Overall, the Sabres have been an above-average team defensively

[Brawndo]

 

1 hour ago, dudacek said:

Not my opinion, it's what the numbers say:

The Sabres finished last season 24th in the NHL in defence, allowing 3.35 goals per game

• In the 1st quarter of this season they were 18th, allowing 3.33
• In the 2nd quarter of this season they were 25th allowing 3.40
• In the 3rd quarter of this season they are 1st allowing 2.16

Overall this season they are tied for 12th allowing 2.98

The last time the Sabres finished in the top half of the league in goals against was 2009/10, Ryan Miller's Vezina season. The only time they've been close since was when they finished 16th out of 30 in Bylsma's first year.

What, if anything, should we read into this?

Between this and the Sabres being on a 97 point pace since January 1st, I believe that Granato, Ellis and Bales (with Christie and Wilford being replaced) remain on the Sabres Coaching Staff at the beginning of next season. With the caveat if the team is not in a playoff position on November 15th next season, Granato would most likely be replaced. 

[Thorner]

2 minutes ago, Brawndo said:

 

Between this and the Sabres being on a 97 point pace since January 1st, I believe that Granato, Ellis and Bales (with Christie and Wilford being replaced) remain on the Sabres Coaching Staff at the beginning of next season. With the caveat if the team is not in a playoff position on November 15th next season, Granato would most likely be replaced. 

Isn’t Ellis the pp guy?

[inkman]

8 minutes ago, Thorny said:

We are also going to finish above .500 twice in a row, when we hadn’t done it once since Darcy Regier, if I’m not mistaken. 

Adams hasn’t been a good GM. That’s a league relative comparison. But he’s been better than the last couple Sabres guys. He’s been the best GM of that bunch

im going to take a shower 

They have 28 wins and 32 losses.  I’m not sold on them finishing above .500.  

[Thorner]

Just now, inkman said:

They have 28 wins and 32 losses.  I’m not sold on them finishing above .500.  

if we are talking points percentage I think they hold on 

[dudacek]

19 minutes ago, Gatorman0519 said:

Goaltending and defense got better, offense and special teams tanked.  Thus we are worse than last year. 

Offence and PP. PK is up from 28 to 18 and trending up: 10th in this quarter.

Don't think it is any coincidence the defence and the PK have improved hand-in-hand and the offence and the PP have done the same in the opposite direction.

The Sabres have 41 fewer goals this year than they had at the same time last year. Tuch, Thompson and Cozens have 35 fewer goals than they had at the same time last year. 16 of those on the PP.

Had we maintained last year's PP, I believe we'd be in the race right now.

Edited March 2 by dudacek

[Brawndo]

20 minutes ago, Thorny said:

Isn’t Ellis the pp guy?

There are conflicting reports on this, some state he has been in charge the past two seasons others state he only recently took over. 
I know that Appert mentioned Ellis runs the PP when he filled in for Granato for those two games.

 

This is not an endorsement of Ellis, I would personally bring in an entire new Assistant Coaching Staff besides Mike Bales. 
If there is an opportunity to improve the HC Position I would take that as well. 

[GASabresIUFAN]

1 hour ago, dudacek said:

The Sabres finished last season 24th in the NHL in defence, allowing 3.35 goals per game

• In the 1st quarter of this season they were 18th, allowing 3.33
• In the 2nd quarter of this season they were 25th allowing 3.40
• In the 3rd quarter of this season they are 1st allowing 2.16

So basically they were just as bad defensively and in goal in the first half of the season as they were last season as they played themselves out of contention.

Now that they aren’t in real contention they are playing better.  I think we have seen this movie before.  

The offense still hasn’t come around.  

UPL does deserve all the accolades he is receiving for this season.  He is the sole reason our numbers are better.  We have allowed the 20th most HDSA (high danger shots against) this season and were 21st last season according to moneypuck.  In fact, we allowed only 2.1 HDSA last season and are allowing 2.2 this season. 
 

However, don’t count on a repeat performance from UPL next season.  As we have seen with our top forwards, next season is a thing onto itself.  It does give hope for next season, but that’s it.   Goaltending stats vary year to year and are very dependent on how the team plays in front of him.  
 

 

 

[Big Guava]

Since January 1st Sabres are:

1st in goals against with 50

2nd in GA/Game at 2.17

3rd in shots against/game at 28.45

5th in goal differential/game at +0.83

6th in shots/game at 32.96

12th in PP% at 22.7%

They have been playing pretty well...now they just have to not take half a season next year to figure out how to be good like they have the last 2 years.

[Marvin]

2 minutes ago, Big Guava said:

Since January 1st Sabres are:

1st in goals against with 50

2nd in GA/Game at 2.17

3rd in shots against/game at 28.45

5th in goal differential/game at +0.83

6th in shots/game at 32.96

12th in PP% at 22.7%

They have been playing pretty well...now they just have to not take half a season next year to figure out how to be good like they have the last 2 years.

This is 3 years running where they have significantly improved their results in the second half.  Whoever is coaching next year needs to get this team playing consistently from day 1.  Meanwhile, GMKA must work with the coach over the summer to find the right combination of players, player types, and player experience to keep lulls in play brief.

[Dr. Who]

16 hours ago, Marvin said:

This is 3 years running where they have significantly improved their results in the second half.  Whoever is coaching next year needs to get this team playing consistently from day 1.  Meanwhile, GMKA must work with the coach over the summer to find the right combination of players, player types, and player experience to keep lulls in play brief.

The obvious solution is to hypnotize the whole damn team and tell them it's Jan 1, 2025 on opening night.

Edited March 3 by Dr. Who

[Thorner]

12 minutes ago, Marvin said:

This is 3 years running where they have significantly improved their results in the second half.  Whoever is coaching next year needs to get this team playing consistently from day 1.  Meanwhile, GMKA must work with the coach over the summer to find the right combination of players, player types, and player experience to keep lulls in play brief.

[Big Guava]

8 hours ago, Marvin said:

This is 3 years running where they have significantly improved their results in the second half.  Whoever is coaching next year needs to get this team playing consistently from day 1.  Meanwhile, GMKA must work with the coach over the summer to find the right combination of players, player types, and player experience to keep lulls in play brief.

"Whoever is coaching"?

 

It's going to be Granato.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

Indeed.  Since the focus was on the defencive side of the game all season it has taken half of it for the team to get to where both aspects are working.

The biggest difference now is that 6K has become the stud #1 they desparately needed.  The goalie coach needs a big fat bonus and a raise.  Sure, 6K has matured, but he has worked hard and the coach is fantastic.  Can't remember that dudes name right now.

I will say this - the Sabes will make the playoff, unless the wheels completely fall off.

[dudacek]

On 3/2/2024 at 8:21 AM, nfreeman said:

Not a damn thing IMHO.

Once again they are a day late and a dollar short — and once again they are putting up empty numbers against opponents who are not bringing their A games in the 2nd half of the season against yet another crappy Sabres team.

To be fair, I suppose we can infer that UPL might be a real NHL goalie.  But I’m not going any further than that as far as making any determinations about the team as a whole.

I still want a new coach and some new players.  

 

23 hours ago, Thorny said:

A lot of it is noise relative to how close we are to fielding a “proper” team re:achieving results necessary to make the playoffs 

our goal differential last season: 19th

our goal differential this season: 20th

I like that I said “shell game” a million times this offseason cause that’s what the numbers bear out 

 

13 hours ago, Marvin said:

This is 3 years running where they have significantly improved their results in the second half.  Whoever is coaching next year needs to get this team playing consistently from day 1.  Meanwhile, GMKA must work with the coach over the summer to find the right combination of players, player types, and player experience to keep lulls in play brief.

 

All spot-on, perfectly reasonable and really interesting to me in the context of the purge, draft and develop from the ground-up plan Adams sold to Pegula almost exactly 3 years ago.

Year 1 the focus was on trading Eichel, playing the kids who wanted to be here and seeing what they had

• They went .394 in the first half and .452 in the 2nd and the vibes went way up

Year 2 the focus was on skill development above all else, showing the kids they could produce in the best league in the world

• They went .483 in the first half and .533 in the 2nd and the goals for went way up

Year 3 the focus was on learning how to prevent goals and playing with NHL consistency, discipline and structure

• They went .447 in the first half and (so far) .609 in the 2nd with the goals against taking a significant drop

It's impossible to ignore the fact that it is reasonable  to expect a rebuilding team to make the playoffs in the third year of its rebuild, especially when that team finished just 1 point out last year.

But I also find it hard to ignore the fact that each year Granato was handed something particularly broken at the start of the year, asked to fix it, and then showed real, demonstrable evidence of doing so over the course of the year.

Is it a shell game? Are these 2nd-half improvements proof of progress or just empty calories? Is this step-by-step process unnecessarily slow and painful when the focus should have been on winning immediately?

Or is this what "building the right way" from within looks like?

I just don't know.

Edited March 3 by dudacek

[Thorner]

4 hours ago, dudacek said:

 

 

 

All spot-on, perfectly reasonable and really interesting to me in the context of the purge, draft and develop from the ground-up plan Adams sold to Pegula almost exactly 3 years ago.

Year 1 the focus was on trading Eichel, playing the kids who wanted to be here and seeing what they had

• They went .394 in the first half and .452 in the 2nd and the vibes went way up

Year 2 the focus was on skill development above all else, showing the kids they could produce in the best league in the world

• They went .483 in the first half and .533 in the 2nd and the goals for went way up

Year 3 the focus was on learning how to prevent goals and playing with NHL consistency, discipline and structure

• They went .447 in the first half and (so far) .609 in the 2nd with the goals against taking a significant drop

It's impossible to ignore the fact that it is reasonable  to expect a rebuilding team to make the playoffs in the third year of its rebuild, especially when that team finished just 1 point out last year.

But I also find it hard to ignore the fact that each year Granato was handed something particularly broken at the start of the year, asked to fix it, and then showed real, demonstrable evidence of doing so over the course of the year.

Is it a shell game? Are these 2nd-half improvements proof of progress or just empty calories? Is this step-by-step process unnecessarily slow and painful when the focus should have been on winning immediately?

Or is this what "building the right way" from within looks like?

I just don't know.

Well, no, it’s not what it looks like. The answer to your questions lies in the overall output of the team. The three seasons you detailed (after leaving out KA’s first) are not created equal in that, each or the first two left us in a better place overall than when we started. Those two seasons, Granato helped fix, and we improved overall. 

Regressing a bunch this season to start, and then battling back to the point we nonetheless still take a step back overall this year isn’t progress 

If Adams torpedoes the roster this summer and we start 0-41 and then 25-16 over the final half, that’s not progress for the rebuild: it’s just progress over the course of a solitary season. You can take a step back to take two steps forward, but that’s not what we’ve done this year so far. We took a step back, and might not even get back to where we finished last season 

we aren’t grading on a curve here: that’s a dearth of expectations, Buffalo only thing: this season if we finish with 90 points isn’t ok because we did it with a poor first half and good second half 

The proof it doesn’t translate is now in the pudding, in that case. Even if we did improve year over year, and took 5 years to make the playoffs: no, that’s definitively NOT what a “building the right way” looks like. I frankly don’t understand the question: 5 years is a demonstrably long time league relative to make the playoffs. Most teams don’t come close to that time frame. A situation where a team hasn’t made it in 4 seasons with the GM on the job where season 4 went backwards is not what we want to be seeing here

tl;dr - “2nd half improvement” (I cannot believe this is still the lingo we are using (cursed development year jargon) is not close to as important as year over year improvement. Especially when your GM has been on the job 4 years and everyone else has already figured it out in the time we’ve been bad 

Edited March 3 by Thorny

[Thorner]

Also, I sort of resent the goal post moving, I’m sorry. It makes being around here a bit difficult. What did you say coming into the year? What did we all say? Progress was making the playoffs. That was the expectation. The BARE MINIMUM expectation. If you want to betray the focus of results to the level of what feels like a cop out, I just can’t do it. We aren’t going to sit here and say, “well, I guess this is what a good build looks like” because we get seduced by a strong finish. There’s zero perspective there: we KNEW that would be possible before the season started, NO ONE claimed that would be evidence of success. NO ONE called that shot! 

The theory of “is this actually the proper way to build?” falls apart with a simple question: 

Would you be satisfied with missing the playoffs next year, provided we finish much stronger than we start the season?

of course not. 

*that was supposed to be this year, too.*

If you want to change your thinking on that and say, no, I was wrong, playoffs didn’t need to be the expectation this year by the prism of whether the rebuild is coming along successfully, have at it. I’m good here. And I’ll continue rooting for the playoffs this season because making it wouldn’t just be “nice”, it’s the only thing that makes the season worth it 

It just makes me laugh. The argument for Adams taking so long was at least we improved year over year. We really gonna sit here and say, “well, as long as we are playing better at the end of seasons than we did at the beginning of seasons, it’s all good.” Where does it end? lol. You see we are just creating a situation where they can never fail because the expectation is basically nothing they can’t fudge manually.
 

The logic is bad because a scenario where Adams willingly ices the youngest team every year where we struggle to amount to anything but get better as year goes on, before re-upping on youth the following year, and thus repeating the same cycle is apparently evidence of success. We could improve during the course of 10 straight seasons and never make the playoffs.

Please, for the love of all things holy: call your shot. Have an argument. Stick with your argument. When are we supposed to make the playoffs? im actually asking. When is it ok to measure by actual results, if not this year 

I am actually asking. 10 years? Is it ok that we say, regardless of how strong we finish, we need to make the playoffs in 2030? What is the timeframe by which it would defy logic to suggest you can’t expect a team to amount to something every other team does? I am actually asking. We all agreed that was this year and now we want to do this whole song and dance again.

If we don’t make the playoffs this year, we failed. I don’t need to run scared and hide from that expectation. I’m not gonna betray everything we talked about all offseason to make myself feel better. I can live with the failure if we call a spade a spade. I’m even willing to give KA another chance 

I’m not going to sit hear and eat sh*t and tell you it tastes good: how it’s supposed to taste. Have at it 

Edited March 3 by Thorny

[Thorner]

On 9/20/2023 at 7:36 AM, dudacek said:

It's time for the Sabres to expect to be there again. Finally.
And to believe they can do something once they get there.

-Mike Harrington

https://buffalonews.com/sports/columns/mike-harrington-its-time-for-sabres-to-perform-with-swagger-thats-been-missing-for-too/article_7cc6f64c-5651-11ee-9d77-a7d6efede8b8.html

 

As training camp opens, this is the proper tone. End the decade of despair.

No more building and waiting and hoping for someone from the outside or something in the future to save us. And this goes for the fans as much as the players.

Expect to win.

It’s time to be good again.

 

“No more building and waiting and hoping for someone from the outside or something in the future to save us. And this goes for the fans as much as the players.

Expect to win.

It’s time to be good again.”

- - - 

You are the better poster, and know about Hockey more than me. I mean it. So, please, just tell me, and don’t mislead this time: when can I expect to win? You said to expect wins and I did it. Did you mean, “expect more wins in the second half than first?”

”it’s time to be good again in the second half of seasons?”

help a brother out 

Edited March 3 by Thorny

[Thorner]

I love you buddy but 

On 9/20/2023 at 9:32 AM, PASabreFan said:

Says Mr. 2027

Whatever. Let's go end this drought.

 

On 9/20/2023 at 9:40 AM, dudacek said:

@PASabreFan we crumbled when you stopped hearing what I was actually trying to say. I still love you 😘

But in this case, so far I was wrong, you were right.

Hedged bets and built-in excuses everywhere in this thread.

I hope the team is made of sterner stuff than the fans.

I’m here. I’m Stern

Edited March 3 by Thorny

[Hank]

1 hour ago, Thorny said:

Also, I sort of resent the goal post moving, I’m sorry. It makes being around here a bit difficult. What did you say coming into the year? What did we all say? Progress was making the playoffs. That was the expectation. The BARE MINIMUM expectation. 

Most, not all. I didn't expect playoffs before 25. I've been as consistent on that as my belief in 6K. 

When Ventura and Karmanos were brought in prior to the 21 draft all you analytics nerds creamed your collective panties. You made compelling arguments and sucked me in. I've completely bought into Adams draft and develop strategy. The drafting part is done, but so many want to forego the develop part. "We need grit! We need size! Trade Kulich and Rosen for a 28yo 3rd liner!"

It's ***** idiotic. Everyone's clutching thier pearls about "all of them won't make it!"  Why not?  If Karmanos and Ventura are as great as the nerds say, and given how they are performing post draft, there's no reason to believe they won't make it. 

[Thorner]

Just now, Hank said:

Most, not all. I didn't expect playoffs before 25. I've been as consistent on that as my belief in 6K. 

When Ventura and Karmanos were brought in prior to the 21 draft all you analytics nerds creamed your collective panties. You made compelling arguments and sucked me in. I've completely bought into Adams draft and develop strategy. The drafting part is done, but so many want to forego the develop part. "We need grit! We need size! Trade Kulich and Rosen for a 28yo 3rd liner!"

It's ***** idiotic. Everyone's clutching thier pearls about "all of them won't make it!"  Why not?  If Karmanos and Ventura are as great as the nerds say, and given how they are performing post draft, there's no reason to believe they won't make it. 

I’m not an analytical nerd. A nerd, sure 

I try to take a wholistic approach to the data/experience 

It’s tough to divine much from our interactions because it mostly just involves you giving my posts eye rolls but yes, if you are the “my expectation is 2024/25 guy”: great. You’ve called your shot. I respect that 

[Hank]

6 minutes ago, Thorny said:

I’m not an analytical nerd. A nerd, sure 

I try to take a wholistic approach to the data/experience 

It’s tough to divine much from our interactions because it mostly just involves you giving my posts eye rolls but yes, if you are the “my expectation is 2024/25 guy”: great. You’ve called your shot. I respect that 

In fairness, when I said something nice to you you said it made you uncomfortable and asked for an eye roll 🤪

Ironically, I believe you and I agree on 95% of everything. 

[Dr. Who]

4 minutes ago, Hank said:

In fairness, when I said something nice to you you said it made you uncomfortable and asked for an eye roll 🤪

Ironically, I believe you and I agree on 95% of everything. 

Well, that 5% short of correct, isn't it? Good for you on sticking by UPL, btw.

Edited March 3 by Dr. Who

[Hank]

Just now, Dr. Who said:

Well, that 5% short of correct, isn't it?

Ha!

[nfreeman]

This thread has turned into a microcosm of SabreSpace and I'm here for it baby.

@dudacek  with a scintillating, hope-restoring post.

@Thorny with a series of passionate posts about not settling for being a bunch of losers, escalating to an alarming degree but ultimately not quite going off the cliff.

@Hank with a fair and friendly but still kinda aggressive contribution.

@Sabres Fan in NS with the kind-hearted generosity towards the team and the board.

@Brawndo with the good info.

@GASabresIUFAN with the good numbers.

Even if the team lets us down again -- and I hope nobody here is really counting on them going 16-5 to close out the regular season and squeak in, although I know some are -- the board lives on gloriously.

[Thorner]

38 minutes ago, Hank said:

In fairness, when I said something nice to you you said it made you uncomfortable and asked for an eye roll 🤪

Ironically, I believe you and I agree on 95% of everything. 

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/vVm8NMgVndwiyQKj/?mibextid=I8mCmY&startTimeMs=65000

Edited March 3 by Thorny