Great deal for both teams!

Look at that Sabres D! 😲

Dahlin, Power and Byram!

Unreal

Throwing up at the thought of having to play Dahlin, Power and Byram in my division on the same team.

What an unreal day it's been and we're still 2 days away from the deadline.

Video game bruh!

Too many LHD?

I dont understand this for Buffalo, all three Power, Byram, and Dahlin are lefthanded, I dont get this

I think Yzerman just $hat his hockey pants! 😲

Tampa Bay model.

Samuelsson too.

They have 4 LHD better than Byram it’s such a bad deal.

Byram plays on the right and when you are talking high end dmen that play both sides I would pay a lot less attention to handedness

It does appear to make less sense for BUF than for COL.

Sabres fans will reluctantly accept a left handed, right side Byram, lol.

But, yeah, their D core just got a ton better. Byram is a 1st pair guy in BUF

Nobody cared about LD or RD until Mike Babcock brought it up during the Olympics.

IIRC Red Wings won a Cup with all LDs?

Yeah dumbest thing ever. Guys can play or they can’t you aren’t going to sit a better player just because he is left handed.

Exactly.

You only need to watch any NHL game and see how often the D switch back and forth during a Power Play.

This was never talked about when I grew up watching hockey in the 80s and 90s.

Now it's all Hockey fans talk about.

Can you imagine a Bruins fan in the 60s/70s saying "We don't need Bobby Orr! He's a LD!"

🤣

I think it's gotten more important as the speed of the game increases. A lot of what these Athletes do is muscle memory. They expect a guy to be in a spot with his stick in a certain place and when you play on your off wing the blade is in the wrong place and sometimes you need to make quick backhanded passes.

Guys, there's a huge difference lol.

Imagine the puck coming along the right side boards. A righty will be able to pick it up on his forehand, be facing up ice, and whenever he's holding the puck and looking up ice, the puck is also up ice from him. A lefty would have to pick the puck off the boards on his backhand, and make a move which takes time to get the puck on his forehand. In a board battle, he'd be sweeping and battling on his weaker side. If he has the puck and is looking up ice, the puck is on the middle of the ice side of him which makes a central forechecker cover way more angles.

There's so so so many logical reasons to having a dman on his strong side, and there's a reason every team tries to keep it like that.

Sure it's doable by some players, but they are seriously handicapped in lots of situations and it is not ideal at all to have it.

Good point.

I recall playing baseball and my team had a left handed shortstop.

It was awkward because he had to turn his body before making a throw to first base.

So it gave the runner an extra second to beat out the throw.

He was moved to right field. LOL

Similarly it takes a D an extra second to make a move with the puck before he passes or shoots it.

Some players it doesn't matter.

Ghost in Detroit plays the same as a LD or RD.

Whereas Chychrun seems to struggle playing RD.

Just because a player CAN play a position doesn't mean he should.

The speed of the game has made a difference for sure.

Imagine thinking that you aren’t going to play the best player because you don’t like the potential of that one incident. It’s the dumbest thing ever. If a guy can’t play off handed then you don’t play him off handed, if a guy playing his off hand is better than a guy playing natural you aren’t benching the off hand guy. You are making an issue out of something that isnt an issue.

more and more of the game is played in transition and is about fluidity, nobody is benching a better player. Nobody makes a deal about wingers that play off handed. Are there situations it is really nice to have? Absolutely particularly on the power play but are you really not going to play the better player because he plays off handed? No.

Of course you're gonna play the guy, but you're also seriously handicapping him, and you're causing issues on-ice in terms of timing and efficiency and quickness of play and decision making. That's universal. Byram with all of those added issues is still better than say Erik Johnson, but you still have those issues on ice now.

I would not be surprised if they moved a guy like Samuelsson for a RHD now, to alleviate the issue and have Dahlin Power and Byram on their own pairs.

You aren’t handicapping anybody that’s just nonsense, guys are good defenseman or they aren’t, picking a handedness as a crucial element is hilarious. COL has had arguably the best dcorp the last 3 years, their top 4 hasn’t changed at all 3 lefties and one righty because they cared more about good play.

No, what you're saying is nonsense.

It doesn't matter *how* good you are, picking the puck off the wall on your backhand is universal for every single player that plays their off-side. That is not something a skill level makes disappear, every single dman on their offside will have to pick it up on their back hand, and then make a move to their forehand, which is universally slower than the same player just picking the puck up on their forehand on their strong side.

That is just an inherent shortcoming of playing on your offside.


P.S. The Avs acquired Josh Manson like two years ago, a righty, and Byram split time with him and Girard this season. They also just traded for another top 4 RHD in Sean Walker, because even the Avs prefer dmen playing on their strong side lmao.