Preseason Points Estimate

[wjag]

Before the crash, we dug up the guess how many points the Sabres will score this year.

 

Since the crash wiped away the official record, you're on the honor system here.

 

I guessed 91 points... I had them under 40 wins and I had something like 15 OTL. No too bad.. But I was way off on playoff positioning. I was naive enough to believe that 91 points would be good enough for 5th place.

 

Do you remember and if so, what was your guess?

[Claude Balls]

I can't remember my exact points guess other than it was in the 80's. I also said they were a 500% club and would not make the playoffs. I hit 1/3, but I would have rather been wrong on that last point.

[Bmwolf21]

I don't remember the points total, but I had them finishing somewhere between 6-8 and obviously qualifying for the playoffs.

[X. Benedict]

Before the crash, we dug up the guess how many points the Sabres will score this year.

 

Since the crash wiped away the official record, you're on the honor system here.

 

I guessed 91 points... I had them under 40 wins and I had something like 15 OTL. No too bad.. But I was way off on playoff positioning. I was naive enough to believe that 91 points would be good enough for 5th place.

 

Do you remember and if so, what was your guess?

 

I am pretty sure I had them at 95 points. 43 wins.

[gregkash]

I had 94 points and 5th in the conference.

[stenbaro]

I had them not missing Drury, or Brierre, Trading soupy and winning the conference and Stanley Cup.....Total harmony in the organization.. :D

[nfreeman]

I will admit I had them fighting for top 3 in the east. I think I also staunchly defended management, as well as my betamax, avocado kitchen and electric blue DeLorean. I don't remember how many points I predicted.

[LabattBlue]

I don't know what I predicted before the season, but about 2 months ago I stated that the Sabres would need 93 points to make the playoffs and ended up being 1 point off(from what they would have needed).

[SabresFan526]

I do not remember point totals before the season, but I, honestly, did not have them making the playoffs this year before the season. I thought they lost too much in the offseason and then with Teppo hurt, I thought it was too much to overcome at the time. In fact, I felt like I was in the minority when I was bashing this management team last summer. But, that's what I predicted before the season started. I really wish my prediction did not come true. Oh well, there's next year.

[Seth Greenstein]

I had something like 95 points but I thought that would a be a nice safe 4 seed. So I was off on many counts... 95 points would have gotten them 6th place instead of 4th... And I missed by 5 points.

[bob_sauve28]

I figured at like 5th or 6th in the conference

 

blah

[GoatheadInCT]

I said 86, so I wasn't far off.. I would have NEVER guessed the Sabres would miss the playoffs and the Bruins

would make it.. what a bunch of bull, huh? lol

[Done]

I will admit I had them fighting for top 3 in the east. I think I also staunchly defended management, as well as my betamax, avocado kitchen and electric blue DeLorean. I don't remember how many points I predicted.

 

I give you credit. Once it went from clowns like me taking an educated guess that the team was headed for the crapper, to the actual facts of heading to the crapper....you weren't worried about keeping to your story and looked at the season for what it was. That takes character.

[nfreeman]

I give you credit. Once it went from clowns like me taking an educated guess that the team was headed for the crapper, to the actual facts of heading to the crapper....you weren't worried about keeping to your story and looked at the season for what it was. That takes character.

 

Thank you sir. I think I overestimated the impact of talent and, although I was concerned about leadership, I underestimated the impact of loss of leadership.

 

Maybe I'm crazy, but I still think this team is very talented. I even think we have pretty good talent on the blueline. It's just that so much of the game is between the ears, and I really think the pressure got to Tallinder, Lydman and Kalinin. Between the loss of the goal-scoring cushion in Drury and Briere (we scored 47 fewer goals this year than last year), the loss of the steady vet in Teppo, and Miller's slow start, I think those 3 felt a ton of pressure, they weren't confident, they didn't play very well, they knew they weren't playing well, it hurt their confidence more, and it all just snowballed. Throw in Paetsch blowing his opportunity to step up into a legit top 6 role, and Soupy playing like he was shellshocked after he realized we weren't going to pony up for him (I thought that he had a great start to the season but a crappy last 4-6 weeks before he was traded), and our defense turned from a strength into a weakness.

 

That's just the D. Similar problems abounded with the forwards.

 

Bottom line is that I'm not throwing in the towel on this team yet. As I've stated previously, I think we are going to sign Miller and Pominville (and Quinn's comments today are encouraging in that regard) and add a couple of decent but unspectacular guys, and I will end up being pretty optimistic when October rolls around.

[bob_sauve28]

Thank you sir. I think I overestimated the impact of talent and, although I was concerned about leadership, I underestimated the impact of loss of leadership.

 

Maybe I'm crazy, but I still think this team is very talented. I even think we have pretty good talent on the blueline. It's just that so much of the game is between the ears, and I really think the pressure got to Tallinder, Lydman and Kalinin. Between the loss of the goal-scoring cushion in Drury and Briere (we scored 47 fewer goals this year than last year), the loss of the steady vet in Teppo, and Miller's slow start, I think those 3 felt a ton of pressure, they weren't confident, they didn't play very well, they knew they weren't playing well, it hurt their confidence more, and it all just snowballed. Throw in Paetsch blowing his opportunity to step up into a legit top 6 role, and Soupy playing like he was shellshocked after he realized we weren't going to pony up for him (I thought that he had a great start to the season but a crappy last 4-6 weeks before he was traded), and our defense turned from a strength into a weakness.

 

That's just the D. Similar problems abounded with the forwards.

 

Bottom line is that I'm not throwing in the towel on this team yet. As I've stated previously, I think we are going to sign Miller and Pominville (and Quinn's comments today are encouraging in that regard) and add a couple of decent but unspectacular guys, and I will end up being pretty optimistic when October rolls around.

You are not crazy at all, this team is very talented. That's interesting though, 47 fewer goals, wow, and we were still third in league in scoring. How many more did we give up?

 

Losing Teppo really hurt. I bet that cost us 20 goals against and some more for. Pratt is ok, but just not quick enough. Patsche I'm losing confidence in, though I wouldn't give up on him for a while.

[Bmwolf21]

You are not crazy at all, this team is very talented. That's interesting though, 47 fewer goals, wow, and we were still third in league in scoring. How many more did we give up?

Losing Teppo really hurt. I bet that cost us 20 goals against and some more for. Pratt is ok, but just not quick enough. Patsche I'm losing confidence in, though I wouldn't give up on him for a while.

A quick look at NHL.com shows they allowed five fewer goals on the year:

 

2006-07 - 238 GA; 2.90 GA/Game

2007-08 - 233 GA; 2.84 GA/Game

[carpandean]

Losing Teppo really hurt. I bet that cost us 20 goals against and some more for.

While I think that managements original plan for leadership with Drury up front and Teppo on the blue line would have made this team a contender this year, I do also believe that just Teppo would have had a huge impact on this team's fragile minds. I don't think he was necessarily enough to make them a contender, but we'd still be playing right now.

 

 

 

As for my prediction: I'm usually somewhere between optimist and realist, so I probably said 93-95 points and in 6-7 place.

[carpandean]

A quick look at NHL.com shows they allowed five fewer goals on the year:

2006-07 - 238 GA; 2.90 GA/Game

2007-08 - 233 GA; 2.84 GA/Game

That's still a 42 goal change in the GF/GA differential and our GF stat this year was inflated by several blowout wins.

[SabresFan526]

That's still a 42 goal change in the GF/GA differential and our GF stat this year was inflated by several blowout wins.

We lost 69 goals to free agency and Vanek had 7 fewer than last year and let's not even talk about Max. Roy made up some of the difference, Pominville scored less goals but got more points, Hecht hit the 20 goal mark, Kotalik hit the 20 goal mark (improving over last year's 16), and Paille had 19 goals. There were some players that definitely did a lot to cut the loss in goals, but when you take 69 goals away from the offense there is going to be a significant drop off in production. Even if we took this year's number for Briere and Drury, that's 31 goals for Briere and 25 goals for Drury. So, that's still a loss of 56 goals that left in the offseason. This team definitely scored goals, but not nearly as many as last year, and when they did score goals it was in bunches like 7, 8, 10, 6, 5, but those games were few and far between and inflated the total goal count. This team lacked consistency in all facets of their game, but also in scoring goals as well. Scoring a lot of goals because of a few really high scoring games is one thing, but scoring a lot of goals by consistently putting up 4-5 goals a game is another story altogether. I'd rather have the latter than the former.

[Bmwolf21]

We lost 69 goals to free agency and Vanek had 7 fewer than last year and let's not even talk about Max. Roy made up some of the difference, Pominville scored less goals but got more points, Hecht hit the 20 goal mark, Kotalik hit the 20 goal mark (improving over last year's 16), and Paille had 19 goals. There were some players that definitely did a lot to cut the loss in goals, but when you take 69 goals away from the offense there is going to be a significant drop off in production. Even if we took this year's number for Briere and Drury, that's 31 goals for Briere and 25 goals for Drury. So, that's still a loss of 56 goals that left in the offseason. This team definitely scored goals, but not nearly as many as last year, and when they did score goals it was in bunches like 7, 8, 10, 6, 5, but those games were few and far between and inflated the total goal count. This team lacked consistency in all facets of their game, but also in scoring goals as well. Scoring a lot of goals because of a few really high scoring games is one thing, but scoring a lot of goals by consistently putting up 4-5 goals a game is another story altogether. I'd rather have the latter than the former.

Yep. I finally finished breaking down the offensive numbers, and we had 17 blowout games where we scored 5 or more goals. In those 17 games we amassed 107 goals, or roughly 45% of our total for the year. Our record in those 17 games - not surprisingly, 17-0-0.

 

We also had 38 games where we scored two or fewer - that breaks down into:

 

--Shutout four times (0-4-0)

--Held to One goal 14 times (2-9-3)

--Scored two goals 20 times (4-11-5)

 

Record in the low-offense games: 6-24-8.

[inkman]

Record in the low-offense games: 6-24-8.

That is beyond ugly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If their D isn't addressed this offseason...Geronimooooooo!

[JujuFish]

I don't recall this thread, but if I participated in it, there is no way the optimist in me would not have them in the playoffs.

[R_Dudley]

I had 94 points and 5th in the conference.

 

Ditto that number however I thought that would've been good enough for anywhere from 5th to 8th slot.

[tom webster]

Ditto that number however I thought that would've been good enough for anywhere from 5th to 8th slot.

 

 

I wasn't posting back then, but as disheartened as I was by their off season, I had them in the 5th or 6th spot in the conference.

[That Aud Smell]

i saw them at just <90 points and in the 9 or 10-slot - i would've been happy to have been very wrong.

 

while i know it's not an apples-apples comparison, i do take some solace in the fact that, like us this year, montreal finished with 90 points and in 10th place in 06-07.

 

go sabres.