IKnowPhysics

Filppula played against some tough competition last year and put up good numbers, but his possession number were trash. Maybe you put him at 2nd line C and slip Enzo, who has great poession numbers, to his wing.

Vyacheslav Kozlov and future considerations. What, too soon? I would take Ian White and either Patrick Eaves or Brendan Smith for Stafford and a 4th. White's stock obviously has taken a hit since Lidstrom retired. I feel like there's a more useful return for Stafford coming from somewhere else though.

Outstanding game, certainly one the more entertaining games this season. Great competition from both teams. Finally a complete three-period effort from the Sabres, and fighting back from behind to boot. Defense looked much better out there tonight in general. Good steady play from Ehrhoff, Myers, and Leopold all game long. Foligno played a very intense game, I think he's been learning from Ott.

Those unscientific mutha######as.

Troof. It's still a little early yet (maybe before we see what shakes out at the deadline, draft, and July 1) to judge Ennis long term at C. Myers is a good pick; he's almost right there for me with Pominville, Ott.

That's about right. Ott's freely interchangelable with Pominville in this game for me right now. I'm not surprised that no else said Ennis, but I believe in him.

This is the part where I'm really supposed to go off the deep end and and say ###### like "you gotta give up something to get something" or "you undervalue our players," whichever's convenient, to qualify all of my ######. Apparently nothing we have is of any value. We've played ourselves into player asset bankruptcy! Woe is us! --- Sneaky sneaky. I couldn't say for sure that they woudn't trade a work-in-progress franchise defensemen for a right-now franchise goaltender and what might turn out to be a pick in the 31st-37th overall range. Hell, throw a 3rd rounder on there too since I'm making ###### up anyways. Bonus: Miller's a brand name that could be useful in selling hockey out there. But E-L does look good, he'd be a great guy to build a very strong back end around for years to come, and he takes the pressure off of Myers a little.

Good effort, OP. I appreciate time and thoughtfulness put into new ways of looking at statistics. What stood out to me a little, is that the three stats you tracked: the first is determined in a major way by games in which a team allows more than three (which correlates strongly to winning/losing, of course), the second is defined by a team winning/losing the game, and the third correlates strongly to the team winning/losing. As a result, I am totally unsurprised by this- sort of: I would suggest that any team's winning percentage, if that's what you used to define living and dying, would track those three stats because of their correlation to winning/losing, but not necessarily as a result of the performance of the goaltender. It's sort of akin to comparing two goaltenders' performance over a season by comparing the number of wins- there's several other factors and the causal relationship isn't necessarily intact. It seems like these stats could make ANY team live and die by their goalie. If there's evidence to the contrary of what I'm supposing, ie a goaltender was considered by the stats to be elite that belonged to a losing team OR a winning team that has a starting goalie that's bad in these stats, I'd be interested to see that.

I'm not usually one for zany trade ideas, but I'd think about the following: Offer Drew Stafford and Jordan Leopold to the Anaheim Ducks for either Jonas Hiller straight up or Victor Fasth and Bryan Allen. Maybe toss in a late round pick to Anaheim on top. Offer Ryan Miller and a 2nd round pick to the Phoenix Coyotes for Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Perhaps try to pull Marcel Goc out of Florida for a reasonable price.

With those two goals, Steve Ott now has nine points in his last ten games.

Theoretically, we could pay him more and give him a higher paid roster.

Mike Komisarek waived by Toronto. Played 2 games so far this year and is 8th on the depth chart. Cap hit: $4.5M. Was -13 in 45 games last year. Player usage charts indicate he was trash last year. Not sure anyone will want to touch this one.

Big game coming up. Montreal Canadiens This game tells the tale. Either they sack up and play, Or players regret this day.

Interesting. Kassian 26GP 5G 3A 8P -7 Hodgson 29GP 12G 12A 24P -1 Hodgson has 9 points, +5 in the last 10 games; Kassian 0 points, -6 in the last 10. In that 10 game span, Sabres picked up 11 points. In the 12 games before that, six points. In those previous 12 game span, Hodsgon recorded nine points, but was -6. Not only has Hodgson been producing well offensively and at least somewhat consistently, if +/- is any indication*, he's improving his two way play as the season progresses. Kassian appears to be struggling some. *I know, I know. +/- blows.

I would enjoy seeing Tyler Myers score this evening. It'd be a nice touch on his progress this season. Not sure it'll happen, but I'd enjoy it. edit: This post has nothing to do with the previous post.

Montreal Canadiennes, amirite?

"Don't crap your pants trying to dig the latrine." -Me, just now

Shouldn't change captains without first establishing who'd be a better captain. In 14 replying posts, the only Sabre names that came up were Hodgson, Foligno, Ott, Weber, Kaleta, and Scott. I'm not convinced. Maybe Hodgson in a few years. Ott has the heart and the work ethic and is probably great in the locker room, but at game time, his forte is talking at the other team, not leading his own team.

Yep there it is there.

My rhetorical question meter is on "borderline," but I'll bite anyways. Miller's age isn't an issue.* If he continues to wear the proper mask, his health won't be an issue either. When they won, Giguere was 29ish, Thomas was 36ish, Osgood was 36ish. Going farther back, Khabibulin was 32ish, Brodeur was 33ish, Hasek was 38ish. Kids won too, of course, Ward, Quick, etc. Maybe it gets to be an issue as Miller passes 36, but if health or conditioning problems get involved. *It's not an issue unless he uses it as a reason to leave town to win somewhere else.

The tally so far from the panel of experts is: Lazy Lazy No way to tell Lack of skill Childhood development Ruff Ruff

Surely a title reserved for Gary Bettman.

Hard to say without seeing an example at speed, and even then, it could be easy to make wrong assumptions about what the coaches have told him to do. Generally speaking, it's one the wings' fundemental defensive responsibilities to NOT get sucked down into the play in the corner, but having said that, the high half wall (above the dots) is a crucial must-win area of the ice in the puck control game. If you lose the puck here, it's dangerous turnover territory.