Good ending to a bad campaign. Please let this drought misery end next year.
There's a lot to digest. Great to see cozens finish a tough year strong. I think he's going to be just fine.
Really curious to see what the Sabres do here. Wait for the lottery and hope you strike it rich. But otherwise, I'd shop the pick if you can get someone young but established. I'll have to digest the season more in the upcoming days..get info on exit interviews, listen to some podcasts.
On this game? Quinn makes a difference. The assist on the final goal (Benson) was a heads up pass. He needs to stay healthy. Thompson needs to be healthy. What, exactly, was his injury? Benson will continue to be good. Where has this Cozens been all year? I still say it's time for Skinner to go and replace with another 30+ goal veteran winger. They need toughness:
This team is still soft. Dating back to when they took a run at Ryan Miller.If you want to know what this team needs in the off season all you have to do is go back and look at Emil Lilleberg hit Zach Benson from behind and plastered him face first into the wall. Not one Sabre got anywhere near him. Not then and not at any point during the game after that.
They still need better net presence. Benson, Quinn and Cozens will go to the net. Others don't.
https://www.audacy.com/wgr550/sports...-season-finale
Don Granato took them from 91 to 84 points. Not good enough to stay.
Historian (04-17-2024)
The only bright spot from this season is that they (barely) finished over .500
This team has talent, but no toughness.
DetoxTent (04-17-2024)
I said it before and I'll say it again: This 23-24 team has too much talent and should have made the playoffs.
You're right about the toughness. If they made it, I'm sure they'd get clobbered in the first round by a better team, especially since the intensity ramps up and the refs swallow the whistles once the playoffs start.
But so few guys on the team have even been to the playoffs. It would have been great to get the young guys at least 4 or 5 games of playoff experience.
The core is there. In fact, the sabres have the prospect depth to rebuild the current core in time. The issue with the Sabres is they've done such a poor job adding supplemental players to the core. This has been a theme when even Eichel was a teenager. Great core, nothing outside of it. And that inability to add supplemental players to the core doomed the Sabres again. And I had a feeling this would happen after Adams sat on the team last off season. He cant afford to do that again, and he's probably going to take the Detroit approach like they did with Copp and Compher and add decent UFAs with huge term. Creating a whole other problem down the road.
Historian (04-19-2024)