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Player Discussion Dylan Cozens, C/RW, 2019 7th overall Part 2

BFLO

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munkyhead8 said:
After he recovered from getting his bell rung early in season, he really seemed to pick it up to finish off the year. What I saw at the beginning was a kid that thought they were anointed 'a playoff team'. I think the contract pressure may have been there for him too. I don't think anyone would doubt he's a competitor, so I'm expecting he comes out of the gate flying this year.
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I know this is an old post to reply to, but with Cozens starting off so terribly and people bumping the thread, it's still the 3rd most recent post.

I don't see someone who "picked it up" to finish off the year. I see someone who was awful all year and continued to be awful in the final 2 months and had a random 3 point night in the last game of the season.
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Jim Bob

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Seven NHL players under the most pressure to prove their value in 2024-25​

Dylan Cozens, Buffalo Sabres​

It’s been 13 seasons since Buffalo last made the playoffs. Sabres fans are sick of being told they have a promising core or an elite prospect pipeline; they want meaningful on-ice progress.

The biggest reason the Sabres regressed last year, following a breakout 2022-23 season where they finished one point back of the playoffs, is that their offense fell off a cliff. Buffalo fell from being the league’s third-highest goal-scoring team in 2022-23 to ranking 23rd in goals for last year.

The Sabres won’t surge back up the standings until their top forwards return to the level they showed two seasons ago, starting with Tage Thompson and Dylan Cozens.

Cozens, 23, exploded for 31 goals and 68 points in 2022-23 but dropped to 47 points last season. He’s also yet to develop into an above-average two-way driver, at least according to the underlying numbers. There’s extra pressure for him to reach his potential as a high-end top-six center because he’s got six years left at a $7.1 million cap hit.

Cozens hasn’t registered a single point through five games. He needs to come alive as a key offensive driver if the Sabres have any shot of climbing out of their early season hole.
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Darnell, Nurse, Alexandar Georgiev, Jacob Trouba, Elias Pettersson, Trevor Zegras, and Chandler Stephenson are the others in the article.
 
Chainshot

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5 Minute Major said:
I’ll go against the grain here….outside of that absolute disaster of a play that led to Pittsburgh’s 2nd goal, I think Cozens has played well with the exception of burying the puck.
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He's getting shots and chances, things aren't going in. It would much more concerning if he wasn't getting either. I'm reminded of people railing on Reinhart in seasons' past when he too was still getting quality looks and dangerous shots. Worry when there is nothing coming off a guys stick, like say... Jack Quinn. In the meantime, it's frustrating but Cozens is at least getting opportunity.
 
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jc17

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Chainshot said:
He's getting shots and chances, things aren't going in. It would much more concerning if he wasn't getting either. I'm reminded of people railing on Reinhart in seasons' past when he too was still getting quality looks and dangerous shots. Worry when there is nothing coming off a guys stick, like say... Jack Quinn. In the meantime, it's frustrating but Cozens is at least getting opportunity.
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Production is much less a concern than the bone head plays for me.

Especially with how bad the pp has been I just can't stomach continuing to give minutes to a guy so turnover prone. It's not recent either, been multiple years of over handling and dumb passes.

Adam's already talked about cozens needing to care less about points. He still might over handle a bit in the o zone, but it seems like all we really need is for him to simplify things in transition, eliminate blind passes, and 75% of his issues will be solved
 
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Der Jaeger

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He needs to be on the wing, or a serious commitment to making him Buffalo's Cirelli. Just go with one and let him develop into it.
 
Jim Bob

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BFLO

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Club said:
I really hope he picks it up. After that fight a couple seasons (?) ago it seems like his confidence just never returned.
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Tired of this narrative.

Cozens scored 7 points in 11 games up to and including the fight. That's 52.2 point pace.

After the fight He missed 3 games and then struggled with 4 points in his next 12 games (27.3 point pace).

But then he was right back to where he was before with 36 points in the remaining 56 games(52.7 point pace).

The fight hurt him for about a month, and then he was almost exactly the same as before the fight.

The outlier in Cozens career is Nov/Dec of 2022 when he scored 28 points in 25 games, (91.84 point pace). He scored 40 points in the other 56 games that season (58.57 point pace)
 

Samsonite23

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BFLO said:
Tired of this narrative.

Cozens scored 7 points in 11 games up to and including the fight. That's 52.2 point pace.

After the fight He missed 3 games and then struggled with 4 points in his next 12 games (27.3 point pace).

But then he was right back to where he was before with 36 points in the remaining 56 games(52.7 point pace).

The fight hurt him for about a month, and then he was almost exactly the same as before the fight.

The outlier in Cozens career is Nov/Dec of 2022 when he scored 28 points in 25 games, (91.84 point pace). He scored 40 points in the other 56 games that season (58.57 point pace)
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The game is more than points. The guy’s confidence was completely shot after that fight and it showed. He hasn’t been the same player points or no points since.
 
BFLO

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Samsonite23 said:
The game is more than points. The guy’s confidence was completely shot after that fight and it showed. He hasn’t been the same player points or no points since.
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Yes it's more than points. But I don't see the fight as being the defining moment of when his confidence broke.

I'd make the argument that it was the contract that killed his confidence.

His points dropped off right around when we can guess contract negations began really heating up in Jan 2023, signing the contract Feb 7th 2023. He's been gripping his stick tight ever since trying way too hard to live up to that big money deal. His points recovered a month after the fight, they've never recovered after the contract. They've only continued to go down, and his confidence with them.
 
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Samsonite23

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BFLO said:
Yes it's more than points. But I don't see the fight as being the defining moment of when his confidence broke.

I'd make the argument that it was the contract that killed his confidence.

His points dropped off right around when we can guess contract negations began really heating up in Jan 2023, signing the contract Feb 7th 2023. He's been gripping his stick tight ever since trying way too hard to live up to that big money deal. His points recovered a month after the fight, they've never recovered after the contract. They've only continued to go down, and his confidence with them.
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Ah, there’s a case to be made for that. Makes some sense.
 
Jim Bob

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But his puck-moving play has declined elsewhere after that was such a difference-maker in his breakout year. According to AllThreeZones, Cozens’ controlled entry rate dropped from 15.6 per 60 in 2022-23 to 9.7 this season. Even with the caveat of this year being a more limited sample, which can amplify results, it’s still an eye-catching difference — and one that rates really poorly in Buffalo after being one of the better puck transporters a couple of seasons ago. It’s not just the volume of entries that has dropped, but his efficiency, with his carry-in percentage decreasing from 62.6 to 53.3 since 2022-23.
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Not good, Bob.
 
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jc17

jc17

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Jim Bob said:



Not good, Bob.
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Ive been wanting to do a littler evaluation of some of these stats along side the eye test.

Does the article hypothesize the reason for the dropoff, or does it simply state that his numbers got worse?

I really think analytics in hockey is interesting, but feel like sometimes a lot of the popular people in this domain are content to pretty much say "x player got better/worse based on y metric" and sort of leave it there instead of trying to figure out why
 
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