I apologize. It’s been so long since Part 1, that most of you have probably just been weeping in anticipation. No, none of you read Part 1? You just accidentally clicked this link as you were scrolling through your twitter feed? Well, go read Part 1. You can read it here. Or even here. Or don’t. See if I care.

 The reason for the delay is that I could delay, since, as you are probably aware, nothing was happening. So I took my sweet time, assuming that there would be no end to the lockout, except possibly as a result of Bettman’s untimely death at the hands of an angry Vancouveran mob. But apparently, I was wrong. Doesn’t happen often, so soak it in.

Today, I will tackle the reason why I wouldn’t trade the whole damn Sabres team for any of the teams in the Central Division, which as its name describes, contains teams from North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota (East Dakota), Iowa and Nebraska. Wait, those states don’t have teams? Minnesota does but they’re in the Northwest division? I’ll let it slide since the NHL was founded before the West was annexed. (#TrueNHLFacts)

Let’s start with:

Chicago Blackhawks: Good old Chi-town is home of my “team away from my team” if you will, so I will start with some positives. Jonathan Toews is awesome both at hockey and life, if you want me to delve further than this, I don’t know, post a comment or something, but does anyone NOT like Toews? Also, Patrick Sharp is a beautiful man. Offensively, Keith and Seabrook are a really entertaining defensive pair. Now, onto why I wouldn’t trade for this damn team. For one, if you’re talking Buffalo tools, Patrick Kane is a bigger douche than Patrick Kaleta and seems to be regressing talent wise, since he prefers to wear beer goggles at all times, even during games, so that, “I can tell which chicks are ugly even when I’m trashed.” (#RealKaneQuotes) Further, the goaltending situation is just as questionable as ever and after abysmal playoff performances from even the most awesome and beautiful players, I think I’ll leave the Blackhawks right where they are.

Columbus Blue Jackets: It’s Columbus…

Detroit Red Wings: Guys, Nicklas Lidstrom is gone. He’s done with hockey. I don’t know whether to be sad, because he really was a bit of an artist out there, or thrilled that maybe Red Wings fans will shut up for 5 minutes. But who am I kidding, they’ll just go on and on about all of their other geriatric talent or their up-and-comers, since they CAN’T brag about picking up Suter in the offseason—because they didn’t. (Suckers.) However, while Detroit has a pretty good record for developing talent, many of the Sabres young ‘uns have more NHL experience and more skills than similar guys in the Wings’ system. If they’re counting on Brendan Smith to show up and fill the Lidstrom hole, they won’t be disappointed by his talent, but by his temper and immaturity (last I saw him with the Badgers anyway.) And I’ll take the elder Miller brother any day. Well, today at least.

St. Louis Blues: While the goaltending tandem of Brian Elliot and Jaroslav Halak may sound appealing, one must note that being swept by an eight seed in the playoffs, without a single overtime or even a one-goal game is a smidge embarrassing. And here, where it counts, the goaltending was not sound, neither was the defense…or the offense. Ouch. This team, which had limited offensive capability to begin with—even Oshie and Backes didn’t reach the 55 point mark—struggled exponentially more in the playoffs. “At least they made the playoffs,” you say? Screw you.

Sometimes, a season doesn't go the way we'd like. Say, for example, after a promising start, a team brutally crumbles only to climb desperately back to a place just outside the playoffs. Then we often hear talk of rebuilding, cleaning house, etc.

Now no one really means it when they say "trade the whole damn team" as far as I can tell. (Editor's Note: Except @AngryLindy) Truthfully, though I've never been a GM before, I imagine this would be both difficult and unlikely to yield good results. But if you could trade your whole damn Sabres team for a different team, would you? I'm not saying you can trade every player for a player of equal or greater value to create your dream team. That is completely unrealistic. I'm just suggesting you reach deep down into hypothetical space-time and the inner realms of your conscience to determine whether you would trade the entire Sabres roster for the entire roster of another team. 

Note: This does not include prospects. Prospects don't exist in this reality. Another note: If the word "damn" offends you, you may want to stop reading, as I will likely continue to use it before every subsequent occurrence of the word "team". If not, please continue.

Have you considered each of your 29 options very carefully? Well, so have I, and now I intend to give you a blow-by-blow of why I wouldn't trade the Sabres for any other whole damn team in the league. Today, anyway. I start with the Pacific Conference, because Anaheim is first alphabetically and because I embrace the challenge of explaining why I would not trade for a team that just won a Stanley Cup.

Anaheim Ducks: I barely wanted Bobby Ryan when it was just Bobby Ryan, and now you expect me to take the rest of the damn team? In theory, they have just as good of a "core" as we do. But the Getzlaf, Ryan, Perry line actually had 10 less points through 4 more games last season than Pomminville, Vanek, and Stafford, and none of our guys are actively asking to be shipped out. Yeah, the Ducks also have Teemu Selanne, but he's like a thousand years old. The defense is ok, and some of them have cool names like Sbisa, or a bit of talent, like Cam Fowler, but others have already had enough giveaways in a Sabres uniform, like Lydman. I actually like Jonas Hiller, but he can be as inconsistent as Getzlaf, and actually had a lower save percentage than Miller, and Miller was on a Concussion off year, so no thanks.

Phoenix Coyotes: I really don't want Raffi Torres back on my team, especially after that hit on Hossa. That was infuriating. I'm infuriated. Besides that, last year's Coyotes weren't a bad team, I guess. They won their first division title and made their first conference finals. When you run down the lines, individual player stats between the Sabres and the Coyotes are eerily similar. With Ray Whitney, point leader, off to Dallas that becomes quite skewed in the Sabres favor. If Doan doesn't re-sign with them, Vrbata's plan to sit on the goaltender's stick until someone else scores (see right) is void, since there will be no one left to score. Even if he does re-sign, while no one is a Selanne-saurus, all the offensive stars on the Coyotes are 30+. When looking to the future, 28-year-old Boyd Gordon (who?) is no Vanek, and 22-year-old, 24 point-scoring in 82 game Mikkel Boedker is no Tyler Ennis.

Los Angeles Kings: Pff. 8 Seed? Pathetic. So they won a Stanley Cup. That's great for them and all, but do you know how many teams have won back-to-back Stanley Cups since 1990? Two. Neither of those teams were 8 seeds. Anze Kopitar is good, but he's not Mario Lemieux or Steve Yzerman.  Besides the LA Kings aren't that good. They're just a team on par with the Sabres who happened to hit their stride in the playoffs. They had only one more win than the Sabres in the regular season and ranked second to last in goals per game. With such a low number of goals, the only thing that even snuck them into the playoffs was Quick's play. He led the league in shutouts with 10 and had a .929 save percentage. These are both statistics that Ryan Miller has matched. So yeah, they won a Stanley Cup, but no, I'm not going to trade my team for a team of basically the same caliber, when they have the odds of repeating stacked against them. If anything, this damn Stanley Cup-winning team gives me hope that a more healthy, consistent Sabres team next season could actually win something.

San Jose Sharks: Talk about odds against them, if the San Jose Sharks continue their trend, they will never ever ever ever (ever) win a Stanley Cup. One of the things I love about the Sabres are our depth players. Sure they weren't on the map as much as I would've liked last season, but I think we have a lot of talent behind our "core" and this season they'll step up and we'll see what they can do. While the signing of Adam Burish, who I'm a big fan of, should help their deficit at right wing, I'm still not convinced that they'll escape their consistent playoff failure anytime soon. Just looking at their horrendous playoff performance (awful PP, PK, 1 win, etc.) again this season suggests that I do not want them as my team. And the reason they struggle with depth? The Sharks seem to face a lot of injuries. Sound familiar? I would like a healthy team this year, please.

Dallas Stars: I don't want Derek Roy back. Also, Brett Hull is a cheater. I KNOW THAT'S NOT RELEVANT, BUT IT'S ALWAYS RELEVANT! (And is any of this really relevant?) As far as the actual damn team that I will NOT be trading for goes, they're not very good. They were good at hitting, but I guarantee they were better with Ott and Burish. Maybe Roysie will come into his own down in Dallas, (I mean their biggest offseason news is their ice girl auditions, eh? Eh?) but he's not enough to substantially improve an all-around mediocre team, especially when he's out until November. Not a very good start. Whitney will be a good addition, but Ribiero's out the door. As far as I can tell, Dallas's moves weren't awful, but they're mostly moving sideways, perhaps even to the high end of mediocrity! I am a big fan of good special teams, and as such, their power play causes me tangible pain. Besides, they don't have their superstar Adam Pardy anymore. 

We all knew the NHL was dominated by North Americans, and Canadians in particular. However, perhaps because I am spoiled by the ratio of Americans on the Sabres roster, I was a litte surprised by the magnitude of the domination. More than twice as many Canadians (360) are active in the NHL than Americans (172). As seen on the map, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Finland, and Russia all have a relatively high number, along with a smattering from the rest of Europe. The Sabres follow this distribution relatively well. Check out the map:

Unlike the league map, this map incorporates prospects to provide a more inclusive picture. Of the countries with large numbers (20 or above) in the NHL, the only glaring absence on the Sabres is the Czech Republic, but we have a Slovakian, so we'll call it good, since when anyone playing in the NHL was born, it was Czechoslovakia anyway (barely). As seen above, the Sabres have a pretty good range of nationalities. In fact, they are tied for the most different birth countries (8) with the Canadiens, Islanders, and Jets. When you add in prospects, this number for the Sabres jumps up to 11, making it a highly diverse system. 

Here's some other interesting points about the numbers:

• Opposite their Island neighbors, the Rangers are tied for fewest different countries represented at 4. Also at 4 are the Lightning, Wild, Blue Jackets, and Kings.
• The Rangers are also the only team aside from the Sabres to have more Americans than Canadians. (9:8) Columbus has an equal number of each. (9)
• Colorado and Calgary each only have 2 American players. Neither Colorado nor Edmonton has any US forwards.
• With the exception of Calgary and Edmonton, US players are actually pretty well represented in Canada. Each team has at least 5 Americans, which is the median value. (The average number of US players per team in the NHL is 5.73.)
• Much to the dismay of Don Cherry, Toronto is the best example of US players in Canada with 9, the 2nd highest in the NHL.
• The New Jersey Devils have the most even distribution of birth nations, with 7 Canadians, 6 Americans, 4 Swedes, 3 Czechs, 2 Russians, and 1 Lithuanian on their active roster...now if only they would sign 5 Fins, they could write a children's song about it.
• With 7 Swedish players, Detroit has the most players from any one European country. As naturally follows, they also claim the title for most European-born players overall. (12)
• At 3 US players, the Red Wings are also one of two teams to have more players from a given European country than the USA. Phoenix has 4 Czech players and 3 Americans.
• Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Toronto on the other hand each only have 3 non-North American players on their rosters.
• The Sabres have over a quarter of the Germans, a third of the Austrians, and all of the Brazilians in the NHL. 

I found an article NHL.com published in February, detailing the growth of US-born players in the NHL. This was helpful since I was not about to calculate these values for the entire history of hockey on my own, yet the values I did calculate were slightly different, since I used only active rosters (as listed by the teams) and not any player to have played at least one game. This actually paints an even nicer picture for US players, placing them at around 25% of all players. Canada, meanwhile sits at just over 50%.

For a few more kicks and since I was already down the rabbit hole, I took the US players from the Sabres active roster and prospects and broke it down further by US state. Here are some of the details I took away from the data:

• "The hockey state" could do better. While the NHL article claims 46 Minnesotans played in one or more games last season, only 36 of them played in 10 or more. I expected the number to be higher.
• Meanwhile, Michigan and New York, the two leading birth states of Sabres players and prospects, are not far behind with 30 and 26 respectively.
• Last thing about Minnesota: the Parise signing was a good thing for promoting hometown heroes. Prior to his signing, the Wild only had 2 of the 36 (5.5%) active Minnesotans in the NHL.
• Upstate New York is a hotbed of NHL talent. (But you knew that already.)
• The deep south sucks at hockey. (I know, another shocker.) Aside from Tyler Myers, there are ZERO players from the area. Unless you count Florida who have a whopping one. Come on, even Utah managed to produce three.

The above point is a statistic I would love to see reexamined a few years from now, due to the growth of youth hockey programs in cities housing an NHL franchise.

Now, to use all of this data to make a perfectly formed argument about how birth country affects NHL talent. Kidding. To do so, it seems to me would be a bit pandering and very contrived. There were only two Slovenians in the NHL in 2011-2012 and one of them helped lead his team to a cup. Should we all go out and draft Slovenians? Not really. It is natural that some of the best players in the NHL will be non-North American players, since only the best players out of Europe actually get to play in the NHL at all. 

It's doesn't imply anything or defy expectation then, that when looking at the league leaders in the NHL, we see Russia, Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the US all represented. I think the diversity of the league is part of what makes the game interesting--the blending of styles and systems. Even if the Amurican one is the best. 

*Amurican (uh-mur-i-kuhn) -n.  1. a citizen of the United States of America who is fiercely and blindly patriotic. 2. One who loudly and proudly expresses the superiority of the USA over all other countries. Especially Canada.

"God we have so many defensemen now," you may be saying. 

"We should definitely deal someone for some more talent up front," your rather vague friend may reply, "but who?"

"Well, Myers and Ehrhoff aren't going anywhere. Neither is Regher. People have been discussing throwing Sekera in as a sweetener in every trade made since he was born. McNabb isn't getting traded, but he could use more development as could Brennan. Weber doesn't have much value. Neither does Pardy, who as far as I can tell was just too big of a cap hit for Dallas without enough skill to go with it. I'm still interested to see what he'll do. I liked Sulzer with Ehrhoff, but I'm not opposed to dealing him depending on the return," you reply, giving a pretty comprehensive description of the NHL-ready depth on the Sabres roster.

"I feel like I'm forgetting someone though," you continue, thinking hard for a minute or two. "Jordan Leopold!" you finally exclaim snapping your fingers in the air.

"Oh yeah," your friend finally contributes, "that guy."

Oh yeah, Jordan Leopold. Yeah, I am exaggerating a bit here. We don't really forget the red-faced, Michael Jackson-loving defenseman from the State of Hockey. We remember him when we talk about the new locker room and the music therein. We remember him when pointing out how many goals guys Myers and Ehrhoff should have scored last season. We even remember him in conversations like the one above (usually) as someone with a "reasonable cap hit for his skill level" with just one year left before unrestricted free agency--someone to trade while his value is high.


Unfortunately, I think their are a lot of times we do forget about Jordan Leopold, and frankly, despite his relatively high value, I would be reluctant to see him go. Though most of us realize that he led the defense in goals this season, most of us were too busy bemoaning the laundry list of injured defensemen to really give it much thought. How exactly did Jordan Leopold score the most goals? 


Well for one, he played. 79 games to be exact. While an upper-body injury sidelined him midseason, he made a quick recovery and played the most games of any Sabres defenseman. That is a resilience that Leo has not always demonstrated. After his early career in Calgary, Leo has not been able to play a full season, or even reach the 70 game mark, with one team. Plagued by everything from hip injuries to a hernia to pneumonia, he also seemed to be a target for vicious hits. Whether it was Andy Sutton in 2010 with a hit that knocked him unconscious for a number of minutes, or our very own newcomer Steve Ott concussing him in 2008, (awkward?) he has also been the victim of concussions.


Yet with the Sabres, something has changed. In both seasons with the Sabres, he has played 70+ games, scoring 13 goals and 10 goals respectively. While he's still not immune to the injuries that have marked his career, he has played a smarter game here--with his head up--and a tougher game. 


Proof? I take you back to March 25, 2011. The Sabres are set to take on the Florida Panthers. Midway through the second period, Ryan Carter gets a shorthanded breakaway because Tim Connolly did something stupid--go figure. Leo races back after him and tangles him up, managing to break up the opportunity, and they both go crashing to the boards. Unfortunately, the play was not the only thing that was broken--so was Leopold's left hand. Nonetheless, with a broken hand, he finished out the game, playing a team high 25:07--including 11 shifts in the third--and netted the game winner to tie his career high 13 goals. It seems in his veteran-ship Leo has developed some resilience, but we don't really remember moments like that.


When Roysie left town, there was a rousing cheer, followed by a sentimental backlash of, "it wasn't all bad." People were quick to remember the good times, such as the most exhilarating game I've ever been to: April 3, 2012 against the Toronto Maple Leafs, that crazy roller coaster ride of a 6-5 comeback in which Derek Roy scored an overtime dazzler to give the team some real playoff hopes (which of course were later squandered). If you were at that game, if you watched that game, I don't think you can forget it. But do you remember the fifth goal scorer? Who was all up in Ben Scrivens' grill for the whole 9 second battle in front of the net with under 2:00 to go in the third? The guy that ultimately poked it through to tie the game and send it to overtime? Who did all that while leaving the blue line and penetrating deep into the zone--even the crease--to create offensive possibilities when we really needed them? You guessed it: That guy. But most of us were a little too busy saying "Thank God the ref didn't blow the whistle," or  "that was clutch," or "WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" to really even think about who scored it. 


We shouldn't forget these moments or that last season, on top of goals and games among defensemen, he also led the team in TOI and blocked shots. We should remember that he led his college squad to a national title and was a Hobey-Baker winner (which we seem to be collecting). For both seasons with the Sabres, Leopold has been in the top 20 for defensemen in the league in both goals and shooting percentage. And before we go lamenting the bygone days of veteran defensemen like Steve Montador and Tony Lydman, we should remember which of them ever scored 10+ goals for the Sabres (hint: neither).  In some cases forgetting a defenseman is not such a bad thing, it suggests they're not making stupid mistakes. (See: Lydman giveaways.) At the same time, the above stats and examples suggest that Jordan Leopold is good at hockey. So while I am not suggesting that he is a Norris quality defensemen or that he is or should be the best defenseman on our team, I am saying that resilient, clutch, and good at hockey are adjectives that I would like to use to describe all the players on my team. Besides, we should also remember who did win the Norris trophy and who scored just as many goals as said Norris winner in 2010-2011. You guessed it, Jordan Leopold. And for one, I'd like to see what he'll do for us this season before he runs back home to Minnesota like everyone else.