Eric and I spend a little time during intermission at the 2015 BMO CHL/NHL Top Prospects game to chat about this guy Connor McDavid and some of the other draft eligible players on the ice in St. Catharines.
Connor McDavid
How the Sabres’ Prospects Fared at 2015 WJC’s
Every year the World Junior Championships is used by top NHL prospects as a showcase to prove to scouts that they are either worthy of a 1st round pick, deserve that first pro contract, or maybe a first shot in the show. As we are now three days removed from Canada’s triumph in the gold medal game the final sprint to June 26 in Sunrise is now underway. As evidenced by ISS’s January Top 30, scouts place a premium on performance (or lack thereof) at the World Juniors.
Sabres fans enduring the three-way battle royale for 30th place this season can take solace in the results from this year’s tournament, as many of their current prospects helped their cause, while some names they may have interest in come June also performed well. Here’s a look at how current Sabres farmhands fared in Toronto and Montreal, as well as how some 2015 draft eligible players helped or hurt themselves. Continue reading
Fury: The Untold Story of the 2014-15 Buffalo Sabres
Ok. Not really.
The start of the season has gone about how you might expect it to and there is still a long way to go before the suffering is over. Sometimes it’s important to take a step back, take a deep breath and just relax. So I took some time to bring a little levity to the current state of the Sabres. Enjoy:
Revisiting Buffalo’s Lottery competition
Even after Sam Reinhart had been selected the collective eyes of Sabres Nation were on the 2015 Draft and Connor McDavid. Even as Tim Murray approached the podium in Philadelphia he had three first round picks in this year’s draft sitting in his back pocket and a ragtag roster with fairly limited potential.
Fast forward beyond July 1 and the first month of the season and not much has changed. The Sabres are bearing headfirst towards the draft lottery, allowing an astronomically high number of shots per game, barely scoring and showing little capacity for carrying out any sort of hockey system.
While I don’t endorse rooting for losses, I fully understand the course this team has been set on and I can accept the decisions based on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I put together a post at the end of June that gave a peek at which teams may or may not compete with the Sabres for 30th place in the NHL and the precious 20% lottery share that comes with a dead last finish. Some of the teams that I expected to nosedive have managed to keep their heads above water while others are surprisingly bad. So I decided to take the opportunity to revisit the teams who could sneak in beneath the Sabres in last place.
The entirely subjective 1-5 (one being the highest) ratings I gave each team were designed to reflect my opinion on where a team would likely finish in the final standings. I made a slight change from “Lottery Threat” to “Lottery Chances” to reflect the influence each team could have on the draft. A team with a one means they have a strong likelihood of picking very high. The opposite, of course, is true of a team with a five. After offseason acquisitions and a month of play, my rankings have undergone a slight change as the NHL landscape has taken shape. Continue reading
Sabres should improve but still won’t contend in 2014-15
Things are going to be better for the Sabres this year. Mainly because things can’t get much worse than they were last year.
Buffalo finished last in the NHL by a country mile. The Sabres were 14 points back of the 29th place Florida Panthers, the same Florida Panthers who also finished 29th in goals for in 2013-14 (39 goals better than the Sabres).
Tim Murray had quite a reclamation project to work on as he inherited a team that was 14 points and 39 goals south of the second-to-last team in the league last year. If the status-quo were to remain, the Sabres would have quite a hill to climb just to leap frog one team, let alone make a run at the playoffs.
Buffalo’s historically bad season was accomplished with only a month-and-a-half of Thomas Vanek, and interim stay from Matt Moulson and two-thirds of the year with Ryan Miller. Miller’s .923 save percentage was good for a monumental point share during his time here and I’ll be interested to see how Jhonas Enroth and Michal Neuvirth perform as a tandem.
Enroth is without doubt the number one goaltender on the roster. To say Neuvirth was shaky during the preseason would be an understatement and he may need a little more time to settle into a groove. Meanwhile, Enroth was tremendous in his preseason appearances and he’ll certainly see the lion’s share of the work early on this year. Will he be able to improve on his .911 save percentage? Will he avoid the lengthy losing streaks that have plagued his young career? The latter is perhaps the most important question here as Enroth’s up-and-down performances have been nothing short of a Jekyll and Hyde of goaltending.
It’s safe to say that there will be a slight decrease in performance in the Buffalo crease. It may not be a regression so steep that it costs the team multiple wins, but it’s safe to assume that the expectations in net will differ from recent years.
Of course, the Sabres roster is vastly improved. The team that will take the ice on Thursday is heads and shoulders better than the one that took the ice in 2013-14. In addition to the departures of Vanek and Miller, Steve Ott, Christian Ehrhoff, John Scott, Henrik Tallinder, Jamie McBain and Matt D’Agostini are all gone. There is some good and bad in that group, but the Sabres are more than improved from top to bottom.
A full season of Moulson and Chris Stewart alone should inject a fair bit of life into the Sabres offense as should the addition of Brian Gionta. With 23, 15 and 11 goals scored by the trio last season, it’s easy to say the Sabres have indeed made up their 40-goal shortfall from last season. Putting Moulson on the wing with Tyler Ennis and Drew Stafford could potentially give the Sabres a bona fide scoring line, although I’m not expecting anyone in blue and gold to surpass 30 goals this season. Continue reading
Who poses a threat to Mission McDavid in 2015?
With the 2014 NHL Draft just a few days away, the Sabres will be making the second highest selection in franchise history that should serve as a major piece of their current rebuild. While the Sabres’ 30th place finish this year ensured them a top-two selection at the draft, the real prize sits atop the 2015 NHL Draft when Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel are set to be picked first and second (not necessarily in that order).
While Tim Murray hasn’t come out and said it, the Sabres aren’t expected to compete for much more than the right to pick one of those two elite talents as yet another building block on the way to a Stanley Cup. Murray and the Sabres are in a good position for 2015 as they hold three picks in the first round, giving them that much more of a chance to score the first pick. While St. Louis’ pick (acquired as part of the Ryan Miller trade) won’t have any sort of effect on Buffalo’s lottery chances, it’s possible that the Islanders’ pick does provide some additional support. Ideally the Islanders would suffer through an ugly season and give the Sabres a massive boost towards snagging first overall. The worst case scenario is that they sneak into the playoffs and give the Sabres two picks in the bottom 15 selections of the round.
There won’t be any change made to the NHL Draft Lottery for next season, so the 30th place club will have a 25% chance to get the first pick with the odds decreasing with each subsequent finisher. So the Sabres could wind up in the exact position they’re in now. No matter how teams are posturing today doesn’t prevent five clubs from finishing between 25 and 30 in the standings and holding the top odds for a very valuable lottery.
I’ve taken the time to run through each club and give my opinion on the current trend they’re following (up, down or neutral), if they own their pick next season and the threat they are to wind up in the lottery. The lottery threat scale goes from one-to-five, with one being the most likely a team is to wind up at the bottom of the league and the top of the draft. Each team’s trend is more subjective as many teams were considered neutral despite having very different circumstances.
Buffalo’s own ranks would give them a downward (perhaps neutral) trend with a level one threat as a major player in the lottery. The Sabres will certainly make some moves this offseason but I don’t foresee anything on the horizon that will drastically turn the team’s fortunes around. The Sabres will certainly be a player for the first pick next year, although the odds certainly weigh against them landing McDavid. Continue reading
Tough choices for Snow will benefit Sabres
A funny thing has happened in the past month-and-a-half. Since sacrificing three major pieces to obtain Thomas Vanek from the Sabres, the Islanders have been in a veritable tail spin; a tail spin that has taken them to just a handful of points away from the Sabres home in the NHL’s basement.
New York’s descent to the bottom of the Metro Division and NHL standings have left the organization, Garth Snow specifically, in a precarious situation as the rest of this season unfolds. Despite the massive shortcomings in the Metro Division, it would appear that the Islanders are dead in the water with regard to the Eastern Conference playoff picture. That leaves them just a few points from the basement and the potential to land a top-five pick based on their spot in the lottery. But with the Islanders due to fork over a first round pick to Buffalo in exchange for Vanek, Snow and his staff will need to determine if they want to lose a potential first round pick this year or miss out on what could be a very valuable chip in the Connor McDavid sweepstakes.
When the Vanek trade went through, determining which pick would turn Snow from saving to sacrificing his 2015 pick was a hot topic of conversation. However, talking about what Snow’s train of thought would be with a pick in the five-to-eight range is much different than if the Islanders are picking in the top three. The former being the more popular train of thought as a late slide out of playoff contention seemed like it could be the most likely scenario the Sabres would find themselves in terms of snagging a second first round pick this year.
With the Islanders struggling as badly as they have, a few more factors come into play with regard to their next two first round picks. Continue reading
Two in the Box 