Jorcus

Hunter Sheppard getting abused in Columbus. I can't tell if he is a giant troll or a member of Jethro Tull.

Nice to hear Rosen and Davidson on the TNT broadcast of the Rangers Flyers game.

He is the guy I want on the ice at the end of a close game.

The were a rumors going around he would play in last years playoffs. Now it's a year later but he is closer. How is he going to survive NHL playoff hockey after being gone so long?

The Triangle theater for me.

I think Kulich will be a 40 goal scorer at some point. This year reminds me of the Thompson year before he went back to the Amerks. Lot's of chances but just not quite connecting. He won't have to go back down like Thompson did. Many more will go in soon. If that's the case maybe it will not depend on Levi.

The thing about that statement is in the timing. In the near term it's one thing in the long term it's another. Like getting Tage for Ryan O'Reilly. Who would you rather have then? Who would you rather have now? Right now I would still rather have Eichel but he is off the ice again. Maybe it's getting closer in value. Next year who knows.

The Canucks are the king of crazy games this year with this one being the topper. What I can't understand is all the hype about Stars winning the cup. How can they survive without Heiskanen? Lyubushkin is your top line D man. I just don't see them surviving that throughout a playoff run.

I think he one of the most dynamic players on the team and given he has played just 241 games there is big upside. I don't know if we will be able to keep him but I would like to.

What the Canes were trying to do last night was take away the first pass. Canes players stayed on top of the outlet players when we had the puck behind our net. In the first period our defensemen would have trouble finding an outlet to break out of the zone. Canes were hoping for turnovers but for the most part Sabres stayed patient. Sabres seemed to solve it by the second and by the third with the 3 goal lead all they had to do was keep flipping it out of the zone. The Sabres zone defense is much better but they pay the price for blocking shots. I think 4 different players came off the ice in pain. I guess they got all summer for the wounds to heal so might as well try playoff type hockey for awhile.

We are pretty heavy underdogs even though we are at home. The expectation is that Carolina will play hard to erase the stink of the loss to Boston.

Challenger by Adam Higginbotham. A well written documentary of the Challenger disaster. It gives a nice outline of NASA from the early days to lay out who the players were and the methods and procedures for getting ships and people into space. Very detailed account of the shuttle program, the sts-51-L mission and what went wrong. Makes one wonder what is going on now with all these private space companies and how long it will be before the next accident.

One thing to keep in mind is how Lindy has restructured everything as of late and has seemed to find a winning combination. Instead of focusing the best talent on the top line and having a top defensive pair he has spread the talent though the line up. In the beginning of the year it was Thompson, Tuch and Peterka who were on a very good number one line. Dahlin and Byram got put together to be a very effective D pair. Now the talent is spread throughout the line up and it has seemed to lift up most of the players. Tuch, Thompson and Peterka are on 3 different lines. Dahlin, Byram and Power are on 3 different pairs. Think about who tells the other players what to do on a line. If Krebs is playing with Tuch it's Tuch telling Krebs what to do. When he is with Zucker and Tuch he is no longer the line driver like he had to be on the third and 4th lines. At times he was playing with very young line mates and he is just not in position to do that well. I don't really see Krebs as a 2nd line center because I don't think he is good enough to drive a line at this point. His passing is often off the mark or he is not in sync with others on the ice. 3rd and 4th lines playing mostly a defensive roll seems to be ok and getting better.

I guess it beats people blowing off fireworks or smoking so much that the arena was pretty much like building a fire in a chimney without opening the flue. Annoyances change with the times.

I will take a stab a this. This article breaks down the 3 different styles of play when the puck is in defensive zone. https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/systems-analyst-breaking-down-the-best-defensive-systems-for-playoffs/ For most of the year the Ruff system as far as I can tell was a hybrid or man to man type system where there was quick pressure on the man with the puck and if you were able to obtain possession it was quick up and out to catch teams on odd man rushes. This works as long as you don't turnover the puck and having the rush come back the other way in an odd man situation. I think most of our D men are fairly poor at defending 2 on 1`s and that includes Dahlin. Ruff was trying to use our mobile D and speed to always rush the play and keep the other team on it's heels. If we are not turning the puck over this system works pretty well. We score enough doing it but it does leave the team vulnerable to counter attacks. Something has changed in the month or two. We have become a zone team again. Everyone is boxing in trying to keep pucks to the outside and limiting multiple rebound attempts on the goalie. I think that is the issue UPL has the most trouble with. Finding the puck when people are crashing the net is tough but he is not the quickest guy down low. When you think back to when he was playing well last year this is how we were doing it. Playing zone requires people to block shots and that can take a toll on your players but it is probably the most effective way to limit chances. Once in awhile those block shot bonce out of the zone and you go an a break. UPL can be effective in the zone system. You can not depend on him to be a scramble goal tender. I would describe him as leaky this year. Often just letting in one too many goals. It wasn't like he was getting chased off the ice all the time. He needed to be better but I think he can be.

Painting hard to reach areas.

Washington is losing their minds in this one. They have turned into the goon squad but Carolina is just giving it right back.

To be honest he has been in a bit of a slump for the last few weeks. There were games to be won where he let in late or overtime goals. Not all his fault and it happens to the best of them but he is going to have to step up a bit come playoff time. I think the playoffs will give a better indication of where he is at. I would be very nervous if he had to play in the NHL right now.

According to Paul Hamilton The head coach designs the power play and the assistant coach implements it. Does Appert get to say who is on the power play? He may have input but the power play issue starts with Ruff. Appert might stink but Ruff is the one I would hold accountable for the issue. Same as Granato last year. Now if someone higher up is telling Ruff who to play when that would be different. I can't see Ruff standing for that at this point in his life.

Yes the skating issue is a big problem. He never was very fast but post injury he is even slower than he was. He only has 53 speed bursts above 20 mph. Most top 6 forwards have twice as many for the amount of games he has played. His one real asset is his shot but in order to get it off he has to be in the clear and that just does not happen all that often. He is a hesitant pick a spot shooter to often the lane closes on him as he is aiming on the goal. He needs to one time more shots. The other issue is he does nothing else to help the team. No penalty kill time, no face offs, low hit counts. If your only asset is your ability to score you better be scoring. There are a number Rochester guys aiming for his spot. If any of them were right handed shots they might have taken it already.

I was going to point this out somewhere I guess this thread is as good as any about player development and time. Maybe this is all BS and it has more to do with point production but there is a point here about player progression. https://dobberhockey.com/2022/06/30/breakout-threshold-bt-using-career-games-played-to-determine-breakout-potential/ The main claim of this article are as follows. Average-sized forwards (between 5-10 and 6-2, or between 171 and 214 pounds) need 200 NHL regular season games to figure it out. At that point, they should show what they will be when fully developed. The player is comfortable with the pace of the game and the power of opposing players and it starts to show in his production. The uptick in production is sharp and noticeable. Generally speaking, with lots of leeway and exceptions, of course, look for 25% or higher year-over-year increase. That doesn’t mean these players have peaked. Once they hit that breakout threshold (BT), these players should continue to improve for several more years and should hit the pinnacle of production between the ages of 25 and 28. Forwards then play at or near this level until approximately 32 years of age (unless they are generational players such as Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin, who could keep producing at an incredible rate well into their late 30s). At this point, when it generally comes to average-sized players, they begin to decline. Some skilled defensemen of average size may also use this 200-game BT as well. Bigger defensemen and exceptionally-sized forwards need 400 NHL regular-season games. We define 'exceptional' here as 5-9, or 170 pounds or less, on the small side, while on the bigger end we use 6-3, 215 pounds, or more. For monster forwards, this is due to simple physics. It takes longer to adapt to your body. A lot of these kids were 5-11 at age 16 and suddenly at age 18, they are 6-4 and weigh an additional 30 pounds. They need a bit more time for their hands and feet to catch up to what they were doing as a teenager and they take time to figure out that they can use their size and strength to their advantage. For diminutive forwards, they take longer to adapt to the new speed. They dominated junior hockey with quickness and fancy moves and some adjustments need to be made (and some never make them). These smaller forwards also take longer to earn more opportunities from coaches who tend to lean on the bigger players. Defensemen take longer to learn the defensive side of the game and earn the coach's trust. Our Current team in terms of games played excluding rookies. Benson 137 Docker 135 Bryson 251 Byram 237 Clifton 375 Dahlin 500 Greenway 435 Lafferty 340 Malenstyn 174 McLeod 289 Norris 239 Peterka 229 Power 236 Quinn 169 Samuelsson 203 Tage 439 Tuch 527 Zucker 761 Krebs 287 It makes you wonder what the future holds for NHL careers for a number of these players. Power, Byram and even Samuelsson would be on the path you would expect a jump out of them. Malenstyn is an interesting candidate to break out. The hope is we have not seen the best of Peterka and Norris yet. Well we have not even seen Norris. Some of the other guys need more games or have enough that we pretty much know what they can do.

Dahlin is very important but I do remember when that was said about Samuelsson. Dahlin was not going to win us the Flyer game if UPL is not going to stop pucks. It's not just an if then logic. He certainly helps our chances but the Sabres don't win for other reasons as well.

The way I look at this game I am just going to take the 24 hours and enjoy it. I am not going to pick on the scabs of this team after they drop a snow man on the first place caps. I know Santa clause is not real but I still enjoy Christmas. This years Sabres are the best last place team I can remember following.

Novikov can defend close to the net. A skill that is lacking on the Sabres. Bryson is puck mover, not a people mover. I am not worried about the Bryson contract. They can bail out on that with no problem. At the end of the day Komorov may end up being a better defender. He is faster and he can lower a boom. Being a right shot does not hurt his chances. He needs another year though.

He is playing center on the Amerks. Long term who knows? He is getting bigger. Had an injury in late October and worked on fitness during the down time. In this interview video he looks more physically mature than he was.