Sabres @ Ottawa 7:30 ET, MSG and ESPN+

[triumph_communes]

We lost our starting goalie to a freak accident and our back up goalie is a tire fire this season. Goalie problems are hazard to fix. Our prospects with promise are still young. 

[Curt]

6 hours ago, 7+6=13 said:

Now you don't have an opinion - you had plenty the last couple days.  Well there's going to be more not traded that aren't on the team next year.  I guess he's going against your wishes and he should.

I'll say it again.  It's not about for nothing if you care about the remainder of this year.  Yesterday you didn't today you do.  I can't follow your changing philosophy.

I honestly can not make sense of what you are trying to say here.  I don’t understand what you are accusing me of.

Buffalo really only has 5 UFA NHL players, all forwards, Frolik, Sheary, Vesey, Girgs, Lars.  There is also Sobotka, Wilson and Gilmour but I doubt they would garner any deadline interest.  I think that Botterill should trade any of those guys who he is sure that he does not want bring back for next season.

That’s all.  It’s not a complicated philosophy.  I don’t believe that I’ve contradicted this opinion previously.  If I did, please show me.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Curt

[Beer]

Glad I missed the EN Shawty

 

Trade deadline has me worried.  I don’t trust JB to make the right moves.  Hopefully he just moves the UFA’s for future assets.  Let a new GM take over this off-season.

[Carmel Corn]

8 hours ago, Brawndo said:

 

Sorry, but the caption of this video is incorrect.  It was actually before the game when JBot heard that Montreal got a 2nd and 4th for Scandella.

[Torpedo Forecheck]

6 hours ago, PerreaultForever said:

I think Montreal getting a second rounder for Scandella proves this to be true. 

That may have been the worst thing about yesterday and for JBot.

[eman]

8 hours ago, Ross Rhea said:

Hahaha, eff you JBots, I had hopes he was going to be good, it's turning out not only is he not good, he doesn't even appear competent. He's gotta go, IDK how he can be kept, it's  one thing to be bad at something, it's  totally different to be inept like JBot is. This team is sad.

I'm giving him one more off season to right this ship. Only because he inherited some garbage contracts from his predecessor and because there are some good youthful pieces in Rochester and the organisation. If they are in the same position this time next year, he must absolutely go. (and if they are, I believe Jack and his agent will be making some noise about departing as well, maybe not that we'll know about, but I can't believe Jack will want to stay if this repeats itself next year- how could he?) Here's hoping he can swing a deal or 2 that makes this club more competitive.

[Stoner]

11 hours ago, Thorny said:

The missed penalty shot call was a potential 2 goal swing. 

I honestly just feel bad for him at this point. You blame someone for all their mistakes but I see him genuinely upset and, it just feels sh*TTy, with captial ts. 

I don't think Johansson was in control of the puck when he was first hooked. The interesting question then is would he have gotten control of it had he not been hooked? That's how the rule is written. Tough call. It'll probably end up on some video reel for ref training.

11 hours ago, Andrew Amerk said:

This is some superb acting right here. 

???

Get mad, Jerry.

9 hours ago, Randall Flagg said:

I guess I understand not trusting Johansson, and keeping Hutton out there. I guess.

But where tf was the timeout after the third, or fourth, goal?

I have more to say but I'm sleepy

Maybe there's some fancy stat that says those timeouts don't work.

8 hours ago, Kruppstahl said:

He knows cameras are on him; he's not stupid.  He's totally inept, but not stupid.

This team is almost all his.  And it's garbage. 

 

Interesting question. Did he know he was on camera? Why would he think he was? Did I hear he was being shown throughout the game? If so, then, yeah, his media relations person should have given him a heads-up.

[Randall Flagg]

6 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

I don't think Johansson was in control of the puck when he was first hooked. The interesting question then is would he have gotten control of it had he not been hooked? That's how the rule is written. Tough call. It'll probably end up on some video reel for ref training.

Get mad, Jerry.

Maybe there's some fancy stat that says those timeouts don't work.

Interesting question. Did he know he was on camera? Why would he think he was? Did I hear he was being shown throughout the game? If so, then, yeah, his media relations person should have given him a heads-up.

Whether or not there are stats on timeouts, the root of the discussion would be whether or not timeouts can settle a team down, which can most bluntly be summarized by the game returning to a manageable state in which goals aren't being scored on you right away. 

We didn't take the timeouts, and kept getting dismantled and scored on by Ottawa, within seconds.

The goalie and the team were obviously out of sorts by the time goal number 2 was scored, much less number 4

[Wyldnwoody44]

I got a bit of flack for being pessimistic before the Toronto game, I implicitly said after the nice win, that we can't turn around and lose to a bottom feeder. And viola, teams that make the playoffs simply don't lose this game after winning the last one in that fashion (no often anyways) 

All that hope (tiny as it may be) from the TO game is now gone and here we are all upset again. I'm not as upset because I saw the writing on the wall and even though that was a nice game last time out, we simply can't sustain it. 

Jbot has effectively been successful with severing ties with several long time fans, creating apathy and assembling a team that simply is not good enough and doesn't entertain or play exciting hockey. In a sport where entertainment is honestly not that hard to achieve, he managed to make it possible. 

Sad day for sabres fans everywhere, I am really hopeful this turns around sometime soon, each passing year that goes by with similar results the more and more we lost could be fans of the younger generation. 

[Randall Flagg]

We've given a goalie with a .894 save percentage behind a defense that is statistically slightly better than average, 25 starts in 60 games

[LGR4GM]

4 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

We've given a goalie with a .894 save percentage behind a defense that is statistically slightly better than average, 25 starts in 60 games

Wait until he is on the team again next season.

[darksabre]

Just now, Randall Flagg said:

We've given a goalie with a .894 save percentage behind a defense that is statistically slightly better than average, 25 starts in 60 games

Can't waive him though. That would be dead cap that we need for *checks notes* Michael Frolik.

[DarthEbriate]

7 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

We've given a goalie with a .894 save percentage behind a defense that is statistically slightly better than average, 25 starts in 60 games

To be fair, one-third of those starts he was 6-1-1 with 2 shutouts and .926 %. October ... it's such a long way from here.

(That's your uncle talking.)

How I'm ever going to explain this?

(Learn about the Moulson, Darth.)

[Randall Flagg]

On Ralph: 
The top line continues to struggle at 5v5 with Olofsson. The way the team is built, they need their top line firing on all cylinders to compete, and with Olofsson all major metrics are substantially worse for the top line compared to without him. In addition to this, the top line scores goals 20% more frequently without Olofsson, and they allow goals 27% less frequently without Olofsson. It may be helping Victor to develop in the tough minutes that come with playing next to Jack Eichel, but it doesn't help the team. 

Meanwhile, I understand the idea of not giving Skinner minutes he hasn't earned. But this hasn't worked to spur him, because it's not effort that is the problem. This isn't a defense of Skinner, who is on the hook for his own production ultimately, especially with that contract. But he isn't refusing to work. We have seen two of Skinner's best games in a long time both last night and against Columbus, and they continue the trend of him being able to generate, but not bury, dangerous chances. Hell, the play he made to steal the puck, get it to Sheary, almost score out of mid-air, and then tie up the defender's stick so Montour could bury the puck, is probably a top 5 Skinner sequence as a Buffalo Sabre. And it gave us all a flashback of the situations in which Skinner was so dangerous. 

When there is netfront chaos. 

Watch his highlight reel from last season. he feasted on chaos created in the area of the ice that the Sabres are historically horrible at doing anything with. He did the same thing to be dangerous against Columbus, and in Ottawa on that first goal. The issue is, he doesn't GENERATE the chaos, he isn't strong enough at making decisions or moves with the puck on his stick to set it up AND finish. He was so good with Jack because Jack can create chaos, and Jeff can finish. We just haven't seen Jeff involved in this chaos, because Lazar, Rodrigues, Sheary don't create it with regularity. 

At this point, I would say that Olofsson hasn't "earned" 5v5 top line ice time either. He has 7 goals at even strength with Jack in 44 games. Skinner would get to 7 in less than half that time if we move him there, I'd bet anyone on this forum $50. Again, I am not absolving Skinner of his performance of late. I am responding to the reminder that last night gave me about who Skinner is, and am proposing a solution that fixes two problems at once (the top line struggling with Olofsson on the ice, and Skinner being ice cold). Every single great Olofsson moment of the past three games still happens without him on the top line, as they all  came in OT or on the PP. We lose nothing except our disadvantage in the only area that we have a chance for success. 

[LGR4GM]

Stop using logic and data, the Sabres prefer to use stupidity and blind stubbornness. 

[Taro T]

Thing is, everybody's focused in the moment on last night's loss.  Though it's frustrating, it isn't damning.

The damning losses were the one at home to the Otters and the 1 at home to Detroit. 

And a better reason to be mad at the Otters isn't playing hard last night and taking advantage of a mentally frail (at present) goalie; it's that they started THEIR tire fire goalie at home against the Loafs and lost a very winnable game (Andersson went in at 0-3 and they nearly came back and lost 2-3) against their big rival who our Sabres just happen to be chasing so they could save Andersson for the Dallas game.  And they then go and start Andersson against the Sabres.  Even though he played poorly last night, he didn't play poorly enough; maybe their backup scrub could've out-Huttoned Hutton.

All hope isn't lost - the Loafs are a tire fire, but Florida could be tough to catch, especially when indications are the Sabres are only going to get ~ 22 of their final 44 available points.  84 isn't going to be remotely good enough.

But change the outcome of just those 3 games (2 Sabres home games & Otter Loaf game) and the Sabres are 2 back of TO with a game in hand.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Taro T

[Stoner]

1 hour ago, Randall Flagg said:

On Ralph: 
The top line continues to struggle at 5v5 with Olofsson. The way the team is built, they need their top line firing on all cylinders to compete, and with Olofsson all major metrics are substantially worse for the top line compared to without him. In addition to this, the top line scores goals 20% more frequently without Olofsson, and they allow goals 27% less frequently without Olofsson. It may be helping Victor to develop in the tough minutes that come with playing next to Jack Eichel, but it doesn't help the team. 

Meanwhile, I understand the idea of not giving Skinner minutes he hasn't earned. But this hasn't worked to spur him, because it's not effort that is the problem. This isn't a defense of Skinner, who is on the hook for his own production ultimately, especially with that contract. But he isn't refusing to work. We have seen two of Skinner's best games in a long time both last night and against Columbus, and they continue the trend of him being able to generate, but not bury, dangerous chances. Hell, the play he made to steal the puck, get it to Sheary, almost score out of mid-air, and then tie up the defender's stick so Montour could bury the puck, is probably a top 5 Skinner sequence as a Buffalo Sabre. And it gave us all a flashback of the situations in which Skinner was so dangerous. 

When there is netfront chaos. 

Watch his highlight reel from last season. he feasted on chaos created in the area of the ice that the Sabres are historically horrible at doing anything with. He did the same thing to be dangerous against Columbus, and in Ottawa on that first goal. The issue is, he doesn't GENERATE the chaos, he isn't strong enough at making decisions or moves with the puck on his stick to set it up AND finish. He was so good with Jack because Jack can create chaos, and Jeff can finish. We just haven't seen Jeff involved in this chaos, because Lazar, Rodrigues, Sheary don't create it with regularity. 

At this point, I would say that Olofsson hasn't "earned" 5v5 top line ice time either. He has 7 goals at even strength with Jack in 44 games. Skinner would get to 7 in less than half that time if we move him there, I'd bet anyone on this forum $50. Again, I am not absolving Skinner of his performance of late. I am responding to the reminder that last night gave me about who Skinner is, and am proposing a solution that fixes two problems at once (the top line struggling with Olofsson on the ice, and Skinner being ice cold). Every single great Olofsson moment of the past three games still happens without him on the top line, as they all  came in OT or on the PP. We lose nothing except our disadvantage in the only area that we have a chance for success. 

This is pretty good cherrypicking and warms my cockles because it shows that our rational Dr. Spock here is human like the rest of us country doctors. You simply ignored some of his horrendous moments, which my eye test says outnumbered his great moments. HE HASN'T SCORED SINCE THE EIGHTH GRADE PICNIC!!!! Sorry to go all Howard Simon. It's not any more complicated than that. Look, listen, stop, drop and roll: RaKru decided he wanted Skinner on the second line because he wasn't defensively responsible enough to play with Jack and he wanted more scoring down the lineup. Everyone, including Jeff, will have to get used to it. As I postulated recently, Ralph might have set it up that way because he wanted to establish his line setup from the get-go, even though he knew he was missing a major piece on the second line. (The players fit the system yada yada yada.)

[Randall Flagg]

16 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

This is pretty good cherrypicking and warms my cockles because it shows that our rational Dr. Spock here is human like the rest of us country doctors. You simply ignored some of his horrendous moments, which my eye test says outnumbered his great moments. HE HASN'T SCORED SINCE THE EIGHTH GRADE PICNIC!!!! Sorry to go all Howard Simon. It's not any more complicated than that. Look, listen, stop, drop and roll: RaKru decided he wanted Skinner on the second line because he wasn't defensively responsible enough to play with Jack and he wanted more scoring down the lineup. Everyone, including Jeff, will have to get used to it. As I postulated recently, Ralph might have set it up that way because he wanted to establish his line setup from the get-go, even though he knew he was missing a major piece on the second line. (The players fit the system yada yada yada.)

I don't care why Ralph set it up, I just think we can both bring Skinner back from the dead and improve the play of the single most important part of our team, which isn't good enough with Olofsson there, with one single move. 

Hockey-wise, with how Skinner plays and produces historically, my explanation for why it would work feels pretty sound, and you did nothing to address it, so I'm going to stick with it. I'm not bashing your coach, I'm trying to fix problems that are currently plaguing your coach's lineup (I don't mean this to come off as mean as it does, I just feel that you can get touchy for things that may tangentially implicate Ralph, especially if it paints Buffalo Bill in a positive light, have removed the 'boyfriend,' which was uncalled for) 

Meanwhile, show me some film of his horrendous moments versus Columbus and Ottawa? Are you including when he had to play defense on the shorty? Not a good look, but that's not something I'd expect him to know how to do, and so it's not nearly as "horrendous" as, say, Eichel's mis-play in the NZ leading to the 4th Ottawa goal, defensively. Otherwise, I'm not ignoring anything, though I may be forgetting something. Those games could have been plucked out of his hot stretch last year. 

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by Randall Flagg

[Stoner]

19 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

I don't care why Ralph set it up, I just think we can both bring Skinner back from the dead and improve the play of the single most important part of our team, which isn't good enough with Olofsson there, with one single move. 

Hockey-wise, with how Skinner plays and produces historically, my explanation for why it would work feels pretty sound, and you did nothing to address it, so I'm going to stick with it. I'm not bashing your coach, I'm trying to fix problems that are currently plaguing your coach's lineup (I don't mean this to come off as mean as it does, I just feel that you can get touchy for things that may tangentially implicate Ralph, especially if it paints Buffalo Bill in a positive light, have removed the 'boyfriend,' which was uncalled for) 

Meanwhile, show me some film of his horrendous moments versus Columbus and Ottawa? Are you including when he had to play defense on the shorty? Not a good look, but that's not something I'd expect him to know how to do, and so it's not nearly as "horrendous" as, say, Eichel's mis-play in the NZ leading to the 4th Ottawa goal, defensively. Otherwise, I'm not ignoring anything, though I may be forgetting something. Those games could have been plucked out of his hot stretch last year. 

 

He's your coach, too. What a terrible place to be as a fan. Hell, even I'd say Terry's my owner.

As for boyfriends, MINE doesn't need chaos in the crease in order to score! Just some wine, three blue pills and Perry Como on the record player.

Edited February 19, 2020 by PASabreFan

[Randall Flagg]

5 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

He's your coach, too. What a terrible place to be as a fan. Hell, even I'd say Terry's my owner.

As for boyfriends, MINE doesn't need chaos in the crease in order to score! Just some wine, three blue pills and Perry Como on the record player.

And I like him, that's just the overarching, meta battle I felt taking place in this conversation, so I phrased it that way for dramatic effect 

I do stress that I'm not saying "Skinner is absolved and Ralph is to blame." 

Just, we have what we have right now, what do we do from here? That's my suggestion, simply because I think it would work. 

Get a 2C this offseason and we can go back to Ralph's original idea. And hopefully Olofsson will better handle these minutes. I'm sure he will. 

Edited February 19, 2020 by Randall Flagg

[Stoner]

5 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

And I like him, that's just the overarching, meta battle I felt taking place in this conversation, so I phrased it that way for dramatic effect 

I do stress that I'm not saying "Skinner is absolved and Ralph is to blame." 

Just, we have what we have right now, what do we do from here? That's my suggestion, simply because I think it would work. 

Get a 2C this offseason and we can go back to Ralph's original idea. And hopefully Olofsson will better handle these minutes. I'm sure he will. 

I suspect this was an evaluation year from the start, and they wanted to see what Skinner could do on the second line (and what VO could do with Jack). I see no reason that they'd change now and put Skinner back with Jack, what with the team being essentially out of it. They didn't do it when they were still in the race, so what does that tell you?

[Kruppstahl]

2 hours ago, PASabreFan said:

I don't think Johansson was in control of the puck when he was first hooked. The interesting question then is would he have gotten control of it had he not been hooked? That's how the rule is written. Tough call. It'll probably end up on some video reel for ref training.

Get mad, Jerry.

Maybe there's some fancy stat that says those timeouts don't work.

Interesting question. Did he know he was on camera? Why would he think he was? Did I hear he was being shown throughout the game? If so, then, yeah, his media relations person should have given him a heads-up.

He knows he was *potentially* on camera at any moment through the game, because he's not an idiot.

He's a GM in the hot seat of a struggling team and he went on the road with them to watch the game from a box.

Of course he's going to end up on camera several times during the game, and it's on him to know that, and of course he would.

The prudent thing for him to do would be to assume he is on camera for the entire game, and measure his actions accordingly.

I watched the Ottawa feed and they showed him like 3 or 4 times while commenting on the woes of the Sabres organization throughout the game.

Everything about Botterill's public image, actions, comments, appearance, is measured and artificial. It's not a big leap to suggest he was aware of being filmed.

I am not suggesting, however, that his reaction is fake.  I'm sure he's upset as hell.  Mostly b/c he knows he is going to be out of a high paying job soon, and will probably never have another one just like it.

 

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by Kruppstahl

[Randall Flagg]

4 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

I suspect this was an evaluation year from the start, and they wanted to see what Skinner could do on the second line (and what VO could do with Jack). I see no reason that they'd change now and put Skinner back with Jack, what with the team being essentially out of it. They didn't do it when they were still in the race, so what does that tell you?

I mean I think if they saw it the way I do (which is surely simplistic and lacking in information they have) they'd make the change just to benefit the team, if they thought it would. 

So it sure might tell me that I have it wrong. But that's not enough for me to abandon the idea, I would need to see their point of view fleshed out and then be convinced that it is more correct 

Edmonton fans described Ralph as a bit stubborn, so it could be nothing more than him sticking with this idea too for sure, but again, none of us really know the discussions going on internally

[WildCard]

5 minutes ago, Kruppstahl said:

He knows he was *potentially* on camera at any moment through the game, because he's not an idiot.

Debatable

[Randall Flagg]

That original post began with an "On Krueger" because I'm doing one about Botts centered on this game too. 

On Botterill: 
There was only one thing about this game that made me mad. It wasn't the goalie situation, or the forward depth. I think they played hard, so it wasn't effort. I wasn't mad at coaching, though I have no idea why we didn't use a timeout. 

Go back to his introductory press conference in 2017. Paul Hamilton asks a question about Jason's vision for the team.
"What I like about the group right now is, this is a league that thrives on centermen."
In 2020, we have two NHL centers under contract: Jack Eichel and Johan Larsson. We have Curtis Lazar, Evan Rodrigues, and Marcus Johansson filling in the other two slots. We have one NHL center under contract for next season. Cozens and Mitts are in the pipeline, but will be good NHL 2Cs somewhere between a couple years from now and potentially never. For a team that simply MUST win next year, it's a tall order to take the next step to Jason's supposed vision. 

"The type of team that I would like to create here, in conjunction with the head coach we bring in, is a team that plays a high tempo... a high tempo puck possession game. Even without skill [referring to his AHL SWB team that models after its parent Penguins organization] you can still play a high percentage, high intensity game... ...Some of the success in Pittsburgh is from the standpoint of simplicity, of a north-south game. If you're asking me specifically what we're doing, up tempo, puck possession, north-south game." 

In other interviews, he elaborates on wanting wingers that attack with speed. He thinks a fast, north-south, high-tempo game is a good vision for a team, and I do too. he cited speed when acquiring guys like Sheary, Vesey, Montour. Montour can skate, but I haven't seen a lot of speed in the game from these other two. 

Anyway, the thing that made me mad last night is this. We gave up 7 goals, but it wasn't because of bad defensive coverage, sloppy play, lack of effort. It was because from behind their net, through the neutral zone, and into ours, Ottawa's high tempo, north-south, speed transition game absolutely broke us to pieces. We couldn't handle the speed at which they moved the puck with precision, straight up the ice, with minimal horizontal fanfare. We couldn't handle how fast they closed in on us, we couldn't adjust our gaps quick enough. We couldn't handle their closing forecheck speed, and as a result, we got to chasing and running around when the Sens got to our zone in a manner reminiscent of tank era teams. Our team can play defense, but any defense breaks if they're not built to handle a huge amount of one thing or another - and in the Sens case, they have a huge amount of speed. It opened us up in ways I've only seen Toronto, Tampa, and Washington do this year.

The Senators are low on talent. They have the worst owner in the league. They were the national laughingstock for about 2 straight years now. They have blown up their identity and built their team as cheaply as possible, with a GM considered by most fans to be a joke (we're a team!). 

Why is this organization, who entered this "joke" status a year after Jason took over, destroying us with the game we set out to build three years ago? Why do we look nothing like this, even though we have pieces that he got here with and lucked into like Eichel, Reinhart, Dahlin? Ottawa's roster is an intentional scrap heap. It still shows a more successful manifestation of hockey ideology than Jason has ever come close to. That Ottawa team is, two years into being a joke, playing a game that we, of infinite resources and sky high building blocks, claimed to want to build three years ago, and are playing that game far better than this team ever will. 

We will finish with a better record, because we can play team defense, and not everything is doom and gloom, and our high end talent dwarfs theirs (though we'll be lucky if it doesn't take Dahlin a couple more years to reach the level of game-breaking ability that Chabot has, which is no insult to Dahlin, and no direct, full comparison either), but the vision Botterill supposedly couples to every single move he makes has never been further from being the Sabres' identity, and was used by a joke franchise to pick us apart three years after he told us about it.