Do we get out of the bottom 8 this year?

[Buffaloed]

I can see a lot of people calling for Housley's head if the Sabres don't take a big stride forward.

 

[Royal Thunder]

I just look at the lineup and struggle to see how the team shouldn't be expected to be out of the bottom quarter. Top end talents in Eichel, Dahlin, Reinhart, Ristolainen. Legitimately good secondary scoring options with Skinner, Okposo, Mittlestadt, Rodrigues, Nylander, Sheary. NHL caliber players throughout the lineup, and a healthy pipeline of talent ready to fill in for injuries, unlike the AHL tweener callups of the last few seasons. A lot will come down to defense and goaltending but for me it's getting to the point where it's like, how much talent do we need to take a real step in a league with so much parity?

Even with how bad we were last year we lost a ton of 1 goal games games or close games where we just found a way to lose. One more goal would have made a real difference a lot of nights and to me this offense looks way better on paper. They just need to shake off that bad mojo from last season and hopefully having a bunch of new guys in there will help. ROR, Kane, and Lehner aren't bad guys at all but they didn't seem like the type to bring a team closer together the way that guys like Skinner, Hutton, and Berglund seem to. I don't know maybe it's a case of preseason naivety but I just feel like we are running out of excuses to be in the bottom 25% of the league. Housley will be and should be gone if we are in the bottom 8 again IMO.

I could see the Sabres finishing ahead of the Blackhawks and the Avs too, not because they're better but because they can beat up on the Sens, Wings and Habs all season long while the competition in the Central is terrifying this year.

Edmonton too, yes they have McDavid who could save them but man, outside of him they have a pretty ugly lineup. A few good players with Drai, Nuge, Nurse, Klefbom, Talbot but the depth is pretty ugly IMO

 

[MayDayMayDay]

We are a playoff team this year.

 

[Jim Bob]

I think the injury bug will bite enough that they are in the 6 to 8 draft pick range pre-lottery.

 

[Myllz]

I can see a lot of people calling for Housley's head if the Sabres don't take a big stride forward.

Is it too early to start calling for it now?

 

[Chainshot]

I think the injury bug will bite enough that they are in the 6 to 8 draft pick range pre-lottery.

I'm in the same boat. And I could see someone passing them on lottery day as well.

 

[La Cosa Nostra]

I look at the 15-17 Sabres that finished out of the bottom 5 and then look at the 18-19 Sabres. We have a far better team ainec. Every single aspect, forwards, defense and goaltending are far better on this years team then 15-16 and 16-17 when we picked 8th two years in a row. I know we finished 6th last in 16-17 and picked 8th due to the lotto but times are changing.

We won a draft lotto to select one of the best D prospects in the history of the game. We had a legit star goal scorer waive his NMC because he WANTED to come to Buffalo. We signed the most sought after goalie in free agency for a steal of a contract. We have 4 1sts the next 2 drafts on top of our elite #1 ranked prospect pool. Even after Dahlin and Mitts graduate after we pick 2 or 3 times in 2019 we will still have a top 5 prospect pool with the amount of high end prospects we possess (high end meaning top 4 D/top 9 forwards who are projected to be NHLers like Guhle,Asplund,Nylander,TT, davidsson, samuelsson etf).

Not only are we trending up NHL wise but also prospect wise. The only area of concern is coaching, and I will give Housley the benefit of the doubt and give him half of the season before calling for his head.

We start the season with a 4 game home stand. If we want to make the playoffs we cant mess up a 4 game home stand to open the season..we must earn 5/8 points or better.

All I Know is that for the first time in 6 years that I feel confident about the team that we are good enough to score 3 or 4 goals a game and do it consistently. After what, 6 or 7 years of having one of if not the worst offense I'd venture enough to say we are firmly out of the bottom 10 and into the middle of the pack. I also think this team can finish with a 3 gpg average for the year. I predicted 225 goals on the season give or take 10 either way. 246 goals is a 3 gpg. This team definitely has the chance to do that. As long as we get 150 goals out of our top 6 forwards (Eichel, Skinner, Reinhart, Sheary, Mittelstadt and Okposo) I think it's reasonable to say that we can get 80-90 goals from the other 6 forwards and the 6 dmen.

30 goal scorers: Eichel , Skinner
20-29 goal scorers: Reinhart, Sheary
15-19 goal scorers: Mitts, Okposo, Berglund, ,ERod

From the 8 forwards above I'd say they all are 15+ goal scorers. If the PP ends up more like 16-17 then 17-18 then I'd say our offense should comfortably be in the 10-15 range. Too much talent not to.

As for defense, the Rasmi and Scandella are a damn good top half of a blue line. I am happy having Rasmus, Rasmus and Scandella as the 1D,2D and 3D. As long as either McCabe or Bogo return to form and seize that remaining top 4 slot then I dare say we may actually have an average top 4 instead of a God awful one that we've had for about a decade. And I think between Guhle, Pilut,McCabe/Bogo and Beaulieu that our bottom pair should be competent enough to play 14-15 mins a night.

Risto-25
Dahlin-23
Scandella-21
McCabe-19
Bogo-17
Guhle/Pilut/Beaulieu/Nelson- 15

That is a reasonable amount of ice time spread out. Risto will still lead the D in ice time this year but Dahlin will be getting the 25+ a game probably next year. Pilut was really active pinching which was nice to see as the forward covered for him most of the time and it's been awhile probably since Soupy left that we had a D pinching as much as Pilut did in his first game.

As for goaltending not much that has to be said. Hutton is a massive upgrade on Lehner. As is Ullmark.

I predict 85-95 points. We will probably come up just short of a wild card but I would not be shocked if they snuck in. There are only 6 teams in conference that I would say are clearly better. Boston, Washington, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Columbus and Tampa are the only teams definitely ahead of Buffalo. After those 6, we are definitely in that next group with Jersey, Philly and Florida. We are definitely ahead of Ottawa, Montreal, Detroit, the 2 NY teams and Carolina. 4th in the division is definitely possible.

Just bring on the season. I havent been this excited for opening night since 06-07.

 

[Snippit]

So we're 10th last now. This is going to be a tight race

 

[Chainshot]

Voted no in September. I still think the free-fall continues down the stretch. Not that another whiff at #8 will likely make that much of a difference.

 

[Member 308457]

Not sure if the team has the pride to escape bottom 8 this year. The thing that jumps out at me, besides spotty goal scoring and mediocre goaltending is the passing. It seems much of the defense doesn't have a clue, is too flustered or doesn't have the foresight to make the right pass tape to tape. Mostly, I see guys passing to guys who are already covered. Because they are too small/inexperienced/unskilled/low hockey IQ (aka stupid), they get hounded in the d zone and get too bottled up there so they just try to get rid of the hot potato with the pretense of passing. The pass gets botched/intercepted and away the other team goes on another scoring chance. Or our guy receives a suicide pass and gets blasted. How about passing with insight on making a play to guys who are OPEN? Now there's a novel idea.

 

[OkimLom]

Right now I have:

Ottawa, Detroit, Montreal, Arizona, and Vancouver as worse teams most likely. IMO, looking at everything with this team, We might be better than NYR and Carolina. There will probably be a team or two that drops significantly. Hopefully our main guns stay healthy all year. At best I think we're in the 9th-10th worst team in the league.

But even then, I haven't seen enough sustainability of the little things that lead to puck possession and other aspects of the game that better teams do, vs NHL caliber teams. We almost had to go to OT vs an ECHL level team, because once again, we started to crack under the pressure of the other team coming back, and that had more to do than just goaltending. Of course, this is preseason, and we may or may not need to read too much in to that. There's a lot left unanswered, and I don't believe we have a coach on the bench that can bring out the best from this team with their decisions. I think it hampers what these guys can do.

I voted no because there's not enough known about this team, other than we're faster (which helps, but isn't everything). There's not enough to have a concrete answer. We will have injuries to our guys. I'm not sure if we're deep enough in talent to lose one of our big pieces through the year to sustain good play. Could I see the talent carrying us past the bottom 8, yes, but a lot would need to go right.

Took longer than I thought it would be, to be here, but it's almost what I thought it would be, including two teams dropping significantly (Anaheim, LA). I was wrong about Carolina, Montreal, and Arizona. The same issues I thought we had going in after the preseason still remain. Depth, mental stability, and the coaching. The injury issues were better than I thought.

 

[Chainshot]

Yeah, I was expecting the injury issue to waylay them again but instead it's a matter of them simply not leveraging things that work and having too little quality in the lineup to overcome it.

 

[sincerity0]

f***. We got got again

 

[Jim Bob]

It looks like the Sabres and Rangers will be battling for the 7 spot pre-lottery.

 

[Chainshot]

It looks like the Sabres and Rangers will be battling for the 7 spot pre-lottery.

Mittelstadt vs. Andersson V2.0

 

[littletonhockeycoach]

Do we get out of the bottom 8 this year?


Uh.... why would we want that to happen?