Don't think San Jose does that

Rangers accept the Smith trade. Turn down the rest.

Value wise we should take the Meier deal and run but we need to improve our defense, not a guy like Meier

Jack Eichel is not getting traded. He has his money and is locked up. Sabres have improved in points % each of the last three seasons. This season they were 13 pts from 3rd place in the Atlantic. Last season they were 24 pts from 3rd and 43 pts from 3rd in 2018.

Almost there.

Buch has been more valuable than Meier over the last 2 seasons.

DeMelo is supposedly getting 2-3M

The probability off another 81.5 cap will dampen salaries. Doubtful teams will be paying 2-3 mil for a bottom pair defender, even one with potential upside like DeMelo. Teams will be able get very useful players for lower than normal salaries this offseason.
Meier is a much better all round player than Buch. Buch is soft & easily pushed off the puck. He gets 45 pts but with the feeds he gets from Mika, Kreids, Bread & Strome he should be scoring 65. Nobody on the team misses more open nets. He needs a change to get to the next level. He does have big potential though.
Eichel may not get traded, but if he wants out Buf will have to see what's out there and this is a very strong offer that improves their team in multiple spots. It'll suck for them to lose Eichel but they'll need to get back quality and this trade has it, IMO.
Overall the Rangers need to get much bigger & tougher to compete with the top teams. No doubt we have talent & youth. We need toughness, leadership and better D. Lower cost vets like Reaves & Maroon could help greatly. And a strong, stay at home physical defender like Dillon would allow Trouba to play his game and excel.

Rangers did a full rebuild in like 3 years. The Sabres have been rebuilding for 5 years and are still bad. I agree that Eichel is not getting traded this offseason, but they need to make serious progress soon, not keep stocking up on prospects- they're not helping.

I dont think they are almost there. They have two major pieces in eichel and dahlin, but there are holes all over the roster. The gm is clueless and the owners have decided that they arent going to pay anybody else to not work for them, regardless of how incompetent they are. I dont trust this package at all to fix that.

No clue what makes you think that, Meier is immensely better in every way.

Well I didn't think of it. I trusted the numbers.

Buch leads Meier in Standings Points above Replacement and Expected Standings Points Above Replacement over the last 2 seasons. As of now, that's the closest hockey has come to encompassing the total value of a player.




Feel free to read up on it here. I think it does a pretty good job.

https://hockey-graphs.com/2019/01/16/wins-above-replacement-history-philosophy-and-objectives-part-1/
https://hockey-graphs.com/2019/01/17/wins-above-replacement-the-process-part-2/
https://hockey-graphs.com/2019/01/18/wins-above-replacement-replacement-level-decisions-results-and-final-remarks-part-3/

would be interested, but screen shots don't load, Ive read up on it before.

Nvm they are there now.

I defensively think its a very detailed analysis, but unfortunately it does do much in the way of context, opponents and teammates.
Unless I missed it, they do not do anything to factor in teammates, even just looking at iGF to GF tells a lot.

Buchnevich scored 11 of the 54 goals that occurred with him on the ice at even strength. (20%)
Meier scored 17 of the 40 that occurred. (42.5%)

Which is better than players like Ovechkin who scored 17 of the 48 (35%), and almost as good as Matthews, who scored 30 of 63 (47.6).

Even this year, in which Meier had a MUCH worse year than last, he still was 28th in the league in EV Goals.

Overall between the past 2 years, he is 15th in the league with 39 Even strength goals (scoring 39 of 102).

My point is that Meier has pretty much been carrying his line for the past year

I mention the even strength, because overall between the seasons, the only stat of EVO, EVD, PPO, SHD (The main stats) that Buchnevich leads is the PPO, in which I can go into how San Jose has had a lot of issues overall with the power play.

Anyways, there are a lot of people making different one number ultimate player valuations, for example, Hockey-reference gives Meier 7.4 and 4.6 PS for the past two years, Buchnevich was given 4.0 and 4.1.
Corsica Hockey gave Meier a 76.87 (Rank 16) this year, while Buchnevich got a 73.99 (Rank 44).

My point is that there are many different 1 number evaluations for players, and just because one says a player is better than the other, does not definitely mean that is the only one that you should look at.

edit (more stuff):

Meier is 1st on the team this past year in EV G/60, P/60, iCF/60, iFF/60 (duh), iSCF/60, iHDCF/60. And one of the top players in Penalties drawn/60 and Hits/60.
Buchnevich is also near the top for Non-Individual CF.

You missed it. the RAPM portion of the calculation addresses context and opponents. And unless you'd like to make a claim that Couture, Pavelski, Hertl and Labanc are objectively significantly worse than Kreider and Zibanejad, I'm not sure a teammates based argument is going to hold much water.

And here's the Hockey Reference Point Share calculation: https://www.hockey-reference.com/about/point_shares.html

It's entirely GF based, which of course is a worse predictor of performance than anything xGF based. We know this to be true: https://hockey-graphs.com/2015/10/01/expected-goals-are-a-better-predictor-of-future-scoring-than-corsi-goals/

So, to your point. I don't think this is a place where we have to aggregate a bunch of different takes on player evaluation when some are clearly primitive compared to others.

And just to re-address where the goal posts are here, your initial point was "Meier is immensely better in every way."

Meier was a better player last year for the most part, Buchnevich was a better player this year. Over the last 2 seasons, they're pretty close. I think Buch has a solid bit more value in a trade because he'll be significantly cheaper to sign long term despite providing equal value to Meier on the ice.

Ah I missed that, I'll need to read further into that.

Meier actually played this year with:
Thornton: 27.53%
Marleau: 26.92%
Goodrow: 27.27%
Labanc: 22.98%
Couture: 22%
Hertl: 21.56%
Kane: 20.45%

while Buchnevich played:
Zibanejad: 52.53%
Kreider: 45.66%
Panarin: 23.87%
Chytil: 22.22%
Strome: 17.9%
Lemieux: 10.48%

(from DobberHockey)

As to the Hockey-reference PS, if that was using xG instead, that would just make Meier even better, 40.82% GF (thanks Jones) to 53.06 xG%.

Right, in regards to teammates I was addressing over the last 2 seasons where he played over 70% of his Ice time at evens with Couture while Buch's on-ice metrics were heavily skewed by a few weeks of games with linemates that included Cody McLeod and Brett Howden last year. Both Meier and Buch are play drivers on teams with poor on-ice metrics. I think they're pretty close and because of their poor defenses (Rangers) or poor goaltending (Sharks), any GF based metric is going to skew wildly year to year.

Over past 2 seasons:

Meier:
Couture: 48%
Hertl: 25.7%
Thornton: 19.6%
Pavelski: 17.3%
Labanc: 15.5%
Goodrow: 14.8%
Marleau: 13.46%
Kane: 13.1%

Buchnevich:
Zibanejad: 43.7%
Kreider: 36.4%
Chytil: 16.2%
Howden 15.8%
Panarin: 11.9%
Lemieux: 11.9%
McLeod: 2.67%

70% is not true, he played 74% with Couture in 18-19, but overall played 48%. Buch has played a lot with Howden, but close to nothing with McLeod.

100% agree with GF%, I dont think anyone would every dispute that GF% is better than CF, xGF, or any others, just was using the iGF to GF to give an idea of how hung out to dry Meier was this year.