Edited Sep. 9, 2022 at 5:19 p.m.
@Sabres923
@Diaspora
Quoting: BestGMBenning
You’re forgetting the fact that all those teams you just mentioned have elite producing players. You are far too confident in an old goalie and a back up that hasn’t even played 20+ games in the league for a season. And a young goaltender that has barely had much time in the league.
As decent as the defence is, you’d still need some of that from the forwards as well. This team is still young and still have holes in the lineup. There’s gotta be some losing teams in the east and considering teams still in playoff spots from last season that made some big additions. Players from Buffalo putting up between 50-60 points won’t make them better than teams ranked in higher spots. And that’s teams in higher spots for a reason. They are up against teams like Ottawa, Detroit, New Jersey, and Columbus that have all made some really big additions and really making me consider them playoff teams. And the only team that I’d see struggling is Washington. The eastern conference is pretty freakin crazy right now. There’s still bigger teams like Tampa Bay, Toronto, Florida, Carolina, New York Rangers,, Boston and Pittsburgh that all made changes to become better. I like your confidence in the Sabres I really do. But those are teams that have made changes and are far more proven. And if the Islanders were to rebound and start playing like they did in 2020 and 2021 well then there’s another team that would become a problem in the east. A team looking to redeem themselves for last seasons downfall and a team that was an ECF team in 2021 which was recent.
Forgive my criticism, but you are repeating yourself and not addressing the new information that I presented.
Let's start, Dahlin, Power, Thompson, Skinner, Olofsson and Tuch are elite.
Mittelstadt, Cozens, Krebs, Quinn will greatly improve and add significant talent to the line up.
Comrie and Lyubushkin are totally new assets and are significantly better than their replacements Tokarski and Miller.
No team had the GK problems that Buffalo experienced that needed three back ups during one season.
You are overlooking how good the team was to close out the season, 12-9-3 v playoff contenders alone would result in 92 pts over an 82 game season.
Let's be clear, over the last 28 games no playoff contender was presuming Buffalo would roll over for them, Buffalo earned those victories.
So this line up that you say lacks star performers did quit well against teams that you think were loaded with talent.
Granato knows how to utilize his roster talents, I would expect him to do the same this year.
Let me add, remove the 5-15-4 of the back up GK from the teams over all record of 32-39-11 leaves 27-24-7 61 pts in 58 games or 87 pts over 82.
Adding Quinn, Comrie, Lyubushkin, Power to the team it should not be difficult to imagine a 13 pt improvement over that 87.
Considering how many games their 3rd, 4th and 5th GK played, presuming they could have had 87 pts last season is not unreasonable.
As for other teams jumping over them Detroit's 3rd and 4th GK records were 2-1-0, Islanders 1-0-0, they did not suffer with GK injuries their poor record was just the team playing poorly.
My optimism is based on past performance and not false promises.
Finally, I said "they will be competitive until the last couple of weeks of the season..." This comment was based on their GK remaining healthy and I did not predict a playoff team.
We can revisit this discussion in June of next year.