The Roster Thread, Summer 2024

[toddkaz]

Wonder whats going on with Alex Nylander? 11 goals in 23 games with Columbus. No one giving him a shot?

 

[MarkusKetterer]

Wonder whats going on with Alex Nylander? 11 goals in 23 games with Columbus. No one giving him a shot?

Probably wants too much money.

 

[TehDoak]

Wonder whats going on with Alex Nylander? 11 goals in 23 games with Columbus. No one giving him a shot?

The previous 98 games and only 14 goals.

 

[toddkaz]

The previous 98 games and only 14 goals.

Lots of players with similar statistics and then mature and take off. I can't believe people still post like this after watching Mittelstadt for 5 years.

 

[MOGlLNY]

Lots of players with similar statistics and then mature and take off. I can't believe people still post like this after watching Mittelstadt for 5 years.

are you seriously comparing Alex Nylander and Casey Mittelstadt right now lol

 

[Sabreality]

Lots of players with similar statistics and then mature and take off. I can't believe people still post like this after watching Mittelstadt for 5 years.

I'm guessing most astute GM's understand that was his '15 minutes' so to speak, guy had a hot run on a terrible team, that's it.

 

[jc17]

Sprong barely got bites with multiple years of decent production

also every player doesn't have to have grit, but I heard nylander's softness at least while on this organization was at a point where it was literally a joke amongst players and staff. Granted our culture during those years was not great, so it might say more about that

 

[NotABadPeriod]

Zemgus Girgensons put up 15 goals in his second season. That remains his career high.

Be wary of guys having career offensive years on bad teams.

 

[Ace]

Be wary of guys having career offensive years on bad teams.

This should have been the tagline for the Sabres coming out of the 2022-23 season

 

[HogtownSabresfan]

I'm great with what Adams has done with the defense. The ghost of 2006 is still real.

You can hide a forward just pulling an NHL shift. Imagine this current roster with 2-3 forward injuries in the playoffs. Adams can put Rousek, Kozak, Murray, Dunne, Jobst onto the NHL lineup, and those forward can likely pull a defense-first role. Rosen, Kulich, etc and the other kids would remain to be seen, but just the same, Ruff could form lines which limited the damage.

You just can't do that on defense without grinding into the ice whatever primary defenders you have left healthy. So having Bryson and Gilbert as the 7 and 8, Johnson as the 1D in Rochester and the 9, with Clague as the 10 is excellent depth.

Imagine if the team made the playoffs but was down 3 forwards (Peterka, McLeod, and Benson). I took a LW, RW, and C. Here's what the team looks like:

Quinn - Thompson - Tuch
Zucker - Cozens - Greenway
Malenstyn - Lafferty - Aube-Kubel
Rousek - Krebs - Dunne/Kozak/Murray/Kulich/Rosen

Not great but you could certainly get that 4th line to just play a sound, tight game and focus on defense and forechecking.

Now do the same for defense. Let's say Dahlin, Jokiharju, and Clifton are all hurt.

Power - Samuelsson
Byrum - Johnson
Gilbert - Bryson
x Clague

You could play with that group if you kept it simple. All 9 of those defenders can play at the NHL level when role and usage are scoped properly. It's a better group than Janik - Jillson - Paetsch - Fitzpatrick.

The D depth is great. Need another serious forward

 

[La Cosa Nostra]

Well this is it the 24-25 roster. There will be no more additions.

 

[DapperCam]

I'm not an expert at the cap, but don't we have a bunch of space that was opened up by buying out Skinner? Pretty lame if we don't actually use that space to make the team better.

 

[Gras]

I'm not an expert at the cap, but don't we have a bunch of space that was opened up by buying out Skinner? Pretty lame if we don't actually use that space to make the team better.

With which roster spots

 

[old kummelweck]

Wonder whats going on with Alex Nylander? 11 goals in 23 games with Columbus. No one giving him a shot?

No one is going to sign him to a one-way deal most likely, so he probably has to reckon with that and think about the AHL team/location he'd be playing vs. perhaps trying to revive his career over seas.

 

[TehDoak]

With which roster spots

Well, specifically, the one they spent on Zucker and re-signing Jokijarhu.

Not adding a top 6F or addressing the poor makeup of the top 4 are Adams biggest fails of the off season.

 

[joshjull]

Its almost like I said in my post Tampa pivoted on from Stamkos and rightfully so...oh wait I did.

The idea of cirelli being available was predicated on them wanting to keep Stamkos because both options weren't really possible.

No one in the hockey world at first predicted a sergachev trade, Stamkos walking, and a guentzel sign and trade so again kudos to Tampa for pivoting and making smart moves yet again.

Tampa just proved that argument wasn’t true by signing Guentzel with Cirelli still on the roster. They could have done the same with Stamkos. The real pivot was moving on from Stamkos and adding a different winger.

The Sergachev trade really drove home that they weren’t interested in moving Cirelli, or Hagel for that matter. The two forwards with bigger contracts and no trade protection. They wanted to build/keep a strong top 6.

The cirelli drum beating was happening way before any of that occurred which is what I find odd to attack. People were looking at him as a potential target before ANY of that happened. Granted given the aftermath obviously the point you are making stands up and frankly I think Tampa once again pulled a magic trick and fixed their situation and came out better for it.

Cirelli has been talked about for years. It doesn’t make him any more available than if he wasn’t. Specific to our discussion, he never made sense as a target for our 3C because he’s Tampa’s 2C. That was true well before this offseason happened.

Cirelli plays in all situations (4th among Tampa forwards in overall atoi/18+min), is signed to a reasonable deal (6.25mil AAV) for 7 more years and is their top 6 match up center. Thats a player who is not remotely a 3C and certainly not someone Tampa is trading for prospects. As you said yourself, they’re a smart team and trade like that wouldn’t be smart from their pov.

I also think many have forgotten what a 3C looks like. Probably because haven’t really had one for years. Cirelli never should have been on anyone’s radar as a 3C option.

 

[Jim Bob]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1815732446727446747

 

[joshjull]

As for the draft portion your opinion is up to you to back up. My memory isn't as good as it used to be so I may be wrong here but what examples can you provide of a team trading a top 10 pick 2 years later for a guy who at best is a 3rd line center? No wait nvm. You don't have to answer. You once again ignored what I said. I said with top picks you take bpa but with later picks you try and draft and develop guys like 3c's. And im upset we haven't taken that approach. Your retort was teams regularly trade top 10 picks 2 years later for borderline 3rd line players....

Your reading comprehension must not be doing well either since this word salad isn’t what I posted. The following is………

“You draft as much talent as possible for two reasons

They turn into a roster player. Or they can be used to acquire a roster player.

The trade was a perfectly normal use of the assets we have. You do realize every team in the NHL will make deals like this. even ones far more successful than we are.”

Thats a big picture view of things. Your fixation on draft status is bizarre.

Part of the problem is you’re not looking at the big picture. We gave up one of our top froward prospects to fill a current NHL roster need. It’s an immediate improvement to the NHL roster without losing anything from the NHL roster. We still have a good amount of higher end forward talent in the pipeline (Kulich/Rosen/Ostlund/Helenius). Thats on top of the 23 and under youth already on the NHL roster (Cozens/Quinn/Peterka/Benson). We knew they weren’t all going to be on the roster together.

I’m guessing you were operating with the misguided belief we could get Cirelli for Savoie and thats what is fueling your anger.

Ooookay. Unless you are a playoff team year in and out and have the luxury of putting your chips in id bet there's not much evidence to back that claim up.

Putting our chips in?

 

[OkimLom]

Cirelli has been talked about for years. It doesn’t make him any more available than if he wasn’t. Specific to our discussion, he never made sense as a target for our 3C because he’s Tampa’s 2C. That was true well before this offseason happened.

Cirelli plays in all situations (4th among Tampa forwards in overall atoi/18+min), is signed to a reasonable deal (6.25mil AAV) for 7 more years and is their top 6 match up center. Thats a player who is not remotely a 3C and certainly not someone Tampa is trading for prospects. As you said yourself, they’re a smart team and trade like that wouldn’t be smart from their pov.

I also think many have forgotten what a 3C looks like. Probably because haven’t really had one for years. Cirelli never should have been on anyone’s radar as a 3C option.

Honestly, I thought, and agreed with the talk that if we were putting our top prospects on the table and draft pick on the table, that Cirelli was a guy we should target. Whether he was available or not, that would be the type of player to do it for. I saw him as a top 6 center, and a guy we could bring in to slide Cozens down, and have a decent top 9 structure. I never envisioned him as a "3C guy". But from my memory, I don't think that discussion about Cirelli, was really about viewing him as a 3C replacement player, unless I missed some posts that focused on that, which case I completely disagree with that assessment of what Cirelli should've been viewed as.

 

[DapperCam]

With which roster spots

Waive Krebs, bump NAK down to 13F (he can rotate in and out, eventually an injury will happen and he’ll be back on the fourth line).

Or if it’s a trade bodies can go out as part of the deal (e.g. Greenway is a LW and could be part of a deal for a better LW).

I think Adams just doesn’t want to pay the price for a trade (which fair enough maybe only bad deals are out there). But in that case he failed to use his available cap dollars in free agency.

 

[HOOats]

*Taps the sign*
Cap space doesn't disappear in August, September, or when the season begins.

We're a team ostensibly looking to move futures to add key pieces still, which will require cap space. We're also planning for the next five years of cap for what should be a continuously growing core, in terms of talent, success, and money spent.

Burning that cap space on an overpay for a middling UFA would not have been wise imo. It's an advantage having it in the back pocket for better moves in the next six months.

 

[Satanphonehome]

Post Eichel trade?

Pretty god damn close to nothing.

I'm probably saying the same thing from a different angle, but I'd present it a little differently.
Three years after stripping the team and announcing he was going build through "draft and develop" Adams has transformed the core of the team

1C: developed Tage
2C: developed Cozens
3C: traded for McLeod
T6W: traded for Tuch
T6W: drafted and developed Quinn
T6W: drafted and developed Peterka
T4D: stuck with Dahlin
T4D: drafted and developed Power
T4D: traded for Byram
T4D: developed Samuelsson
G: developed UPL
G: traded for and developed Levi

Most of the supporting cast — Zucker, Greenway, Malenstyn, Lafferty, Aube-Kubel, Clifton, Krebs — are outsiders he brought in. I'd call Jokiharju a holdover. Benson is another draft-and-develop.

This is his team, these are his choices: the guys he has actively tapped to perform the above roles that the vast majority were not responsible for post-COVID. They aren't prospects any more, and Adams can't hide behind their ages any more. He said it himself.

It's the team he has consciously built. They're either good enough or they aren't, but they are his design and he can't get away with saying "they'll be good someday", not any more.

They need to be good now.

 

[TageGod]

I'm probably saying the same thing from a different angle, but I'd present it a little differently.
Three years after stripping the team and announcing he was going build through "draft and develop" Adams has transformed the core of the team

1C: developed Tage
2C: developed Cozens
3C: traded for McLeod
T6W: traded for Tuch
T6W: drafted and developed Quinn
T6W: drafted and developed Peterka
T4D: stuck with Dahlin
T4D: drafted and developed Power
T4D: traded for Byram
T4D: developed Samuelsson
G: developed UPL
G: traded for and developed Levi

Most of the supporting cast — Zucker, Greenway, Malenstyn, Lafferty, Aube-Kubel, Clifton — are outsiders he brought in. I'd call Jokiharju a holdover. Benson is another draft-and-develop.

This is his team, these are his choices: the guys he has actively tapped to perform the above roles that the vast majority were not responsible for post-COVID. They aren't prospects any more, and Adams can't hide behind their ages any more. He said it himself.

It's the team he has consciously built. They're either good enough or they aren't, but they are his design and he can't get away with saying "they'll be good someday", not any more.

They need to be good now.

People forget Adams brought in Tuch Krebs Ostlund Rosen Levi Greenway Byram and Kulich from trades. That is a lot of significant adds. Maybe it is not translating into seeing star power on the team, but moves are moves.

 

[DapperCam]

*Taps the sign*
Cap space doesn't disappear in August, September, or when the season begins.

We're a team ostensibly looking to move futures to add key pieces still, which will require cap space. We're also planning for the next five years of cap for what should be a continuously growing core, in terms of talent, success, and money spent.

Burning that cap space on an overpay for a middling UFA would not have been wise imo. It's an advantage having it in the back pocket for better moves in the next six months.

Paying for 1-2 years of a middling UFA would have been better than sitting on the cash if it improved the team. Depth is a good thing. If more moves are made, then my point is rendered moot (I’m hoping that is the case, but I’m skeptical).

 

[HOOats]

Paying for 1-2 years of a middling UFA would have been better than sitting on the cash if it improved the team. Depth is a good thing. If more moves are made, then my point is rendered moot (I’m hoping that is the case, but I’m skeptical).

My point is we're not sitting on the cash until we go all year without using it. Maybe it makes a good rental at the deadline possible because it won't require money going out. Long way to go.

And overpaying two years on a middling UFA is a nonstarter with our RFA class next summer. The "Pegulas are cheap" narrative will come to a screeching halt when Quinn, Peterka, and Byram put us close to the cap in 12 months.