Confirmed with Link: Jeff Skinner -- Bought Out 6/29/24

[joshjull]

I think you're trying too hard to make it sound like Skinner has done nothing wrong when even Vogl is saying that Skinner may not be listening to coaches and putting in the work others have been putting in

Not only I have I not done that. I’ve sympathized with Krueger’s decision to put Skinner on the 4th line and have defended it frequently on here. Because I understand Skinner isn’t blameless.

Tortorella would've benched Skinner had he done the same thing, so would any competent coach

Torts is irrelevant to this but this made my chuckle for two reasons.

(1) You don’t even know why Skinner is sitting but your sure Torts would sit him for it.
(2) Torts would be blunt and leave no doubt as to why a player was sat. The complete opposite of how Krueger has handled this

You can argue hypotheticals about other coaches avoiding this situation altogether, but that's not the reality as it exists today

I didn’t argue hypotheticals about other coaches avoiding the situation. Maybe you meant to respond to someone else with this.



But I have to say its interesting how you repeatedly avoid responding to the bigger picture with Krueger. I’ve brought up plenty of examples of a coach making poor player usage decisions. A wider context to view this Krueger/Skinner discussion. That maybe , just maybe this is another example of Krueger making a poor player usage decision. But you refuse to engage on it and want to pretend this situation is happening in a vacuum. It isn’t.

 

[explore]

Not only I have I not done that. I’ve sympathized with Krueger’s decision to put Skinner on the 4th line and have defended it frequently on here. Because I understand Skinner isn’t blameless.



Torts is irrelevant to this but this made my chuckle for two reasons.

(1) You don’t even know why Skinner is sitting but your sure Torts would sit him for it.
(2) Torts would be blunt and leave no doubt as to why a player was sat. The complete opposite of how Krueger has handled this



I didn’t argue hypotheticals about other coaches avoiding the situation. Maybe you meant to respond to someone else with this.



But I have to say its interesting how you repeatedly avoid responding to the bigger picture with Krueger. I’ve brought up plenty of examples of a coach making poor player usage decisions. A wider context to view this Krueger/Skinner discussion. That maybe , just maybe this is another example of Krueger making a poor player usage decision. But you refuse to engage on it and want to pretend this situation is happening in a vacuum. It isn’t.

I'm tired of talking in circles, so I'm going to quote this again:

Inside the Sabres' curious decision to keep Jeff Skinner as a healthy scratch – The Athletic

"There are rumblings that the left winger has not embraced (or even attempted) the extra work being asked to shore up his deficiencies."

 

[joshjull]

I'm tired of talking in circles, so I'm going to quote this again:

Inside the Sabres' curious decision to keep Jeff Skinner as a healthy scratch – The Athletic

"There are rumblings that the left winger has not embraced (or even attempted) the extra work being asked to shore up his deficiencies."

Posting a rumor over and over doesn’t make any more accurate or true than the first time you posted.

EDIT: we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this.

 

[Panthaz89]

How can you say Skinner is a reason that we are losing when you don't even play him in a spot where he can actually impact the game? The top unit is getting outscored so bad 5v5 and the coach does basically nothing to addresss this hell the 3rd line is probably the least threatening line in the league and rarely gets any changes. Normally when Skinner is the other team is stuck defending the best real defense in the NHL is having the puck in your opponents zone because they aren't scoring from there.

 

[Royisgone]

How can you say Skinner is a reason that we are losing when you don't even play him in a spot where he can actually impact the game? The top unit is getting outscored so bad 5v5 and the coach does basically nothing to addresss this hell the 3rd line is probably the least threatening line in the league and rarely gets any changes. Normally when Skinner is the other team is stuck defending the best real defense in the NHL is having the puck in your opponents zone because they aren't scoring from there.

I thought Skinner was invisible in his return today against Philly. Of course, the same impediments to his success were in place.

Guy gets very little ice time and has no play makers on his line.

Managing his ice time in this manner is equivalent to deciding not to give him K extension. And yet they did! And it was HUGE!

Sabres. LOL

 

[BFLO]

Skinner contributed nothing yesterday.

He doesn't put himself into position to receive passes, or to contribute to the cycle along the walls in the O-zone. When he does manage to come up with the puck he turns it over

He's just a body skating around out there.

 

[Jim Bob]

Skinner contributed nothing yesterday.

He doesn't put himself into position to receive passes, or to contribute to the cycle along the walls in the O-zone. When he does manage to come up with the puck he turns it over

He's just a body skating around out there.

Skinner is obviously demotivated thanks to the way the coaching staff has dealt with him last year and again this year.

Ralph and Skinner both need to be better.

 

[SackTastic]

Of course it does. In Krueger’s line structure 4th line LW is the only spot available to Skinner. Thats the case no matter how he plays.

You must have bought into the fairy tales Krueger was spinning about Skinner having chance to work his way off the 4th line. To where? Krueger doesn't view him as top 6 winger, said so recently and wouldn’t move any of the current top 6 wingers to but Skinner there. He also wont break up the 3rd line no matter how crappy they play. We have 10+ games of them playing as one of the worst lines in hockey to a back that up.

The thing is I don’t even care about Krueger playing Skinner were he has. I’ve defended it a lot and I know he’s the type of forward that can drive coaches crazy.. But he can spare me with the bullshit about sitting him over “principles” or because of a “culture of accountability”. He was playing better than most forwards and all of those on the 3rd line. He was sat because he wasn’t scoring and doesn’t PK. Plus they wanted to give Mitts a chance and Krueger will never sit the golden 5 in the bottom 6.

But Krueger just won’t own a decision like that for the obvious reason he did it. He keeps changing his reasons and makes it about the player and him not buying into “principles”.

I also hard to listen to talk about a culture of responsibility from a coach that keeps icing that joke of a 3rd line.

ALL OF THIS.

I was really surprised that Hall decided to sign here generally, but it was most mystifying why they WANTED to. If you looked at the roster before Hall, your top 2 left wingers are Skinner and Olofsson. Doesn't matter the order, that's pretty good. Now you get Hall, so you have this abundance of riches on the left, but it means one of those guys gets bumped to a 3rd line and IS going to struggle to produce , and fight for minutes, unless you also have an abundance of talent down the middle, which they do not. They also clearly see Olofsson as a long term piece, so you don't want to demote him to the 3rd line and risk pissing him off for once UFA hits, nor do you really want to have him only getting 3rd line + power play minutes, since that will impact his PP production, which is most of what he provides still.

It is exactly the sort of mistake that shitty teams make ; a good experienced GM would have these conversations with the staff and figure out how this could impact the structure of the team on the ice. I strongly think that in this situation, a good GM doesn't sign Hall and help create this situation, but spends that $8M shoring up other deficiencies in the roster. Instead, we have a clip of GM Terry thinking this means the team who hasn't made the playoffs in a decade suddenly becomes a Cup contender.

Hall and Skinner are both great players. Hall has been more noticeable to me working with and without the puck this year than Skinner has, and as much as I like him, Skinner does have a career full of slumps like this.

No matter which way you slice it, it all runs back to Fantasy Draft Terry, pushing to SIGN PLAYERS, not BUILD A TEAM.

 

[elchud]

The Skinner contract is simply the worst thing in the past 10 years. Worse than OReilly trade, the Moulson/Leino/Okposo contracts, worse than Kane/Lehner, worse than all the horrible coaches and gms. Its the sui generis of all worst things. It may worse than like the 3 other worst things, COMBINED. The veritable coup de grace of worstiness. Worst contract in NHL history? Maybe...I guess there is DiPietro...but the Islanders recovered from that pretty well. It may be worse because we are WASTING THE PRIME YEARS OF EICHEL with that contract.

I wish he scored 35 goals instead of 40. It would be the difference between 7.5 and 9. Would still be bad.

The only way this ends well is a good return in an Eichel trade and hitting home runs on three top-6 picks the next three drafts.. This is how we get salvage the next SIX seasons.

 

[Doug Prishpreed]

Ralph and Skinner both need to be better.

They both need to be gone

 

[The Red Helmet]

ALL OF THIS.

I was really surprised that Hall decided to sign here generally, but it was most mystifying why they WANTED to. If you looked at the roster before Hall, your top 2 left wingers are Skinner and Olofsson. Doesn't matter the order, that's pretty good. Now you get Hall, so you have this abundance of riches on the left, but it means one of those guys gets bumped to a 3rd line and IS going to struggle to produce , and fight for minutes, unless you also have an abundance of talent down the middle, which they do not. They also clearly see Olofsson as a long term piece, so you don't want to demote him to the 3rd line and risk pissing him off for once UFA hits, nor do you really want to have him only getting 3rd line + power play minutes, since that will impact his PP production, which is most of what he provides still.

It is exactly the sort of mistake that shitty teams make ; a good experienced GM would have these conversations with the staff and figure out how this could impact the structure of the team on the ice. I strongly think that in this situation, a good GM doesn't sign Hall and help create this situation, but spends that $8M shoring up other deficiencies in the roster. Instead, we have a clip of GM Terry thinking this means the team who hasn't made the playoffs in a decade suddenly becomes a Cup contender.

Hall and Skinner are both great players. Hall has been more noticeable to me working with and without the puck this year than Skinner has, and as much as I like him, Skinner does have a career full of slumps like this.

No matter which way you slice it, it all runs back to Fantasy Draft Terry, pushing to SIGN PLAYERS, not BUILD A TEAM.

Dude, Skinner is not a great player. He is not even good.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

All retirement contracts suck.

Players shouldn't be paid according to their past performance. Pay them according to their projected performance.


Betting on a player to continue performing at their absolute peak outlier season well into their 30's is alwaya a terrible bet.

 

[Jim Bob]

They both need to be gone

Given each of their contracts, I doubt that is happening any time soon.

 

[Jim Bob]

All retirement contracts suck.

Players shouldn't be paid according to their past performance. Pay them according to their projected performance.

Betting on a player to continue performing at their absolute peak outlier season well into their 30's is alwaya a terrible bet.

But, projected performance is heavily influenced by past results.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

But, projected performance is heavily influenced by past results.

It's the 'starting point'.

Like if he's a 40 goal scorer at 28, it would be stupid to pay him as a 40 goal scorer until he was 36. He was never going to score 40 a year into his late 30's. He's not Ovechkin.

If I were to look at the data of players like him, I would've pegged him to score 25-30 maybe 2 more times before falling into a 30-40 point guy... and being healthy scratch at 34-36.


All UFA contracts are terrible. For every 'Bergeron' who age like wine, you'll 20x more Heatley's, Clarksons, and Skinners.

 

[Doug Prishpreed]

Given each of their contracts, I doubt that is happening any time soon.

Agreed. That’s why they won’t be making the playoffs at all in the 2020s.

 

[Jim Bob]

It's the 'starting point'.

Like if he's a 40 goal scorer at 28, it would be stupid to pay him as a 40 goal scorer until he was 36. He was never going to score 40 a year into his late 30's. He's not Ovechkin.

If I were to look at the data of players like him, I would've pegged him to score 25-30 maybe 2 more times before falling into a 30-40 point guy... and being healthy scratch at 34-36.

All UFA contracts are terrible. For every 'Bergeron' who age like wine, you'll 20x more Heatley's, Clarksons, and Skinners.

I get it. That's why I always say it's usually a bad idea to sign a UFA to a long deal.

I had the "like the player, hate the contract" response when the extension was announced. And like the Hall contract has shown, the dollars aren't the issue. It's the length and the NMC clauses that are the issues.

 

[Jim Bob]

Agreed. That’s why they won’t be making the playoffs at all in the 2020s.

I won't go that far.

The Pegulas owning the team is why I am not bullish on the team's results any time soon, though.

 

[Dingo44]

 

[Shmuffalo]

View attachment 578389

Sabres/Bisons short-sleeved reverse retro 2.0 sweaters confirmed. Excited for the anti-Philly-cooperall era. /s

 

[DapperCam]

I just heard “Party in the USA” yesterday on the radio. Really made me miss Sabres hockey.

 

[Deep Blue Metallic]

Some of the Skinner posts from spring 2021. Oosh, lad. What a difference a Kruger-less season makes.

Luckily all of my posts flawlessly stand the test of time. ;-)

 

[Dingo44]

 

[stokes84]

I saw the thread title and I was like “again?!?!”

 

[Nikolajs Sillers]

I saw the thread title and I was like “again?!?!”

Same.