like Tuch and Okposo and Girgensons. Obviously it was all about the offense going off and outscoring the crappy defense and not very good goaltending. How did they keep any pucks out of the net with that crew in front of them? What can UPL do with what is on the ice now vs what was on the ice then? I think UPL can come around and fit into this system as long as the offense stays alive.

I am not worried about roster spots. Rotation could be an issue because they never seem to manage it right. Yes the defense is playing well. For the most part they have all season. We just have not been converting chances in a number of games. Last night we did. I was doing a dive into the 22-23 Sabres season and how important scoring was given the crap defense they had on the ice that year. I will do it in another thread.

Scoring 4 or more goals is the key to winning in this edition of the NHL. It may not seem like we needed it because we only gave up one goal but the early lead helps settle everything down and play a structured game. We have only won 2 games when we did not score 4 goals so far this year. Every loss we have we have scored less than 4. Goaltending is so random these days you just don't know who is good or bad. Lets look at the former Sabres goaltenders. Devin Cooley 10-3-2-2 1.88 .930 Eric Comrie 10-5-5-0 3.13 .893 Linus Ullmark 19-9-6-4 3.10 .874 Did Devin Cooley a 28 year old rookie become a great goaltender? Did Ullmark turn into a pumpkin with that 8.25 million dollar salary? We are not going to trade UPL unless we know we have someone way better to replace him with. The answer is outscoring the problem.

This is what happens when you get destroyed by last place teams.

Dahlin is playing nonchalant.