IKnowPhysics

Likely, although it's being hailed as a promotion to include more responsibilities at the NHL level. It's just more fallout from the Coyote's purchase and relocation of the Springfield Falcons in 2016, part of the ferris wheel of AHL/ECHL and NHL team affiliate regionalization. Springfield Falcons AHL -> Tuscon Roadrunners AHL (ARI) Portland Pirates AHL -> Springfield Thunderbirds AHL (STL) (Anchorage) Alaska Aces ECHL -> (Portland) Maine Mariners ECHL (now BOS) Lehigh Valley Phantoms are the Flyers' AHL affiliate and are GM'd by Flyers President/GM Chuck Fletcher, although the Phantoms are not owned by the Flyers or their parent company, Comcast Spectacor. Reading Royals are the Flyers' ECHL affiliate and are GM'd by David Farrar. Comast Spectacor also owns the Maine Mariners ECHL (BOS, formerly PHI). The Royal's owner, who bought them immediately before COVID, is the Berks County Convention Center Authority and they're reeling in losses from having two arenas closed for COVID. It would make sense for the Flyers' and Bruins' franchise values for Comcast to sell the Mariners to the Bruins' Jeremy Jacobs. Comcast could then buy the Reading Royals, and potentially install Briere as GM of the Phantoms and/or Royals. But it's hard to tell if Comcast would do it, because Comcast also has the arena management contract for the Maine arena, and they don't have that for the Reading arena. Dolla dolla bill y'all. Or they could just promote Briere to a Flyers' AGM role, whichever.

Sure. But the outcome doesn't always favor the package over the player, and the Sabres have been both perpetrators and victims of that. I didn't think there was no solution to move forward, but there was an entire universe of bad ideas possible. I'm glad KA held the line and didn't compromise the return on paper- because it initially appears to have worked.

Notes on some numbers. If it wasn't obvious, Tuch is absolutely balling out right now. His production rates lead the Sabres and he's among top-of-the-league in several categories (among players with more than 100mins 5v5 played): Total Assists/60 - 4th most with 2.4 First assists/60 - 5th most with 1.71 Total points/60 - 7th most with 3.43 For reference, peak Eichel was 1.6, 1.03, and 2.43, respectively (again 5v5, no PP). Tuch's 3.43 5v5 P/60 is the most we've seen from a Sabres since sometime before 2007 (database limit). He's killing it at even strength play in a franchise-historical way. If anyone was worried that we were trading away the now for the future by trading away Eichel, Tuch should be helping you sleep a little better. And then add Krebs whose 1.25G/60 over his 11 games, if sustained, would be 32nd most in the league and constitute first line scoring production. And then add the 1st and a 2nd, which would be 21st and 53rd overall based on today's standings. Now, I'm not saying Tuch or Krebs or the 1st or 2nd are as complete players as Eichel. But the aggregate production of the package return may be able to accomplish more than the individual.

I was surprised too. It's hard to connect events like that with only the numbers. It's easy to see whether we do or do not give up the puck and separately whether we do or do not give up a lot of goals. But there's no easy access to counts or rates of IF we giveaway the puck THEN we give up a goal. Mayyyyybe one could generalize that lots of giveaways miiiight correlate to lots of CA/60 or HDCA/60, but that wouldn't be a perfect method. And it wouldn't be true for the Sabres, because giveaways are low and CA/60 and HDCA/60 are medium-bad.

Swing and a miss.

I think quality of defenseman is too much in the eye of the beholder: if you asked people for their quantitative reasons why they think a defenseman is or isn't good, you might get 50 different answers, or worse, qualitative answers. None of Butcher's stats are the lowest or worst on the team, with the exception of: PIM/60, Hits/60, team GF/60, team HDCF/60, and team xGF/60 (but not HDCF%, xGF%, or xGF/60). Maybe that's why he's gets looked at funny: his stats say he's a stay-at-home type with good HDCA/60, but he doesn't hit or get penalized.

The better pairings were all pairs they've already tried briefly at one time or another, so their performance data is already there. I laid out the pairs with the best overall numbers as a whole. If it fits some architype about mixing eyeball strengths and weaknesses, it's an unintentional outcome.

Plainly incorrect. Sabres have the 2nd lowest giveaways rate in the leage. Nowhere near mediocre to below average.

Giveaways/60: 2nd fewest Takeaways/60: 4th fewest Differential; (Takeaways - Giveaways)/60: 13th best We don't take away the puck very often, but we also don't give away the puck very often, and the differential is middle of the road. Montreal, for example, has a league worst differential of -4.62/60, because they giveaway the puck 9.96 times per 60 minutes and only takeaway the puck 5.34 times per 60 minutes. Tampa leads the league in differential at +1.92. Panthers take the puck away the most, Kings the least. Verhaeegesfes, Lundell, and Barkov are takeaway machines, as is Mark Stone and Pietrangelo in Vegas. Panthers also give the puck away the most, Lightning the least. Barzal and Getzlaf are league leaders in Giveaways/60. Wideman, Petry, and Zadorov give away the pucks most among defenders. Our team rate of giveaways is nestled among TBL, COL, LAK, MIN. FWIW, Bjork and Z lead the Sabres forwards in differential; Hinostroza is last. Pysyk leads defensemen, Hagg is last.

Narrator: This was not true. Sabres defense by most measurables is 22nd-ish in the league. Better than the offense and goaltending (sans Anderson), which, unfortunately, are both worse. Surprisingly, though, Sabres are the 2nd best team in the league in Giveaways/60. Now, if you said the Sabres are easy to play against because they don't hit (32nd) or take the puck away from opponents (29th) or generate scoring chances (30th) or block shots (30th), you'd be right. But instead you somehow guessed the only stat we're actually good at.

I think they tried this under Murray and didn't like the results. I also think the Bills tried this and it didn't work. Then I think the Bills saw progress with organic "process" and development. And I think that's what is being sought after with Adams, Granato, young good players, and high draft picks. I'm not saying this will fix all woes and we won't need to make trades to finish the puzzle when it's almost done, but it's not nearly done yet and I don't think Adams will leverage the future to force it. The "12 years" bit is a sunk cost fallacy. The team needs to improve the best way possible, regardless of how many years they've been out.

And this isn't even necessarily the case. Needs might be a strong word, but by doing the math on the defensive pairings for this post, a few notes about Butcher came out from that. The partner he played the most minutes with was Dahlin as a lefty-lefty pair, which is abnormal for the Sabres, and that pair didn't perform well. But it wasn't as bad as Dahlin-Joker or Dahlin-Miller. Butcher's next-most minutes was with Hagg, also a lefty-lefty pair, and that was worse. However, for a brief time, Butcher was Joker's best partner (finally a lefty-righty pair for Butcher). While they allowed a lot of shots overall (high CA/60, against the Sabres' apparent doctrine of limiting CA/60 and xGA/60), they created a lot of high-danger shots for the Sabres (HDCF/60), resulting in one of the highest xGF% pairs we ever tried. Butcher was also Pysyk's best partner (also a lefty-righty pair). They were one of the best pairs at limiting CA/60 (well within Sabres' doctrine). When paired with Bryson, Joker, or Pysyk, Butcher allowed the fewest high danger shots against (HDCA/60) and allowed zero high danger goals (HDGA/60). He's solid in front of his own net. The downside of his game is two-fold. His pairings's performance aren't overall perfect, they all lack in one area or another. For example, he plays well defensively with Pysyk, but that pair doesn't generate the much in the way of shots for (CF/60) or the or goals for (GF/60). But as mentioned in the other thread, this hasn't mattered to the coaches. Butcher has been sheltered as fuuuuuck. His player usage puts at the most sheltered player on the team (maybe along with R2), and this is on a team that doesn't typically line-match competition. Butcher noticeably has a the highest OZ% and the lowest QoC. His usage is way weird and it's unclear why. I hope he heals up soon.

I did some digging. The author points out that the Dahlin-Joker pairing fails to generate high danger shots and allows a lot of high danger shots. This is true. But you can't fix the problem if you don't look at the big picture. Every pair should be examined and how the whole team performance is impacted. Other lineups of pairs could be worse- and some of them are. I'll spare you the math. The Sabres are in a tough spot defensively, but there are ways to improve. With Butcher out, the Sabres go-to defense pairings of Dahlin-Joker/Bryson-Miller/Hagg-Pysyk appear to be designed to minimize xGA/60 (under the constraints that lefties play with righties). Compared to other possible lineups, it's about the best set of pairs you can make with those six players for minimizing team-wide mean xGA/60. It's also not the worst lineup for minimizing CA/60. It's had the outcome of doing an ok job minimizing GA/60 and HDGA/60 compared to other lineups. If what the Sabres are doing is intentional and data-driven, then it's clear that the pairs are setup specifically to prevent goals. However, this focus on xGA/60, CA/60, and GA/60 comes at a cost: this lineup is worse than some other possible lineups in several other key areas, including CF/60, xGF/60, GF/60, HDCF/60, HDCF%, HDGF%. The current pairings are absolutely eating it on the offensive side of the puck. Optimizing for as many categories as possible, emphasizing CF%, GF%, xGF%, and HDCF%, the defense pairs should be, in no particular order: Bryson-Joker Hagg-Miller Dahlin-Pysyk This will have the following effect of improving almost every area (CF/60, CF%, GF/60, GF%, xGF/60, xGF%, HDCA/60, HDCF%, HDGF, and HDGF%), with the biggest increases to CF/60, CF%, while holding mostly steady on some others (CA/60, xGA/60, SCF/60, SCA/60, HDCA/60, and HDGA). Some of the biggest impact include: Increasing CF/60 from 48.9 to 57.4 Increasing GF/60 from 1.69 to 3.75 Increasing HDGF/60 from 0.98 to 2.12. The good news is that the data suggests that Sabres may be able to increase offense by changing up the pairs to what's above. The bad news is that data suggests our defensive side of the puck doesn't get much better no matter what defensive lineup we put out.

"You mean management wanted you to lose?" "Oh, no question. No question. It was all about losing so you could get the proper draft position." We tanked. It was intentional, at least right up to the door of the locker room. They didn't tell the coaches or players to lose, the roster was simply converted into futures, prospects, and draft picks.

*****-tier jokes in an injury thread. Top notch. He had posted only 53 seconds of ice time since returning from his other injury. When it happened, it looked like high-ankle or knee.

Fire up that loud, another round of shots... Tuch down for what. Guys remember that song?

Interesting to hear more details from his point of view. I'd love to hear more details from the organization side. It's unclear yet what the root cause of the sticking point was. The Buffalo doctor quietly being in agreement then not being in agreement and distancing from the situation is an interesting move. Also interesting that Buffalo's only medical recommendation was more and more slow rehab. Also interesting that Vegas was like, "yeah, you did the research, sure, whatever you want to do." Also interesting, but not unexpected, that Eichel didn't mention firing his agent. Something was up here, and it doesn't seem like it was in the Hockey Department. Maybe team insurance on Eichel's contract was saying ADR isn't covered? Maybe egos playing among the doctors about who gets to heal the star?

Tuch gushing about his Sabres fandom: Give him an 'A' right now.

Because Phoenix is the 11th largest television market in the US and doesn't have the lowest ratings. Doesn't matter if the team is hemorrhaging money if the carrot of more money is dangling in front of the ass.

http://www.sabrespace.com/community/ignore/

pp soft