The Roster Thread, Summer 2024

[SnuggaRUDE]

The dataset is flat out flawed.

75+% of your data set would be incomplete when collecting data in this fashion, because most of the players did not play those ten years they are graphing for. You can't graph trajectories of players with incomplete datasets. Your results are going to be misrepresentative of what you are trying to measure.

As a universal scoring measuring stick, context is immensely important. Do you believe Girgensons in his 30s would not outscore his age 20 year old self now if he were playing a full season with Thompson and Tuch? I know he would.

The dataset on the majority of young players is also extremely lacking. The majority of early 20s players play incomplete seasons on callups, and are not eligible for this dataset. Most of them end up playing in the bottom six as filler and their inclusion in this graph would dramatically change the curve, yet they are missing. Then there are the young guys with high draft pedigree that only stick around for a couple seasons, but are given top six minutes, but who have no data in their mid to later years as they are out of the league.

Teams rely on older players to play defensive roles. The coaching scheme utilizes them in matchups or energy roles, and they are instructed to play defense first. This also dramatically skews the stats when viewed out of context. Almost every healthy winger in the league will put up better numbers at age 27 when playing with a McDavid or a MacKinnon than they would at 22, but the majority of players that are still in the league at 27 are playing bottom six roles by then, further skewing this data set.

If you want an honest indicator of progression by age then you take out the calendar year restrictions and run the data on individuals by player age. The graph changes substantially. It would still be highly flawed as it doesn't account for the context, but it wouldn't be quite as bad. As Chain pointed out, the best teams in the league are rolling out mostly rosters devoid of a lot of kids. This is definitely a case where bad data leads to faulty assumptions.

And for the record, we were talking about this Sabres team and the age of the players three years ago, mostly 19-22, as not being ready to go "all in on the trade market". We aren't talking about 24-26 year olds.

You don't need a 10 year career to show up on the curve. The average player's career isn't even that long.

All this curve does is graph the % of a player's career year in points for a given age. Missing early data when they're call ups won't change anything. It won't change their peak year, nor will it change the % of their peak when they're 30.

Again, that's not 'context' it's a different idea. Go ahead and graph xG% if you want to see how puck possession plays out over a player's career.

I'm confused by the bolded. That's basically what the curve does. If a player's best year is 100 points and they score 75 points subsequently they're at 75% for that age. Combine all of the players over that data set and you have a curve with confidence intervals (gray).

EDIT: Btw here's the other link from my original post. It plots WAR over age. A New Look at Aging Curves for NHL Skaters (part 1)

 

[Beerz]

Hartman signed 4 years nmc with Minnesota

Doh. For some reason I thought he was a UFA

 

[Beerz]

This was interesting... he has a realistic mock offseason and a "chaotic" offseason mock.

People will hate the chaotic one ... haha

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

This was interesting... he has a realistic mock offseason and a "chaotic" offseason mock.

People will hate the chaotic one ... haha

Well chaotic is one way to describe it. Big fan of the Clifton to Utah for a 3rd as a sort of palate cleanser after all that.

 

[Gras]

Well chaotic is one way to describe it. Big fan of the Clifton to Utah for a 3rd as a sort of palate cleanser after all that.

I'd be curious if there are charts comparing his play with games on his off-side vs natural because his play seemed to improve when he got to play RD full time.

 

[TehDoak]

This was interesting... he has a realistic mock offseason and a "chaotic" offseason mock.

People will hate the chaotic one ... haha

I just sent this gentleman a list of questions for Adams (He mentioned they have him on WGR tomorrow morning).

I doubt any of them get used.

 

[Irie]

You don't need a 10 year career to show up on the curve. The average player's career isn't even that long.

All this curve does is graph the % of a player's career year in points for a given age. Missing early data when they're call ups won't change anything. It won't change their peak year, nor will it change the % of their peak when they're 30.

Again, that's not 'context' it's a different idea. Go ahead and graph xG% if you want to see how puck possession plays out over a player's career.

I'm confused by the bolded. That's basically what the curve does. If a player's best year is 100 points and they score 75 points subsequently they're at 75% for that age. Combine all of the players over that data set and you have a curve with confidence intervals (gray).

EDIT: Btw here's the other link from my original post. It plots WAR over age. A New Look at Aging Curves for NHL Skaters (part 1)

There was no standardization. There is no control. You are comparing apples to oranges and drawing faulty conclusions.

This graph that is supposed to be telling us about the point totals of younger players league wide is excluding all the later bloomers and basically non teenage stars. It doesn't have half of the skaters in the league accounted for in their early years, and only represents the early developing exceptions in that demographic. I could probably list hundreds of current NHLers whose 18-23 development years are excluded from this chart. How is that representative? The data is poop.

 

[Beerz]

I just sent this gentleman a list of questions for Adams (He mentioned they have him on WGR tomorrow morning).

I doubt any of them get used.

You gonna share?

 

[Gabrielor]

This was interesting... he has a realistic mock offseason and a "chaotic" offseason mock.

People will hate the chaotic one ... haha

On realistic:

Good, but I actually think he short-changed the Sabres. I think they'd make 1-2 moves more than this.

On chaotic:
The Tkachuk idea is fun, but the mock itself is exactly what it's label is, chaos. The entire prospect pool is gutted, and I'm kinda for that part. I'm against trading Owen Power, because I seem to be among the few who think people are crazy to think we'll be better by moving him. There aren't many certainties in life, but Dahlin-Power being part of core is one of them. I think Tage is moved before either of these two.

I also wouldn't just Marner with a 10 foot pole. He isn't solving what ails this team.

 

[Beerz]

On realistic:

Good, but I actually think he short-changed the Sabres. I think they'd make 1-2 moves more than this.

On chaotic:
The Tkachuk idea is fun, but the mock itself is exactly what it's label is, chaos. The entire prospect pool is gutted, and I'm kinda for that part. I'm against trading Owen Power, because I seem to be among the few who think people are crazy to think we'll be better by moving him. There aren't many certainties in life, but Dahlin-Power being part of core is one of them. I think Tage is moved before either of these two.

I also wouldn't just Marner with a 10 foot pole. He isn't solving what ails this team.

Yeah... he touches a lot of sacred cows for people... including mine in Benson and Quinn

 

[Gras]

On realistic:

Good, but I actually think he short-changed the Sabres. I think they'd make 1-2 moves more than this.

On chaotic:
The Tkachuk idea is fun, but the mock itself is exactly what it's label is, chaos. The entire prospect pool is gutted, and I'm kinda for that part. I'm against trading Owen Power, because I seem to be among the few who think people are crazy to think we'll be better by moving him. There aren't many certainties in life, but Dahlin-Power being part of core is one of them. I think Tage is moved before either of these two.

I also wouldn't just Marner with a 10 foot pole. He isn't solving what ails this team.

I didnt even catch how he deals with Skinner in the chaotic model

 

[Beerz]

I didnt even catch how he deals with Skinner in the chaotic model

Poof. Gone.

He didn't address him at all haha

 

[paulmm3]

I was thinking a little bit about JJ Peterka as a trade piece. He's going to get a decent size contract soon and he's kind of redundant in terms of our top forwards bringing offense and little else. But then I thought about it more. This is not a post about trading Peterka. This is a post about buying out Jeff Skinner.

Peterka is young, we don't know his ceiling, and the easy way he becomes less redundant is to buy out Jeff Skinner. Do it now. Forget the 2.4M x 6y buyout cap hit. We're not at the cap and you're going to have lost the remainder of your dwindling fan base if we get 3 more seasons like last one. Jeff Skinner is not value-less, and shouldn't get all the blame. His weaknesses are magnified by being on a line with Tage and Tuch, for sure. Tage I have serious concerns about also, but this isn't a post about that. Tage's defensive deficiencies magnify Jeff Skinner's, and vice versa. And Alex Tuch completely neglected to show up for the early part of last season, so he gets no pass from me either.

Defense needs to be better, bottom forwards need to be better, but the top forwards are a disappointment also. There are some characteristics multiple of our top forwards have that we should lessen. Buying out Jeff Skinner is the best way I see to do that.

 

[Beerz]

I was thinking a little bit about JJ Peterka as a trade piece. He's going to get a decent size contract soon and he's kind of redundant in terms of our top forwards bringing offense and little else. But then I thought about it more. This is not a post about trading Peterka. This is a post about buying out Jeff Skinner.

Peterka is young, we don't know his ceiling, and the easy way he becomes less redundant is to buy out Jeff Skinner. Do it now. Forget the 2.4M x 6y buyout cap hit. We're not at the cap and you're going to have lost the remainder of your dwindling fan base if we get 3 more seasons like last one. Jeff Skinner is not value-less, and shouldn't get all the blame. His weaknesses are magnified by being on a line with Tage and Tuch, for sure. Tage I have serious concerns about also, but this isn't a post about that. Tage's defensive deficiencies magnify Jeff Skinner's, and vice versa. And Alex Tuch completely neglected to show up for the early part of last season, so he gets no pass from me either.

Defense needs to be better, bottom forwards need to be better, but the top forwards are a disappointment also. There are some characteristics multiple of our top forwards have that we should lessen. Buying out Jeff Skinner is the best way I see to do that.

It's not a 2.4 mill x 6 buyout... you're missing a years that is 4.5 mill caphit and 6.5 mill caphit

 

[Ace]

It's not a 2.4 mill x 6 buyout... you're missing a years that is 4.5 mill caphit and 6.5 mill caphit

What does he make those two years if we keep him instead? So he can get even worse and continue to produce literally nothing when taken out of the top six?

Because where you see costs of 4.5 and 6.5…I see savings of 4.5 and 2.5.

Anyone who looks at a Skinner buyout and sees cap money spent the next three years as a reason not to do it is flying blind. The alternative is having him here…continuing to age and suck…for a lot more.

The cost is in the three years after his current deal is up. So give us those numbers so we can have a procession of people who see it and say “oh god…yes do it please”

 

[Der Jaeger]

Matthew going to Florida is a completely different scenario than Brady coming to Buffalo, though.

Until proven otherwise, Buffalo is a place where players leave to thrive in a lot of instances. Plus, adding a really young former captain, who failed to lead his former team anywhere, to a young, inexperienced locker room could be problematic.

It's not like Eichel going to Vegas with all the experience and leadership they have. Or Matthew going to Florida that had leaders like Barkov, Ekblad, and Bobrovsky already entrenched in that locker room.

I don’t think you can act in a narrative style way. Eg: people get better when they leave here are better.

Nor can you run a team based on the Eichel experience.

That kills potential solutions for really no reason at all.

There’s leadership on the team with Dahlin, Tuch, Thompson, Cozens, etc.

I would also say that Florida was fairly strongly leaning into physical players, and Matthew was just another one. Bennett, Lomberg, the Finns my voice to text butchers, departed guys like Vatrano and Gudas. It isn’t that they started being dinks, they were dinks. Bennett was throwing cheap shots at Dahlin before Tkachuk ever got there he adds to their Kari of douche bags, and I don’t think Buffalo has those sorts of players that anyone would bring forward a different dial of play. They’ve actively avoided having those sorts of players, actively removed those sorts of players, and don’t have any in their system. Linus Weisbach is the dirtiest grittiest guy that they have on the farm. This is a systemic failing over two management teams.

Buffalo doesn’t have dirty players, true. Krebs or Skinner would be closest. But Dallas and Vegas are hard nosed teams without much dirtbaggery.

Krebs will agitate.
Cozens can play a heavy game.
Tuch can play a heavy game.
Greenway can play a heavy game.
Dahlin has grit and some dirt bag in him.
Samuelsson can play a heavy game.
Clifton can play a heavy game.
Skinner can agitate.
Benson, for his size, plays a tough game.

Surrounded by that, I’d bet Thompson plays heavier.

It just takes someone to pull them in emotionally.

 

[Gras]

What does he make those two years if we keep him instead? So he can get even worse and continue to produce literally nothing when taken out of the top six?

Because where you see costs of 4.5 and 6.5…I see savings of 4.5 and 2.5.

Anyone who looks at a Skinner buyout and sees cap money spent the next three years as a reason not to do it is flying blind. The alternative is having him here…continuing to age and suck…for a lot more.

The cost is in the three years after his current deal is up. So give us those numbers so we can have a procession of people who see it and say “oh god…yes do it please”

Next summer still makes more sense

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

There was no standardization. There is no control. You are comparing apples to oranges and drawing faulty conclusions.

This graph that is supposed to be telling us about the point totals of younger players league wide is excluding all the later bloomers and basically non teenage stars. It doesn't have half of the skaters in the league accounted for in their early years, and only represents the early developing exceptions in that demographic. I could probably list hundreds of current NHLers whose 18-23 development years are excluded from this chart. How is that representative? The data is poop.

Because it's based on their BEST YEAR. Early shitty years won't affect how a players years after their best year look.

Did you review the WAR link? It's much more exhaustive and includes 'context' as it's based on puck possession.

 

[paulmm3]

It's not a 2.4 mill x 6 buyout... you're missing a years that is 4.5 mill caphit and 6.5 mill caphit

Rats. You're right. I was doing everything from a phone that truncated the last few columns in CapFriendly - I just saw the "buyout cost" column but the "cap hit" column was cut off. Now I feel silly for making a long post based on bad data. Those higher cap hit years could hurt us. That makes the buyout a much tougher question.

If we don't buy out Skinner and don't make major trades - which seems most likely - I guess there's reason to hope we can squeak into a wild card spot with another year of age for the kids, some changes to the bottom 6 forwards, and a better first 3 months of the season. Hopefully the players work harder this summer than they did last summer.

 

[MarkusKetterer]

What does he make those two years if we keep him instead? So he can get even worse and continue to produce literally nothing when taken out of the top six?

Because where you see costs of 4.5 and 6.5…I see savings of 4.5 and 2.5.

Anyone who looks at a Skinner buyout and sees cap money spent the next three years as a reason not to do it is flying blind. The alternative is having him here…continuing to age and suck…for a lot more.

The cost is in the three years after his current deal is up. So give us those numbers so we can have a procession of people who see it and say “oh god…yes do it please”

You see a saving, but you need to replace his spot in the lineup. Still technically a saving on money, but Skinner is not gonna be replaced with some AHL veteran making league minimum. Or a rookie on their ELC

 

[Old Navy Goat]

You see a saving, but you need to replace his spot in the lineup. Still technically a saving on money, but Skinner is not gonna be replaced with some AHL veteran making league minimum. Or a rookie on their ELC

You could but it depends on what you're willing to sacrifice. None will probably give you his goal production but Kulich would be a better PP weapon, while Savoie would give you better all ice defense

 

[Irie]

Because it's based on their BEST YEAR. Early shitty years won't affect how a players years after their best year look.

Did you review the WAR link? It's much more exhaustive and includes 'context' as it's based on puck possession.

I do not believe the data collection is based on their best years. This guy is comparing 2 years across a huge scope of players and see what the rise or drop in WAR is and concludes that 22 to 23 is the last positive development year and that 23 is the peak for NHL players in his opening chart.

Here is the thing. The muckers and grinder, the low scoring defensive energy forwards and defensemen quite often don't become fulltime NHL players until they are 24 or 25, at which point their addition to the datapool and inclusion shifts the stats away from the high scoring top 6 players that have been in the league since they were teens, changing what we are annalyzing completely. We are starting to measure apples to oranges at that point.

Wins above replacement in these charts say that 23 is the peak age for hockey players, yet the most competitive teams often don't have a single player that young on their roster.

The eye test nearly always is going to tell you that the 27 year old is way more effective on ice than the 22 year old, yet this chart says otherwise, because well, WAR.

Let's look at a handfull of players that have been coveted in this thread recently because people view them as players that can help the Sabres win:

Haula. Entered the league at 25. Best season at 26-27 years old.
Coleman. Entered the league at 25. Best season at 32-33 followed closely by his 27-28 season.
Gourde. First fulltime season at 26. Best season at 27-28 years old.
Carrier. A coupe of half seasons, not a fulltime player before he turned 24. Best season at 25-26.
Colton. Entered the league at 25. Best season at 27.
Cousins Entered the league at 23. Best season(tied) 25-26 and 29-30.
Trenin Entered the league at 23, best season(tied) 24-25 and 25-26.

This trend holds true to the majority of players that aren't in the league as teenagers. The kids that follow the curve in the chart are typically high top ten draft picks that make the league at 18 or 19, are highly sheltered, and not asked to play D. No one is peaking at 23 in the real world (Which is when early 20s ends).

If we look at defensemen, the majority of them won't even qualify for the curves prerequisites before they are 23.

I agree with a lot of things you post, but these charts with their data that flies in the face of reality are really out of touch with the true development curves of players because they skew data and ignore context. They are extremely faulty.

 

[toomuchsauce]

That ain't the move.

Seth Jones would probably make a hell of a partner for Dahlin or Power.

I'm not sure how much I'd give up to acquire a 30-year old defenseman making 9.5M, but if the acquisition price was right, I really like the player. He's kind of exactly what Buffalo needs.

 

[Beerz]

Seth Jones would probably make a hell of a partner for Dahlin or Power.

I'm not sure how much I'd give up to acquire a 30-year old defenseman making 9.5M, but if the acquisition price was right, I really like the player. He's kind of exactly what Buffalo needs.

I don't think Sabres need another PMD who is suspect defensively.

 

[Archie Lee]

Next summer still makes more sense

Re: a Skinner buyout.

The value in waiting a year is you have one less year of him taking up some cap space. The benefit of a buyout this year is the approximately $7.5 million in space you get now.

I think it is debatable which makes more sense. Since there is almost no short term benefit in waiting, and given how critical this season is, I would lean towards it making more sense to buy him out now.