Toggle sidebar

Was Cozens the problem?

Jim Bob said:
This isn't the first time the Sabres have gone on a run at the end of a horrible season.
Click to expand...

They have one late season "run" to speak of recently and that was the year they missed out on the playoffs due to Fasching's punting style.
Big Wood said:
They are 9-4 since the deadline and Cozens had that nice assist on Krebs goal yesterday.
Click to expand...

Eight wins. Not 9. Perhaps not grinding their starter into the dust is part of it. Reimer's little run has a bit to do with it. Over a slightly longer timeline they are 8-9-1.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Doug Prishpreed, ValJamesDuex, enthusiast and 4 others
Jim Bob said:
The Sabres also went 3-1-1 in the first 5 games after the Mitts-Byram trade.

Small sample sizes of quality play or bad play never tells the whole story about the impact of a single player.
Click to expand...

Similarly, we haven't brought the Joke that Kills into this topic. He got the heave at the deadline as well. Some team he's on has just reeled off 9 straight losses and he's played north of 20 minutes in every game.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Doug Prishpreed, enthusiast, TheMistyStranger and 2 others
Benson getting on the top line was huge so in a way yes. Im not sure if benson gets a chance if Cozens is still on this team.

JBD over bryson and Joki is pretty big too.

Dahlin being hurt then injured throughout the season seems vitally important

I think KA thought bringing over 2/3rds of the Capitals defensive shutdown line was going to help carry the defensive burden. When that backfired and Greenway being oft injured, we typically had 6 forwards who were a tire fire in their own zone in the top 9.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BUCKSHOT and brian_griffin
No, the normal variance is a lot larger than just Cozens playing or not playing.

Unless he were absolute poison in the locker room his mediocre production was enough to offset his other deficits, overall. I've never heard anything about him being a bad teammate.

Losing him had the impact of losing a replacement level player which is pretty terrible from a $7M player though.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: paulmm3, enthusiast, Jim Bob and 1 other person
Heaters at the moment -

Biggest? Reimer. Tage is on a heater. Tuch-Krebs and JJ-McLeod are working well together offensively. But Reimer being on a heater is the biggest reason. It's not like they're locking games down. But they are getting unsustainable goaltending out of their backup.

Edit - forgot Quinn's Skinner impersonation in the last couple weeks.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: paulmm3, Jacob582, Macbanan and 3 others
Chainshot said:
Heaters at the moment -

Biggest? Reimer. Tage is on a heater. Tuch-Krebs and JJ-McLeod are working well together offensively. But Reimer being on a heater is the biggest reason. It's not like they're locking games down. But they are getting unsustainable goaltending out of their backup.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of the 10 game winning streak from 5 or so years ago. The fancy stats say this run of 'good play' isn't sustainable. Im hoping it doesn't influence Adams roster building too much. There are still so many needs on this roster (top-6C and complete revamp of the D core).
 
  • Like
Reactions: itwasaforwardpass, debaser66, kirby11 and 1 other person
Dubi Doo said:
Reminds me of the 10 game winning streak from 5 or so years ago. The fancy stats say this run of 'good play' isn't sustainable. Im hoping it doesn't influence Adams roster building too much. There are still so many needs on this roster (top-6C and complete revamp of the D core).
Click to expand...

Adams seems to be easily mislead so it probably does matter.
 
  • Like
Reactions: WeDislikeEich and Dubi Doo
I still think part of his issue is how much pressure he puts on himself. Things started to spiral and as the pressure builds, we can see the wheels turning, see him thinking instead of reading and reacting. His situational awareness goes down as the pressure on him internally builds, putting him into a spiral. It isn't all him and clearly he cares but the balance between caring and caring too much is probably as important as caring and not caring.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TheBarnIsElectric, Der Jaeger, kirby11 and 4 others
It's going to be interesting to see how Norris adapts to the role of 2C here. There's little doubt in my mind he's a better C than Cozens (at this point in time). Cozens has a lot of growing to do mentally before I'd trust him (even with his hot streak to start with the Sens). Norris seems more capable in the two-way areas of the game at center, which this team is sorely lacking in the top-6.

It'd be nice if he can turn around his health issues. He can be a good player for us, and someone who I believe can play the 2C role here better than Cozens, though Cozens certainly has enticing tools (just needs to mature, and not get in his head so much)
 
  • Like
Reactions: debaser66 and BUCKSHOT
Chainshot said:
I still think part of his issue is how much pressure he puts on himself. Things started to spiral and as the pressure builds, we can see the wheels turning, see him thinking instead of reading and reacting. His situational awareness goes down as the pressure on him internally builds, putting him into a spiral. It isn't all him and clearly he cares but the balance between caring and caring too much is probably as important as caring and not caring.
Click to expand...
Would've been nice if the organization realized that it's not uncommon for young players to sink under too much pressure. Imagine if they slowly brought him along on the wings, or at least centering a bottom 6 line with veterans like Greenway and Zucker? Maybe he'd still be here and viewed differently.

I was surprised they didn't put McLeod in the top-6C role and allow Cozens some time to find his game in a smaller role when it was clear he was sinking. It must've killed his confidence knowing he was struggling in an incredibly important role during a year the team was hoping to make the playoffs.
 
Is Cozens the problem or did Buffalo create Cozens? I am thinking the latter.

If this team has a winning culture with strong leadership there is no problem.
 
  • Like
Reactions: goach
Removing a metastized tumor is a good thing, but it does not change the fact that the cancer came from the organization itself. We consistently put him in a position to fail, and he failed to the point where his career trajectory may never recover.
 
  • Like
Reactions: debaser66
tsujimoto74 said:
He was certainly *a* problem, but I think calling him *the* problem is really underselling other obvious flaws in Buffalo’s roster construction.
Click to expand...
I was coming here to post exactly this. A problem, but not THE problem.

And them being 9-4 since the deadline is a mishmash of Reimer pulling incredible saves out of every orifice of his body combined with us seeing some really ROUGH goaltending opposition (we got Logan Thompson on a REALLY bad night, Ullmark wasn't great, Comrie wasn't good, we chased a subpar Jarry AGAIN, etc).

Once Reimer gets off the good stuff and we see average goaltending, we'll be back to our usual ~NHL 0.500 pace.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dubi Doo and HOOats
We went 3-4 with a couple of OT wins immediately following the trade deadline.

Since then, Reimer has started 5 of the last 6 games, winning them all, and has over 3 full goals saved above average (the team has gone 5-1 in that stretch with UPL losing his lone start):

1743605650784.png


I mentioned this in the GDT yesterday, our metrics are abysmal since the trade deadline:

1743605955969.png


So no, Cozens was not the problem. The team still sucks, Reimer has just been playing lights out for the past two weeks. If UPL starts every game we're probably 5-8 instead of 8-5.
 
  • Like
Reactions: WeDislikeEich, Doug Prishpreed, Dubi Doo and 2 others
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Ad

Ad

Top Bottom