But you have to factor in the, at least, 150 minutes he missed due to injury, which are minutes that Montour ended up eating as well

He is their best player...

calm down buddy.

He still plays on PP1 and double shifts with hall and eichel in close games. Also in this scenario, the lines are 2a and 2b.

not everything fits into a neat little box. take a deep breath.

No hes the highest producing forward, Valimaki is widely considered the best player in the league.

But for the sake of not arguing over semantics ill change my question a bit. How will his production drop without his best teammate?

even if that were true, ruotsalainen himself will be in Buffalos camp.

I don't know that I've ever seen anyone suggest a forward would lose production if a defensemen left the team.

i'm calm, thanks for your concern though.
i'm just saying that would be the most Buffalo thing to do, take a top 6 forward and play him in the bottom 6...
...and then question why the team is in the bottom 5 of the league for the last 15 years.

Will he be in Buffalo's camp? Thought he was staying in Liiga for the year.

Usually when your 2nd highest producing player leaves the highest takes a drop in production

The horror of having line up depth.

We have done nothing but put all our chips in one line for like 4 years. Having a balanced line up will do nothing but help and is the exact opposite of what we have done for the last several years (not sure why you went back 15 years, 3 division titles, 2 conference finals and 1 presidents trophy fit in there. which, funny enough came when our leading goal scorer was on the ....THIRD LINE!!! TA DA). He will still be top 3-4 in time on ice and the team will be much better.

I would expect him to be in buffalos camp and to be playing in north america. i believe his opt out if he didn't make the NHL was just last year.

Hedman was facing, not just 1st pairing comp, but elite 1st pairing comp by the start of his 3rd season a couple months before he turned 21.

His first season he played top-4 and Lightning brought in aging mountain and long-time top-pair D Ohlund to mentor him.
His second season he played top-4 with another aging vet, in Clark. Late that season they brought in Brewer to continue to mentor Hedman and for them to take on the toughest competition the following year.

Dahlin faced stronger competition his first year (than in his second), especially when paired with Bogo. And that is the problem that the Sabres have right now. They don't have a decent mentor, and they don't really want to pick one up because they already have too many RHDs (there also isn't really any suitable candidates on the UFA market, but perhaps through a trade). Miller has always been sheltered (for good reasons). Joki and Montour are both young, inexperienced and not big. That leaves Risto, who is still only 26, and probably shouldn't be mentoring Dahlin.

Puckiq doesn't have info for when Hedman was 21, the first year they have is 2014-15 when Hedman was 23-24. He's definitely 2nd pairing at that point.

http://puckiq.com/woodmoney?season=20142015&tier=Elite&positions=d&team=tbl&group_by=player_season_team&min_toi=100

When Hedman started his 3rd season he was 21 already - he turned 22 mid-December so he played most of the year at 22. He wasn't being sheltered as far as I can see, I'm not sure how much he faced Elites though.

you think that the above line up has "depth".
depth by numbers and quality of depth are 2 different things.

buffalo finally has a decently complete top 6 and you have managed to water that down - nice work.

The sabres havent really done what you are saying though. They have had a top line, but havent had much beyond that since we paid to give ror away. Moving skinner away from eichel last year was an attempt to get something else from the bottom 9, but the execution was terrible. We need more scoring from the bottom 9. At this point, there are plenty of teams that dont have a third line checking line, and the middle 6 is probably more about zone starts than anything else. So if you can have eichel and hall bank passes off of girgensons stick and get more than the nothing offense that girgensons typically gives from reinhart on line 3...you are netting more goals. Normally i would rather run out our top 6 forwards on the first 2 lines and then have something more like a 2 way line for d zone starts on line 3, but theres 2 reasons for optimism here- cozens and ruotsalainen. If those 2 can actually play, we may be deep enough to credibly attempt 3 scoring lines, which then makes reinhart moving down not so big a deal.

That was because of a bad injury at the start of the season. In 2011/12, Hedman's third season, he was first on Tampa in ES ice time, heavily defensive zone starts, and with his partner Brewer went up against the best players in the NHL (for instance his % of TOI against Ovi was at the very top of the NHL - and it was similar for the best players on every team Tampa faced) both at ES and the PK.



This is simply wrong. Every single word of it.

Yes, this line up as proposed has quality depth throughout the top 9.

Good ideas here. I'd like to try out Sam at center. He's got such a high hockey IQ so I figure he could adjust well. If not Ruotsalainen could play there. I like the idea of a grinder playing with Eichel and Hall. It's like McDavid and Kassian except imo Girgensons is more gifted than Kassian offensively. I could see Okposo doing well on that line too

quality depth cannot be claimed when you have a 4th line player on your top line (regardless of who they are playing with).
an unproven commodity on your 2nd line.
an unproven commodity on your 3rd line and a career winger moving to C.

Hall / Eichel / Reinhart (Olofsson)
Skinner / Staal / Olofsson (Reinhart)
Thompson (Ruotsalainen) / Eakin / Cozens
Girgensons (Rieder) / Lazar / Okposo

after putting this together, it appears to me that the Sabres don't have much quality depth.
Cozens on the 3rd line with Eakin makes sense, gives him a chance to feel the game out, take some draws and find himself.
2 inexperienced players on the 3rd line would make me a bit nervous.

i understand what is trying to be done with this concept but I do not think even distribution of wealth really works here. if the bottom 6 were more solid, maybe but in my experience, evenly trying to distribute talent over 3 lines isn't an effective strategy and only puts more pressure on the star guys to carry the weight...