Do the Sabres make the playoffs this season (Thanksgiving edition)

[#freejame]

Fourth edition of the poll. Previous results below. This is meant to be aligned with American Thanksgiving. Next poll will be at the halfway point (barring unforeseen circumstances)

1st Edition: 0-0-0, 77.5% Yes (38/49), 22.5% No (11/49)

2nd Edition: 0-2-0, 23.2% Yes (13/56), 76.8% No (43/56)

3rd Edition: 4-5-1, 43.59% Yes (17/39), 56.41% No (22/39)

Sabres current record is 11-9-1, good for 3rd place in the division. 

Poll will close prior to Friday’s game. 

 

Edited November 24 by #freejame

[HumanSlinky39]

I still believe they do, but they're gonna make us sweat until the end.

[Wyldnwoody44]

I still say no. I don't have any real Intel on why, I just don't think they're good enough as a unit. 

If they can manage being consistent longer, then, perhaps. But yeah the last 13 years have kept my expectations at bay. 

Also, I'm not sure I trust UPL and Reimer in the long term as of yet. 

[aristocrat]

Goaltending looking good. Offense needs to get going especially cozens. We’re gonna need more guys get into a 20 goal pace

[WhenWillItEnd66]

Until I see consistency i am a non playoff believer.  To be clear,  I want to see them make it,  but 13 years hard to shake. 

[Thorner]

16th in the league right now, 8th in the east by points %, and Boston is 17th and 9th. 

Pretty fun tbh 

results are reasonable so far: we are in a playoff spot, that’s all I ask

- - - 

the underlyings suggest caution. 

Edited November 24 by Thorner

[elijah]

16 minutes ago, Thorner said:

16th in the league right now, 8th in the east by points %, and Boston is 17th and 9th. 

Pretty fun tbh 

results are reasonable so far: we are in a playoff spot, that’s all I ask

- - - 

the underlyings suggest caution. 

Love and hate the underlyings. 

I trust them and put a decent bit of weight into them, so it breaks my heart when we’re doing good and they say not to trust our results quite yet.

 

However, you can see before the Tage, Tuch, Greenway, Muel injuries that we were hovering around 50% xGF%. Can argue that we’re winning in spite of missing our best offensive player, and Greenway who plays a strong analytical game. Maybe we just stole a couple wins with our star out and the analytics start to trend back upwards once we get Tage back? One can hope. The analytics don’t mislead you very often.

[Thorner]

2 minutes ago, elijah said:

Love and hate the underlyings. 

I trust them and put a decent bit of weight into them, so it breaks my heart when we’re doing good and they say not to trust our results quite yet.

 

However, you can see before the Tage, Tuch, Greenway, Muel injuries that we were hovering around 50% xGF%. Can argue that we’re winning in spite of missing our best offensive player, and Greenway who plays a strong analytical game. Maybe we just stole a couple wins with our star out and the analytics start to trend back upwards once we get Tage back? One can hope. The analytics don’t mislead you very often.

It’s a good point. On the one hand, injuries will continue to be a factor. I generally caution against “once we get our guys back” logic in that a) rarely if ever do you have all the guys and B) often guys missing games have a proclivity to miss more games 

to your point, Tage specifically being the guy that’s out creates some potential, there. On the other hand, the Ewing affect across the board with him gone has been good

on the other, other hand and to your point again: McLeod has been simply awful metrically the more he moves up the lineup. Even getting him back into a second line role would help a lot metrically 

[Weave]

In a playoff spot at Thanksgiving at least makes the conversation about them in a playoff spot at seasons’ end a rational conversation.

Will be interesting to see if they can sustain enough wins as the intensity ratchets upward. 

[dudacek]

What things are mostly likely to push in the opposite direction:

• The very solid recent goaltending of UPL?
• The abysmal production of "2nd liners" Cozens, Quinn, Benson and Kulich??
• The fact that the remarkable 5-on-5 production of Byram and Power is kinda offsetting the abysmal production of the 2nd liners?
• The amount of times a defenceman will make a costly mistake?
• The incredible and criminally under-discussed numbers Rasmus Dahlin is putting up since he got healthy? (17 points in his past 13 games? Are you kidding me?)
• The play of the blueliners other than the big 3?
• The positive contributions of "3rd liners" McLeod Greenway, Zucker and Krebs?
• The thus-far inconsequential nature of the 4th line?
• The bounceback seasons from Tuch and Thompson, especially their two-way games, along with the eye-test dominance of the first line
• The improving special teams?

Feels like we need more data

[Thorner]

On 9/13/2024 at 11:05 AM, Thorner said:

But screw it. Today we spell redemption R-O-N: 51% likely, imo 

 

On 10/5/2024 at 2:43 PM, Thorner said:

I chose to say 51% in spite of better judgment before the year started, 2 games isn’t enough to jump off what was already a hopium filled projection. I’ll still say yes.

It’s probably just cope but I ALWAYS think about that Marcus Johansson 2C, Botterill team that was FLYING out the gate at 2-0. Look what happened. Why not the inverse? 

[PerreaultForever]

I am going to reserve judgement until they win a bunch of games in the division. They have fooled me before. 

[PerreaultForever]

2 hours ago, Thorner said:

It’s a good point. On the one hand, injuries will continue to be a factor. I generally caution against “once we get our guys back” logic in that a) rarely if ever do you have all the guys and B) often guys missing games have a proclivity to miss more games 

to your point, Tage specifically being the guy that’s out creates some potential, there. On the other hand, the Ewing affect across the board with him gone has been good

on the other, other hand and to your point again: McLeod has been simply awful metrically the more he moves up the lineup. Even getting him back into a second line role would help a lot metrically 

Or we can just throw metrics out the window and just look at wins and losses 🙂

 

[Archie Lee]

A few things have occurred that have me upgrading my opinion from a pretty hard no to a cautious yes. While it was always the case that for the Sabres to make the playoffs there would be a number of things that had to happen that either had never happened before or that had never consistently happened, it was not the case that all of these things had to happen. And, some of them are happening.  Thompson, Tuch, and Dahlin are having bounce back offensive seasons.  Peterka, Power and Byram are, so far, having breakthrough offensive seasons.  Tucker, McLeod, Krebs, and Clifton are, in their respective ways, outplaying expectations.  UPL is, on balance, the same goalie as he was last year.  The special teams, after a rough start, are performing better. They are standing up for each other in a way that they didn't always do before.

Also, there are 8 teams in the East who, to this point in the season, have not only been worse than us, but who we seem to have a bit of the inside track on.  We have more room for improvement, both from an age and experience standpoint, and from a cap-space and trade-capital standpoint. 

It's precarious.  But I'm trending towards optimism. 

Edited November 24 by Archie Lee

[Pimlach]

I will at least wait for the Minnesota Wild home game to make any detailed comments.  After that game is Thanksgiving. 

That game will say a lot.  

 - getting to 4 wins in a row, its been awhile for that

 - Playing good hockey at home and making the KBC a harder place to visit.  

 - beating another top tier team that you are not taking by surprise 

 - pushing into the race for 3rd in the division 

Winning home games with Wild on Wednesday, and the Canucks on Friday, will look very favorable for the Sabre's chances.  

Right now you can at least say they are still in the WC race.  

 

[steveoat87]

Barring unforeseen injuries I see the team improving as they keep getting comfortable with Lindy's system.

Last year we wouldn't have won any of the recent games on the west coast.

I would imagine we will see Levy again toward the end of the season.

Maybe a trade will be made that actually helps the team?

[Taro T]

The Bruins are mortal and the Bolts are looking that way as well.

The teams that have been in the Sabres boat the past couple of years haven't improved more than the Sabres have and though the Habs still seem to give the Sabres fits; the Sabres are one of the few teams that they do.

Dahlin, since finally getting healthy, is playing as well as we could hope for offensively and has been ok (overall) defensively and he likely is still learning Ruff's system.

They still have a tremendously difficult time getting into the zone and maintaining possession on the PP; BUT once they do so, they have actually been really effective.

UPL is looking like a legit starter and based on all of a 1 game sample, it looks like Reimer could be a Shields/Roloson that can go ~0.500 in occasional relief.  (If they get even better results when he gets his occassional start, awesome; but having the backup flirting with 0.500 is usually enough when you have a legit starter.)

At the moment, there are only 5 teams in the east that are at/above the NHL 0.600 guaranteed* playoff pace and only 1 of them are in the Adams (though FLA is pretty much a single win in their next game from that threshold themselves).  So, there's an opportunity for 2 (or 3 if we don't include FLA) teams to up their output and join them in the dance.  (Amazing how bad the east has been since that weird year when all 8 playoff teams were well over 0.600 and all 8 non-playoff teams had been pretty much eliminated by the 1st of March.)

All that says, the table is set that if they keep working and getting more comfortable in understanding what Ruff expects of them and executing it, then playoffs are quite doable.  

[French Collection]

It is just fun to be in this position as the calendar flips pages.

That legwork KA is supposed to be doing needs to bring in support by the deadline. If they are in this position in the New Year, TP needs to believe and loosen the purse strings. Once again there is tons of cap space to make something(s) happen.

[Big Guava]

Yes...this team is starting to come together and learn how to play properly and how to win.

That's a direct influence of Lindy Ruff and him holding the players accountable for their play and understanding what it means to be a professional.

Already have strung together three 3 game winning streaks this year before the end of November. Now they need to figure out how to turn 3 game winning streaks into 4 and 5 game win streaks. They have not succeeded their prior 2 times.

Got to keep taking steps in the right direction.

Edited November 24 by Big Guava

[JohnC]

I won't be surprised if Washington slides down after losing Ovi for an extended period of time. As @Pimlach noted, if the Sabres can win the next two home games against good teams (Minn and Vanc), that would be a good omen for our chances of making the playoffs. And with UPL as our primary goalie, the Sabres have been getting superb and consistent high-end goaltending. That's a recipe for success. 

There was some recent speculation that KA was perusing the market to make a notable deal. My sense is that he won't pull the trigger just yet. Maybe closer to the trade deadline when he has a better feel for where this team is. We shall see. 

[EM88]

I think 91, 92, 100, 96 and 96 were the point totals of the last team to make the playoffs in the east over the last 5 non-covid-shortened seasons.

Sabres are on pace for 89.8.  They are in the mix, but they need to still pick up the point pace over the next 20.

Getting Tage Thompson back and healthy will be key.  To me it is clear that Thompson, UPL and Dahlin are by far and away the 3 most important  players for them to make the playoffs.  Keep them healthy.

Edited November 24 by EM88

[The Jokeman]

If UPL plays like he has and he plays more and Reimer and he plays more than Levi. 

[JohnC]

35 minutes ago, EM88 said:

I think 91, 92, 100, 96 and 96 were the point totals of the last team to make the playoffs in the east over the last 5 non-covid-shortened seasons.

Sabres are on pace for 89.8.  They are in the mix, but they need to still pick up the point pace over the next 20.

Getting Tage Thompson back and healthy will be key.  To me it is clear that Thompson, UPL and Dahlin are by far and away the 3 most important  players for them to make the playoffs.  Keep them healthy.

I would add Tuch to your three listed players. I consider him a very unsung player. 

[Doohicksie]

2 hours ago, Big Guava said:

Yes...this team is starting to come together

The impressive part is how integral McLeod and Zucker have become to this team in such a short time.  They make the players around them better and have helped implement Lindy's system.

[PerreaultForever]

3 minutes ago, Doohicksie said:

The impressive part is how integral McLeod and Zucker have become to this team in such a short time.  They make the players around them better and have helped implement Lindy's system.

Zucker started really slow, like he didn't really want to be here. A disinterested mercenary. But then he started to come along and now he's one of those veteran leaders we've been missing all these years. I don't know what changed, but I don't think they'd be winning without him.