Sabres Practice Notes 11-9

[Brawndo]

1 hour ago, LETSTUCHINGO said:

I like it, but I like Power w/ Muel even better and drop Joker down.

That’s even better 

[Taro T]

1 hour ago, Thorny said:

I think we have better D depth than at F

I understand we have a few injuries but the bottom 6 in general is a hounds breakfast 

You could literally get rid of all 6 and none of the losses would be painful to take provided a replacement-level player was iced instead 

Disagree.  They have 7 D that look reasonable/good in the NHL.  They have 1 more low end NHLer and 2-3 more tweeners that are IMHO lesser NHLers than the Sabres current 4th liners.

Lose 2 of those 7 D and in a best case you're playing Stillman and in a worst case you're playing Bryson 8 minutes wearing out Dahlin and Power (provided they're 2 of the healthy 5).

They're already missing Quinn, Cozens, and now Tuch (not to mention Benson & until now Savoie plus even Biro is apparently injured) but only Olofsson is significantly out of his element (and that's as much from having become a headcase as it is being overmatched).  (A case could be made that Okposo is too, but Adams and Granato seem happy to have him rolling along, so it doesn't really count against the overall team skill IMHO.  (Self inflicted wounds don't mean better players aren't available within the organization.)

But even with all that, the top 2 lines are still good, the 4th line is adequate at worst and getting Olofsson off the "3rd line" might allow even that to become adequate/reasonably good.  And they could pull up either Rosen or Kulich to fill his slot if they wanted to do so. 

Bring Quinn, Cozens, and Tuch back into the lineup and you've got a top 9 (in no particular order) of Skinner, Thompson, Tuch, Greenway, Mittelstadt, Peterka, Quinn, Cozens, Savoie/Benson with Girgensons, Krebs/Jost, Okposo for the 4th line.  That, right there has 2 guys sitting in the press box or moved back to Juniors before even going to the Kulich, Rosen, Rousek, Olofsson, Biro cards.

The forwards are deeper, and so far that's been a good thing, as the injury bug so far has been plaguing the F's rather than the D like it did last year.

[Taro T]

3 hours ago, Brawndo said:

I would do 

Dahlin-R Johnson

Power-Jokiharju 

Samuelsson with Clifton/Johnson/Johnson rotating 

Samuelsson goes back with Dahlin on the games that Ryan Johnson sits

I would do a 2:1:1 rotation for Eric Johnson:Ryan Johnson:Clifton 

 

 

2 hours ago, LETSTUCHINGO said:

I like it, but I like Power w/ Muel even better and drop Joker down.

Yup.  And then the 7th D rotation goes however you want out of Johnson, Johnson, Jokiarju, Clifton when all are healthy with either Samuelsson or Jokiharju moving to Dahlin's partner when Johnson the Younger is out and that call can be made based upon whether Muel-Power clicks as well as it should or not.  If it's seriously solid, suffer through the 1 game every 5 with Ras-Joker and don't mess with the other pairing.  If it's just OK, then slide both Muel and Joker up 1 pairing when Ryan is out.

And Bryson is nowhere near that rotation and likely in Ra-cha-cha now that guys are getting ready to come off IR and the 23 man limit is once again limiting.

[Night Train]

5 hours ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

Ryan Johnson

He's playing better than a lot of our regulars. 

[dudacek]

17 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Disagree.  They have 7 D that look reasonable/good in the NHL.  They have 1 more low end NHLer and 2-3 more tweeners that are IMHO lesser NHLers than the Sabres current 4th liners.

Lose 2 of those 7 D and in a best case you're playing Stillman and in a worst case you're playing Bryson 8 minutes wearing out Dahlin and Power (provided they're 2 of the healthy 5).

They're already missing Quinn, Cozens, and now Tuch (not to mention Benson & until now Savoie plus even Biro is apparently injured) but only Olofsson is significantly out of his element (and that's as much from having become a headcase as it is being overmatched).  (A case could be made that Okposo is too, but Adams and Granato seem happy to have him rolling along, so it doesn't really count against the overall team skill IMHO.  (Self inflicted wounds don't mean better players aren't available within the organization.)

But even with all that, the top 2 lines are still good, the 4th line is adequate at worst and getting Olofsson off the "3rd line" might allow even that to become adequate/reasonably good.  And they could pull up either Rosen or Kulich to fill his slot if they wanted to do so. 

Bring Quinn, Cozens, and Tuch back into the lineup and you've got a top 9 (in no particular order) of Skinner, Thompson, Tuch, Greenway, Mittelstadt, Peterka, Quinn, Cozens, Savoie/Benson with Girgensons, Krebs/Jost, Okposo for the 4th line.  That, right there has 2 guys sitting in the press box or moved back to Juniors before even going to the Kulich, Rosen, Rousek, Olofsson, Biro cards.

The forwards are deeper, and so far that's been a good thing, as the injury bug so far has been plaguing the F's rather than the D like it did last year.

Thorny will speak for himself, but i read his post as talking about NHL depth, as opposed to replacement depth

Jokiharju, Johnson Clifton Johnson, (the bottom half of the D) are better NHLers than Olofsson, Jost, Krebs, Okposo, Girgensons, Benson, Rousek) (or whoever he sees as F7-13)

[dudacek]

8 minutes ago, Night Train said:

He's playing better than a lot of our regulars. 

He played really well in one game.

It's both a small sample size and a meaningless commentary on the quality of our regulars.

[Taro T]

38 minutes ago, dudacek said:

Thorny will speak for himself, but i read his post as talking about NHL depth, as opposed to replacement depth

Jokiharju, Johnson Clifton Johnson, (the bottom half of the D) are better NHLers than Olofsson, Jost, Krebs, Okposo, Girgensons, Benson, Rousek) (or whoever he sees as F7-13)

But if you're looking depth, you have to include the injured guys in that IMHO.  And Olofsson, Jost, Krebs AREN'T 7-9 (or whichever of those guys you're chosing as 7-9).  The top 9 are Skinner, Thompson, Tuch, Greenway, Mittelstadt, Cozens, Peterka, Quinn, & likely Savoie.  Take whichever 3 of those you want to say are 7-9 and throw in 3 of those others and THAT's the bottom half of the F lineup.  

The D is likely SLIGHTLY better, but it isn't like they're the '05-'07 Sabres D going up against the '14-'15 Sabres F's.

Would say the Sabres are 14 NHL deep at F and 7-8 NHL deep at D.  Again, it's pretty comparable.

My 2 cents.  YMMV.

[Thorner]

3 hours ago, dudacek said:

Thorny will speak for himself, but i read his post as talking about NHL depth, as opposed to replacement depth

Jokiharju, Johnson Clifton Johnson, (the bottom half of the D) are better NHLers than Olofsson, Jost, Krebs, Okposo, Girgensons, Benson, Rousek) (or whoever he sees as F7-13)

[LGR4GM]

19 minutes ago, Thorny said:

[Thorner]

54 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

You *will* suffer me 

Edited November 10, 2023 by Thorny
Can I just say, the dialogue in that scene renders goosebumps. What a film