As many of you may know, I am not a big fan of Long term Contracts.

That said, to get in the Festivus 'spirit', an unedited rant about long term contracts:

First, we'll start with "Lessons all GMs should have learned four years ago" section, also known as "Mike Milbury sucks"

Alexei Yashin (IM LOOKING AT YOU LOU):  The original titanic contract that everyone should have seen coming.  I mean, the guy got into contract hissyfits like every 3 years and had Kovalev-itis times a million.  Yet every stupid GM thinks "I can deal with this guy" and throws bags of money at them, somehow expecting them to bother trying.  Let this be a lesson to all GMs: When dealing with players that clearly are about fame and fortune, don't go throwing a lifetime's worth of fame and fortune at them and then expect them to care.  They won't.  5 good years, and 10 more years dealing with your mistake.  Lou, if your plan wasn't "I don't care because i'll be retiring to the Caribbean in five years anyway", then you've clearly gone senile and should have already retired to the Caribbean.

Rick Dipietro:  Never ever sign a goalie long term.  Their backs/joints can randomly explode at any time.  Also, DiPi has, so far, made over 126 grand per GP.  That's more than Ovechkin is currently making per game played.  I only expect this number to go up. (THIS MEANS YOU KEVIN LOWE)

I'll also throw in a few other serious offenders:

Ryan Malone:  This guy, at the time of his contract signing, had scored 87 goals in four seasons.  So of course the Lightning needs to give him a contract paying 31.5 million dollars over seven years, because 20 goal scorers are such a valuable asset.  The guy has a good 20-game stretch in the Penguins first Stanley cup final run, and he's suddenly worth 10 times his weight in gold.  I consider this to be a separate type of stupid contract than the ones given to superstar players.  Of course, now everyone has to sign these type of contracts, because it clearly is a good idea because other GMs did it.  I swear, if a GM jumped off a bridge and posthumously won a cup ring, at least sixteen other GMs would try it next season.

The Philadelphia FlyersCap Circumventers:  First off, 7 players on their team are currently on contracts longer than 5 years in length.  Second, the wondrous "Mike Rathje on IR for three years" silliness.  Third, they're not even competent enough to read the CBA and see that they couldn't sign Pronger to a cheater contract.  GMs are going to look at the Flyers and go "Aha! long term contracts are obviously good", totally ignoring this in 3-4 years when all these guys start down-trending and the team wallows in a pit of epic failure.  Then they'll blame something else, like goaltending, not CAP KILLING CONTRACTS.  The Cap Circumventers currently have somewhere around 300 million dollars in future player payroll obligations.

On a less angry note: I do accept (though with much grumbling) contracts like Alex Ovechkin and its earlier predecessor Wayne Gretzky.  That's because i accept these contracts were not signed for Alex Ovechkin, hockey player, but signed for Alex Ovechkin, hockey icon/player.  Look at the lineup for their alumni game and you'll see why the Caps needed to sign him forever.  (though Olie the Goalie is, strangely, missing)

Seriously.  How can someone be so arrogant to think they want someone on their team 6 years from now. Insanity is what it is.

Parting shots/lesser grievences:  Kevin Lowe, Brett Lebda, Toronto Sun, Jim Basille, Glen Sather's boss, Scott Gomez, 2006 Carolina Hurricanes, the Islanders cardboard arena, people who don't believe in statistics,  people who think that Winnepeg Winnipeg is a more lucrative hockey market than Pheonix Phoenix, and the lack of a supplementary discipline committee (even if one of those people is Colin Campbell.) 

(Edit: Mirtle points out my inability to spell city names.)

So on last Friday ago I wondered "I wonder if I can put the Sabres and Leafs together and create a team that doesn't suck?"  Well, I figured it couldn't hurt to try.  To make it more interesting and less of an all-star team, it will need to be cap-compliant and i'll even try to stick to the Top/Sheltered/Checking/Grind breakdown for forwards.

Here goes:

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These happen some days and not others, depending on whim.  I'm totally not Harry Neale.  This is just so you don't have to find them all.

12/13:  And you thought our powerplay was bad.

Shamelessly stolen from ‘The Classic Blog’ By Ryan Classic (numbers updated).

Who gets to 10 goals first: Ilya Kovalchuk, or the entire Florida Panthers power play? The Panthers are currently leading the race 8-5.

12/12 Drafts.  Sometimes they are great, sometimes they suck.

After much scouring, i have determined(with substantial bias) the worst draft classes ever. (1985-2004). Strangely the sabres of the early 2000s didn’t make this list (though a valient effort saved by players like Nathan Paetsch in the 192nd round[approximate])

The Loser: 1990 edmonton oilers. Top 3 picks: 17,38,59. 11 picks total. No NHL games, at all. I can’t even fathom how bad the scouting has to be to not have even one of them play a single game.
Runners-up:
1999 Montreal Canadians: Top 3 picks: 29, 58, 97. 11 picks total. 111 NHL games, all by Matt Carkner who left MTL as a free agent before playing any of them.
1999 Maple Leafs: Top 3 picks: 24, 60, 108. 9 picks total. 3 NHL games played.

Honorable mentions: 1996 blackhawks, 1996 red wings, 2002 canucks, the canucks in general.

Obligatory “Glen Sather is the worst GM ever” entry: 2003 NYR. The best first round in the history of the NHL and Hugh Jessiman plays zero games. Oh, and your next three picks: 1 game. You’re lucky your late round picks bailed you out or it would have been you and the 1990 oilers as the only two i mentioned.

In conclusion, canadian teams suck at drafting. Ottawa narrowly escaped, but was in the final ten worst drafts ever, even though they only had five valid drafts. Calgary had a bad draft, but it was too recent so i held off final judgement: (Best hope: new Hurricane Brett Sutter.)

12/11 Putting Crosby in perspective.  (Its baaackkk.)

At the point Crosby had 33 points in 16 games, To pass Wayne Gretzky in points, he needed to keep up that scoring pace for the next 1116 games, or until he’s 37 years old, assuming he doesn’t get injured or retire in the next 14 years.

11/22 Patrick Lalime doesn't suck, Ryan Miller is just too good.

Here are some goalies with GAA and S% almost identical to Lalime's last year:
Lalime: 4-8-2, 2.81, .907, Sabres.
Legace: 10-7-5, 2.81, .907, Hurricanes
Giguere: 10-15-2, 2.87, .907, Ducks/Leafs.
Quick: 39-24-7, 2.53, .907, Kings
B. Johnson: 10-7-2, 2.76, .906, Penguins
Roloson: 23-18-7, .907, 3.00, NYI

11/17:  Something completely random:  Shutout losses/ties leaderboard.

11/16:

Tyler Ennis is still second in rookie scoring with 11 points. (Skinner leads with 15)

Steve Montador leads the league with a +13 and this STILL is completely unfathomable to me, but i accept it and move on.

GWGs:
Vanek: 1
Roy: 1
Myers: 3
(Ennis and Roy each have Shootout deciding goals)

Also as mentioned during the Canucks game, the five straight overtime games is a franchise record.

11/15:  Our expansion buddies over the last 39 seasons: 

11/13:  In 4 games last year against the caps, the sabres gave up 5 powerplays… total.

11/12

This is entirely for the PPP blog, Skinnyfish, and Penguins haters everywhere
Marc-Andre Fleury: 1-7 .853 sv%
Vesa Toskala’s stats first 8 games last year: 0-8 0.854 sv%

11/11: Combined record of next week's opponents (5 games in 8 days) 52-20-4. 

11/10:  Since the lockout, Ryan Miller has allowed one goal or less in a game 26.2% of the time.

11/9  Sabres even strength TOI leaders

Derek Roy is pretty important.

11/8  Sabres Rookie +/- Leaders

11/6

The largest decrease in points between two years for the sabres is 26. (1984-1986)

11/5

The Bills and Sabres have currently combined for a points percentage of .308, (NO THANKS TO YOU BILLS)

Here are the 5 Worst combined Points percentages between the Bills and the Sabres all-time:

11/4

Sabres 09-10 Payroll according to capgeek (not cap hit, calculated manually with massive rounding): ~$55,290,351
Sabres 10-11 Payroll according to capgeek (Excluding call-ups but including all performance bonuses): 55,092,000.
Darcy has said he likes to keep 1 million to pay callups and trades, so i’d imagine the budget this year is 56 million (We’re "over budget" by a whole $92,000), though it appears overages are allowed within reason because i had deduced that last year’s budget was 55 million and it looks like they were slightly over that.

So indeed our budget is higher than last year’s. By 1 million, 900K of which we haven’t spent yet. Wooooo.

11/3

So the Buffalo Sabres power play hasn’t always been good. Or has it? A history: As a tribute to Jack Edwards, instead of reporting the %, i’ll report Power play goals for:

05-06  Buffalo: 101 (4th)  Average: 85
06-07  Buffalo: 71 (4-way tie for 12th)  Average: 70
07-08  Buffalo: 66 (7th)  Average: 62
08-09  Buffalo: 75 (7th)  Average: 65
09-10  Buffalo: 55 (17th)  Average: 56
And… the uncool year that is…
10-11 Buffalo: 6 Average:8 (T-20th and They should be in first because they’ve played so many games.)

11/2

Many of you know that the sabres have basically quit drafting european players.  In fact, they have made 24 straight draft picks without picking a single european (the last one was Felix Schutz in the 4th round of 2006).  You may wonder how much change there is from before.  If you take the 24 picks before those, 8 were european. (3 Czechs, 2 Swedes, 2 Germans, 1 Russian) 

Another way of looking at it, picks in the first two rounds of 2007-2009 were 6 canadians and 1 american, but from 2003-2006 the sabres picks in the first two rounds had nationalities of: 1 Austrian, 2 czechs, 1 german,  2 swedes, 2 american, and 1 canadian.  Even more amazing is out of all six those Europeans only Vanek has played a game in the NHL, yet all 3 of the North American picks have. 

11/1
A long table on number of times short by year, showing how the sabres are way above their norm.  http://www.diebytheblade.com/2010/11/1/1786505/daily-links-for-monday-nov-1#50882233

10/30

In the last game the sabres played against Dallas, Tyler Myers had 4 points. Since the lockout, 23 players have managed to score 4 points in a game for the sabres. (Derek Roy has done it the most times at 4).

Oddly enough, only five times a Sabres player has had a 4-point night on the road. Even more oddly, three of them were against Philidelphia.

10/29

Mike Weber’s statline last year: 80 GP, 5G, 16A, +18, 152 PIMs.

Mike Weber collects a lot of penalty minutes. In fact, last year,his 152 PIMs much higher than the Sabres leader Craig Rivet with 100 (There are a lot more PIMs in the AHL i’ve noticed.) Oddly enough, that wasn’t even good enough to top his team (Cody McCormick had 168 in 14 less games) Also, it wasn’t even a career high.

In a wonderous display of efficiency, he managed to sit in the box for 178 minutes in 2007-2008, in only 59 games!

10/28

Three game winning goals have been scored by the Sabres. Derek Roy has one. Guess who has the other two?

Tyler Myers.

10/27

Andrej Sekera's Shot Differential:

Andrej Sekera Buffalo 28.9 Shots/60 19.4 SA/60 Shot differential: 9.5/60
This is 17th in the league. (Leopold is 13th)

10/26

Tyler Ennis is tied for first in rookie scoring with seven points.

Leafs Mount Puckmore, a statistical study

Being as I'm only a leafs fan when the Sabres suck/are bankrupt (and I'm a youngin')  Its only fair that I choose Leafs mount puckmore members on more... measurable criteria. (All measurements include games as a leaf only.)  Plus, when you've got an almost 100-year history, there's too many choices not to consult the leaderboards.

We'll start with goals, as supposedly they are critical to winning hockey games.  Mats Sundin leads in goals.  Also, aside from that silly Vancouver fiasco, he's quite the beloved player.

Next I'm going to check assists.  I plan to pick a defensemen here... Oh look! Borje Salming.  He seems like a good choice.  Interestingly, there are only two leafs defensemen with even half of his 620 assists, Tomas Kaberle and Tim Horton.

Next is GP.  Leader here is... George Armstong, playing a whole 2 more games than Tim Horton!  There's a bit of debate here, then, but I want more forwards than defensemen, so I'll go with Armstong.


Now for the last slot:  I could either choose a goalie, a builder/coach(i.e. Conn Smythe), or Tie Domi here.   I think i'll try a goalie first, and then go on to the other two choices if that doesn't work out.  I'd kind of prefer them to be from different eras than the other players, so let's see who we get...  First off, WOW... you guys go through goalies quick!  I suppose I could select either Turk Broda or Johney Bower here, as they're really apart from everyone else by a fairly large margin, but I'm going to go with Broda because of that whole "Different Era" thing.

So the final answer is:

Turk Broda  (1937-1952)
George Armstrong   (1950-1971)
Borje Salming   (1974-1989)
Mats Sundin   (1995-2008)

Just throw Wendel Clark and Tim Horton in there with Conn Smythe as owner/coach/GM/whatever, and you've got a pretty awesome all-time Leafs starting lineup, wouldn't you say?

[EDIT: Grammar, insufficient number of bad jokes, Had Arnott instead of Armstrong in one place for some reason...]

As Ilya Kovalchuk just signed a stupid 17 year contract that takes him to age 44, I decided to run some numbers.

Fun fact: 24 22 players have played past the age of 42. (6 were goalies)
Links: Skaters Goalies  (13 skaters + 7 goalies, 1 of each eliminated because they weren't really players)

Missing from these lists: Andy Bathgate (42) and Harry Howell(43) because they played those years in the WHA, and Theo Fleury(42?) because he only played preseason, and Mark Recchi(43) because he hits 43 next season.
Also, because the cutoff for hockey-reference (Feb. 1) is not the end of the season, you can also make a case for adding Dave Keon, Tommy Albelin, Ed Belfour, and Curtis Joseph to this list. This makes 26 players in the history of the NHL/WHA (I may have missed a few 41 year old WHA players but i don't care enough to recheck)

Players at 40: A lot
Players at 41: >50
Players at 42: 24 22
Players at 43: 14 (1 WHA and assuming Recchi doesn't randomly retire in the next 3 months, and 5 goalies)
Players at 44: 8 7* (3 goalies)

EDIT:  * - I have removed one of the goalies (Moe Roberts, 46) because he was played for one period under the "If all your goalies are unable to play, you may put anybody in goal" rule. (He was the Blackhawks assistant trainer, and hadn't played pro hockey in six years)

I also removed Lester Patrick(43) because he was the coach/GM(/defensemen/emergency goalie) of the Rangers, and he also was played under the "If all your goalies are unable to play, you may put anybody in goal" rule.  From Wikipedia:

Patrick is famous for an incident which occurred during the Stanley Cup finals of 1928. At the age of 44, while serving as coach and general manager of the Rangers, Patrick inserted himself into a playoff game to play goal against the Montreal Maroons due to an eye injury to starting goaltender Lorne Chabot.

Note: he also did this one time in the regular season the year before.

It isn't a stretch to suggest that age 41 will be his last in the NHL, but he may well play in the AHL at age 42 and thus still be paid under the contract. Therefore, the last two years (or probably three) of this contract should be nullified. 42 was a reasonable arguement. 44 is not.

SEVEN PLAYERS IN HISTORY PLAYED AT 44, AND THREE WERE GOALIES (and one extended his career so he could play with his sons). Therefore, it is clear that there is no real chance of the signed player ever playing all the years in their SPC, and therefore it should be considered a circumvention of the cap.

Here’s another way of looking at it:
1248 players in history have played at least 500 games in the NHL. 4 of them played when they were age 44.  (.32%)  If you to restrict to only inactive players, there are 1042 retired players, of which 3 played when they were age 44 (Chelios is still active), or .28%. (.38% if you declare Chelios to be retired.)

If some GM or owner doesn’t write this exact letter to Gary Bettman, they should all be fired. Every one of them.  (Well, maybe with more lawyer-speak and less rage, that or just changing the font to Comic Sans)

Also, in the years he’s making 11.5 million, 36,000$ ~28,000$ (Thanks Skinny for running numbers!)  of that paycheck comes directly from Alex Ovechkin thanks to the wonders of escrow. Maybe he should complain too.

I feel better now.  Numbers always make me feel better.

I dug up these tables from a while back in a fanpost i never posted.

The Kaleta is officially the player the opposing team most wants to cheapshot.  Also of note is the very low number of penalties he took. (misconducts and coincidental penalties are not included)

Minor note: Tables do not include the final day(or 2) of season.  I'm too lazy to recreate them just to fix that. They don't change much anyway.  (http://www.behindthenet.ca/2009/5_on_5_pens.php?sort=10&mingp=30&mintoi=5&team=&pos=)

The first table is a sorted list by penalties drawn per 60 minutes of ice time

The second table is the two players with a higher penalty +/- then him.  (He's tied with Datsyuk, but drew 5 more penalties)

I never thought i'd say that Kaleta was tied with Datsyuk in any statistic!

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I said before the deadline that i didn't like any of the choices at forward, and it looks like i was mostly right.  That, or the Pheonix Coyotes took all the good players and there wasn't anyone left.

What have we learned?

1. Rentals always score less with their new team except for Pheonix, who specifically traded for players they already had some familiarity with.  I bet that this probably helps.
2. Defensemen were in, as well as few penalty killers.  Being as a players make up much of the UFA class, its not suprising that there are not a lot of good forward UFAs.
3. Being as the new point system drastically reduces the number of sellers and increases the number of buyers, there is a substantial price hike in February.  It's probably better to make your acquisitions in January.  Or December.  Or, anytime as long as you are trading with the flames.
4. At these prices, pretty much everyone should trade their top-tier UFAs if they aren't top-5 in the league.  This is especially true when the resigning chance is low.  Like, for example, might the Sabres have made the playoffs if they didn't trade Brian Campbell?  Maybe, but then we wouldn't have Tyler Ennis (or a second round pick that we traded Bernier's rights for.)  Or, for this year's example, I'd much rather have Tyler Ennis in 2012, Bergfors, Oduya, and Cormier, than two playoff home games where you get smashed by the Caps and four weeks of Ilya Kovalchuk.  I admit that the fanbase won't realize this fact until about two years later, and the GM runs a significantly higher risk of getting exiled during that time, so its a risky move.

I wish i could write a post without it turning into a three page essay.

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These predictions are based partly on what i'd like to happen and partly on what previous history suggests will happen.

Coaching:  Keep Lindy Ruff.  There are a few reasons for this.  First, he works well with the rest of management, and i don't see a total turnover when winning a division and losing to a team that is poor matchup.  He's shown time and time again that he can outcoach other teams.  Most importantly, if we fire him, someone else in the East with crappy coaching(or the devils) will hire him and he'll dominate us for about a decade and win stanley cups.  Being as TEAM CANADA puts him right below Yzerman's best friend Mike Babcock in terms of coaching skill, he can't be that bad.  I like him mainly because he has shown that unlike many coaches, he can completely change his coaching style to fit his team.  We could shuffle the rest of the coaching staff around, but i wouldn't know enough about those things to have an opinion.

The Sabres only won the division this year because of their consistancy (which i attribute to coaching.)  Their overall talent isn't much better than any of the other members of the division but all those teams had two or more lengthy suckage streaks (whereas we just had one ten-game stretch.)  It's not like we are in a market that demands a stanley cup every year so i'm satisfied with an average of 1.5 playoff series a year, as long as we are competitive in all of them.  Sure, I'd like to win stanley cups every year, but I don't see that happening.

Goal & Defense:  Looks like we are either going to sign and promote Jhonas Enroth or a get a stopgap (Garon?) as a backup, resign Henrik Tallinder and add Mike Weber (His statline is very good and he's comparable to Toni Lydman in skill set) on defense.  I don't see Craig Rivet being offloaded so he'll have to be #5 defensemen this year with the two-headed Chris Butler/Andrej Sekera defense hydra.

Forwards: Add Tyler Ennis, (please?) resign Patrick Kaleta, Matt Ellis, Tim Kennedy, Cody McCormick (as the replacement mair), Mike Grier(unless he retires, in which case sign him as a coach (or scout, or anything)) as well as a random other free agent forward.  (so we can have one NHL free agent i suppose) 

That'd give us 2 goalies, 7 D, 14 forwards, with stafford on a short leash to a trade which would drop us to 13 forwards.
Most those resigns (except tallinder(~3) and possibly Grier(~1.5)) will be in the <1 million range, and we have $13,497,143 of cap, so that actually leaves us 1-2 million to sign a random free agent.

Trades: I don't see roy/pommenville to be tradable until 2012, as the free agent market is overrated in general and also not very deep this year.  We're either going to get a much worse player or a salary anchor if we trade them this year, and we don't have the cap to deal with either of those this year.  I really think Tim Connolly was just tired, it's been four years since he's played anything close to a full season, and he's probably fatigued from all the games he played, though he'd never admit it.  The only trade plan i might accept is trading pommenville for picks and prospects and signing Poni from the penguins who couldn't possibly afford to resign him.  Free agent centers don't exist and are signed to rediculous contracts (see Matt Stajan, as well as however many billion dollars some team gives Patrick Marleau) and therefore our only hope in the center department is Luke Adam.  Ennis can definatly replace Roy, but not until next year at least.

Montador probably deserves a short extension, but it'll probably be a boring offseason being as we have too many NHL-level prospects, and no reason to sign older free agents when we have similiarly skilled young players.

Our larger players are still 1-2 years down the road, sadly (unless you want Mark Mancari), so we'll just have to deal with our team being as short as the Montreal Canadians next year.

 This leaves:

Vanek-Roy-Kennedy

Hecht-Connolly-Pommenville

Grier-Ennis-Free Agent (or Stafford until he is traded or stops sucking)

Kaleta-Gaustad-Ellis

Myers-Tallinder

Montador-Weber

Rivet - Butler/Sekera

Extras: McCormick, whichever of Butler/Sekera isn't playing

The reason i don't write more fanposts is that they quickly turn in to comprehensive essays.