Risto said it's time for him to go?

[WildCard]

 

[triumph_communes]

23 hours ago, Randall Flagg said:

WAR/GAR models (which also isolate player impacts from team, opponent, and situation) have Cirelli as a top 30 player in the NHL, so it's not just my eye that sees it. 

Mitts was a bad NHL player this year. I completely buy the excuse that it's because he's little and weak, but what Cirelli showed in the NHL this year in terms of potential (of course his raw point total is low when every offensive situation imaginable is force fed to the Stamkos and Point lines, and when his linemates are Joseph and Killorn) dwarfs anything from Mitts' high school year, or his college year, or his NHL year. That's not to say that Mitts can't become a good player, of course he can - but Anthony was an excellent two-way NHL forward this past season, and will explode in the proper setting, just like Brayden Point flipped a switch from 66 point rookie season to top 10 NHL player, despite chasing every team's best player around the ice all night. 

Mitts' development curve is eerily similar to Tyson Jost, however you feel about Tyson Jost. There is plenty of potential, it's just the other guy we're talking about already has a measurable and tremendously positive impact on NHL hockey and is also young with loads of room to grow. 

 

Mittelstadt was an out of shape 19yo who was only one year removed from high school hockey and played a light college schedule in between. His best games unsurprisingly always came after the little breaks in the schedule last season. 

Kids a player, has the heart, smarts, and all the physical attributes you want on the chart.

 

Hes only a disappointment if you thought Housley was going to make the team go the distance last season. Housley never was. 

[darksabre]

12 minutes ago, WildCard said:

 

You can't fix stupid.

[Randall Flagg]

9 minutes ago, triumph_communes said:

 

Mittelstadt was an out of shape 19yo who was only one year removed from high school hockey and played a light college schedule in between. His best games unsurprisingly always came after the little breaks in the schedule last season. 

Kids a player, has the heart, smarts, and all the physical attributes you want on the chart.

 

Hes only a disappointment if you thought Housley was going to make the team go the distance last season. Housley never was. 

He's not a disappointment, he looked exactly like you'd expect a sub-PPG college player to look being thrust into the NHL - bad. I'm not disappointed by it, I expected roughly as much. The only people whose expectations had to shift around are those who thought that because of a 7 game tournament he was destined to be 1C talent.

I don't think he'll always be bad, I just think the clear view of him as a prospect is not what Pronman got everyone all excited for. I still think his ceiling is a 70 point guy that helps give us one of the best center spines in the league. 

[Randall Flagg]

This is why some people love Risto:

This is why others hate him:

(wide open partner, chooses his trademark play instead, Sabres never possess the puck again before Chicago scores, and Risto was off the ice and avoided the "minus" for the play) 

[tom webster]

So just so I’m clear, some on this board don’t want to give up a third round draft choice to acquire a player that we would all be thrilled with if the third round draft choice turned into in five or six years?

[Randall Flagg]

2 minutes ago, tom webster said:

So just so I’m clear, some on this board don’t want to give up a third round draft choice to acquire a player that we would all be thrilled with if the third round draft choice turned into in five or six years?

If this is about vesey, then absolutely you are correct.

[tom webster]

9 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

If this is about vesey, then absolutely you are correct.

And that makes absolutely no sense

[Randall Flagg]

5 minutes ago, tom webster said:

And that makes absolutely no sense

Why not? If I could intentionally snap my fingers and make one of our 7th rounders disappear so that we don't waste a roster spot on Jimmy Vesey next season, and save whatever asset we would theoretically move for him, I'd do it. 

You don't get a better hockey team by plugging in pieces that don't play good hockey, especially when our main problem is that in those same roster positions we have guys who are capable of putting up similar point totals but are similarly incapable of playing consistent, reliable, repetitive high offensive event, low defensive event hockey. You need that to win and Vesey does the opposite. He's a lock to continue our main roster problem, not a solution to it 

[triumph_communes]

54 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

He's not a disappointment, he looked exactly like you'd expect a sub-PPG college player to look being thrust into the NHL - bad. I'm not disappointed by it, I expected roughly as much. The only people whose expectations had to shift around are those who thought that because of a 7 game tournament he was destined to be 1C talent.

I don't think he'll always be bad, I just think the clear view of him as a prospect is not what Pronman got everyone all excited for. I still think his ceiling is a 70 point guy that helps give us one of the best center spines in the league. 

He was the center anchored by Okposo nearly the entire season.  I don’t think he’s a 1C, and I think he would make a better winger, but given his line mates I don’t have any concerns about his last season. When he had Reinhart at wing he was producing PPG pace, Housley was just too awful of a coach to maintain smart lines and instead kept trying to force Eichel-Reinhart to work instead. 

Edited June 21, 2019 by triumph_communes

[Randall Flagg]

11 minutes ago, triumph_communes said:

He was the center anchored by Okposo nearly the entire season.  I don’t think he’s a 1C, and I think he would make a better winger, but given his line mates I don’t have any concerns about his last season. When he had Reinhart at wing he was producing PPG pace, Housley was just too awful of a coach to maintain smart lines and instead kept trying to force Eichel-Reinhart to work instead. 

He had the most offensively sheltered minutes in the league, essentially. Despite not getting a lot of time with our three good scoring forwards, we couldn't have done much more for him than we did. Further, if you try to adjust his stats and metrics for teammates/situation, he winds up looking worse. He was a bad NHLer in the 18-19 season and probably shouldn't have been there. 

I agree that we should have spent more time on the 23-37 duo, especially as the season wound down, but we had to keep Reinhart with Jack and Skinner so that we could continue to win one game out of sixteen. That's more important than actually doing interesting things, and seeing what players can do, dammit! 

[triumph_communes]

2 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

He had the most offensively sheltered minutes in the league, essentially. Despite not getting a lot of time with our three good scoring forwards, we couldn't have done much more for him than we did. Further, if you try to adjust his stats and metrics for teammates/situation, he winds up looking worse. He was a bad NHLer in the 18-19 season and probably shouldn't have been there. 

I agree that we should have spent more time on the 23-37 duo, especially as the season wound down, but we had to keep Reinhart with Jack and Skinner so that we could continue to win one game out of sixteen. That's more important than actually doing interesting things, and seeing what players can do, dammit! 

 

Faceoffs are overrated. He played 4th line minutes with criminal possession losers. 

 

We we could have given him linemates who didn’t just lose the puck every time it hit their stick. Mittelstadt is a player who excels with tic tac toe, and was almost never given a winger who had the hockey IQ to pull that off. 

 

He’s one of those players who will look bad with low hockey iq teammates because he isn’t a puck hog and relies upon his teammates to do equally smart things with the puck. He had awful linemates in college too. Give him smart guys like Reinhart on his line and his production will not just increase like Reinhart might do with others, but exponentially so. 

[Marvin]

In case anyone missed it, McKenzie was on WGR earlier and said that most people around the NHL believe that Ristolainen's problems are 100% of the Sabres making.  The belief is that someone will find him the right partner and he will become what everyone is hoping for.

[darksabre]

3 minutes ago, E4 ... Ke2 said:

In case anyone missed it, McKenzie was on WGR earlier and said that most people around the NHL believe that Ristolainen's problems are 100% of the Sabres making.  The belief is that someone will find him the right partner and he will become what everyone is hoping for.

[LGR4GM]

21 minutes ago, E4 ... Ke2 said:

In case anyone missed it, McKenzie was on WGR earlier and said that most people around the NHL believe that Ristolainen's problems are 100% of the Sabres making.  The belief is that someone will find him the right partner and he will become what everyone is hoping for.

The videos posted are 100% why I believe Risto's defensive zone problems are 100% of Risto's making. 

[Drunkard]

35 minutes ago, darksabre said:

Yes, let's trade him for more darts! If we can get 4 or 5 middling pieces for him I'm fairly confident that one of those pieces might turn into a half way decent player 3 years after Botterill is fired.

[darksabre]

4 minutes ago, Drunkard said:

Yes, let's trade him for more darts! If we can get 4 or 5 middling pieces for him I'm fairly confident that one of those pieces might turn into a half way decent player 3 years after Botterill is fired.

Relax. I'm happy GMs all think they can fix him. That means they'll have to over pay to get him, and that's good.

[Drunkard]

Just now, darksabre said:

Relax. I'm happy GMs all think they can fix him. That means they'll have to over pay to get him, and that's good.

I get it, I just don't want Ristolainen traded, especially by our Dart Thrower in chief. GM's thinking Ristolainen could actually be good doesn't mean Botterill will get anything good for him. Without bringing up the name of "he who shant be named" everyone in the league already knew he was good and that didn't stop Botterill from trading him for magic beans.

[darksabre]

3 minutes ago, Drunkard said:

I get it, I just don't want Ristolainen traded, especially by our Dart Thrower in chief. GM's thinking Ristolainen could actually be good doesn't mean Botterill will get anything good for him. Without bringing up the name of "he who shant be named" everyone in the league already knew he was good and that didn't stop Botterill from trading him for magic beans.

If "everyone" knew O'Reilly was so good then they would have outbid St. Louis for him. They didn't though, did they?

[WildCard]

1 minute ago, darksabre said:

If "everyone" knew O'Reilly was so good then they would have outbid St. Louis for him. They didn't though, did they?

I wish I could super like this

[Drunkard]

6 minutes ago, darksabre said:

If "everyone" knew O'Reilly was so good then they would have outbid St. Louis for him. They didn't though, did they?

A lot of teams couldn't fit him under the cap and there were reportedly several budget teams like Carolina interested in him but they wanted to wait until after his $7.5 million bonus was paid before picking him up. I'm sure after seeing how badly Armstrong spanked Botterill on the trade though teams up against the cap were probably kicking themselves after realizing they could have had the cap space by sending Botterill their cap dumps like St. Louis did with Berglund and Sobotka.

[darksabre]

Just now, Drunkard said:

A lot of teams couldn't fit him under the cap and there were reportedly several budget teams like Carolina interested in him but they wanted to wait until after his $7.5 million bonus was paid before picking him up. I'm sure after seeing how badly Armstrong spanked Botterill on the trade though teams up against the cap were probably kicking themselves after realizing they could have had the cap space by sending Botterill their cap dumps like St. Louis did with Berglund and Sobotka.

They could have offered that. They didn't. 

It's one thing to criticize the trade on its merits.

But it's completely insane to argue that everyone outsmarted Botterill by...not trading for Ryan O'Reilly...and forgetting they could offer cap dumps. 

Everyone is simultaneously smarter and dumber than Botterill. Interesting argument.

[Drunkard]

1 minute ago, darksabre said:

They could have offered that. They didn't. 

It's one thing to criticize the trade on its merits.

But it's completely insane to argue that everyone outsmarted Botterill by...not trading for Ryan O'Reilly...and forgetting they could offer cap dumps. 

Everyone is simultaneously smarter and dumber than Botterill. Interesting argument.

Let's not twist words now, nobody is dumber than Botterill. Other GM's just weren't as smart as Armstrong or they have owners who were too cheap to pay a new guy $7.5 million on his first day.

[darksabre]

1 minute ago, Drunkard said:

Let's not twist words now, nobody is dumber than Botterill. Other GM's just weren't as smart as Armstrong or they have owners who were too cheap to pay a new guy $7.5 million on his first day.

Lol you're talking out your ass bud. 

Either GMs wanted to make a better offer or they didn't. Clearly they didn't. 

[LTS]

Just now, darksabre said:

Lol you're talking out your ass bud. 

Either GMs wanted to make a better offer or they didn't. Clearly they didn't. 

You'll be happier just ignoring him.  Honestly.  He's clearly living up to his name and he's ground the axe so far his fingers are bleeding.  He's not going to stop.