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Spoke to fiend who is a senior amateur scout for NHL team: His take on Cozens is he is good player with definite chance to be a good second line center in the league. He is big, good skills, very good skater, and can make plays at top speed. I have been very hesitant to get on Dylan bandwagon, but was happy to hear this. FYI: there are only 10-15 true first line centers in the league. When the scout says he could be a good second line center that is a big compliment. Like saying a pitcher could be a number two starter. There are only 5-10 true number one starters in baseball. The aces. Second line centers can play in any situation, and will be among top 20% scorers depending on PP time.

Though this is too early, I wanted to starting think about what the Sabres options might be for drafting another top flight center next year because it appears you can never have enough. Here are some articles already out there: https://dobberprospects.com/2020-nhl-draft-rankings-november-2018/ https://www.eliteprospects.com/draft-center/2020 https://www.draftgeek.ca/nhl-draft-2020/ https://thepuckauthority.com/the-historic-talent-of-the-2020-nhl-entry-draft/ http://insider.espn.com/nhl/insider/story/_/id/27059799/20-2020-way-too-early-nhl-draft-rankings https://www.dudedaily.ca/top-2020-nhl-draft-prospects/

"Hey, kid. You need to see the private room we have in this place on Chippewa. Oh yeah, Chippewa is an Indian word for 'many crabs.' We do blow off of Keith Radford's back. Give me your InstaSnap and we'll hook you up, brahski." This is how ya do it, Doohickie.

With the Fasching trade, the Pilut signing and the draft, who are our top prospects? I’m going to stick to players 23 and under with limited to no NHL games. I try to balance age, upside and time until NHL impact. 1) Dahlin 2) Mittelstadt 3) Guhle 4) Pilut 5) Olofsson 6) Asplund 7) Davidsson 8) Nylander 9) Pu 10) Borgen 11) Smith 12) Samuelsson 13) Johansson 14) UPL 15) Hickey 16) Baptiste 17) Bailey 18) Weissbach 19) Fitzgerald 20) Pekar 21) Bryson 22) Oglevie 23) Laaksonen 24) Malone 25) Cornel O’Regan and Ullmark are aged out of this list

This year, several Sabres, past and present, played in DaBeautyLeague, a Summer 4 on 4 hockey league. The league's season is now over. Here are some point totals for our guys and my personal reviews. The league didn't post +/-, so I only have point totals. Mind you that in a 4 on 4 Summer league, point totals are going to be highly inflated. [I am NOT a scout...just some of my observations.] B. Boeser 9gp 16g 18a 34pts For comparison the leading scorer was Brock Boeser; he was phenomenal day in day out. He's an example for why I wanted Jim Benning as our GM. Z. Bogosian 5gp 4g 9a 12pts. Zach played OK. He showed some offensive flair with a nice shot on display for his goals. Unfortunately, his defense wasn't stellar. He made a completely bone-headed play in the semi-finals that helped cost his team the game. [He pinned a guy along the boards and then just stayed there while the play ended up coming back to the front of the net.] Hudson Fasching 9gp 5g 6a 11pts. I didn't see him score any goals personally. From what I saw he was the Rochester Fasching, i.e. has tools but cannot score. Casey Nelson 9gp 2g 7a 9pts. Casey was solid albeit unspectacular. C.J. Smith 6gp 2g 5a 7pts C.J. was solid albeit unspectacular. Casey Mittelstadt 4gp 1g 3a 4pts On his one goal, it was the Casey that makes us drool. The rest of the time, his play seemed a bit uninspired. And then he dropped out of the league after just 4 games. He wasn't injured because he played with Eichel in a Buffalo beer league afterwards. I know that it's just a Summer league. And as the games went on and grew in importance, intensity improved somewhat. I guess that we'll have to wait for the prospect tournament and training camp to see how Casey fits in. Sam Reinhart 1gp 1g 1a 2pts. With his team down, Sam pushed hard to score the tying goal. Yay. But then he made a blind pass to the opponet's crease which ended up at the blue line and was taken in for a break-away for the game winning goal. Ouch. The play-by-play guys were also playing things a bit loose. So, I'm sure that I missed some play by our guys as I didn't have everyone's numbers memorized and the camera work was not top shelf. But there you have it, some feedback on the DaBeautyLeague for 2018.

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