# Talk:1974–75 Buffalo Sabres season

This review is transcluded from Talk:1974–75 Buffalo Sabres season/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Wizardman Operation Big Bear 22:18, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Reading through this, I notice that this has the same problems as 1973 Buffalo Bills season. Rather, this one is more concerning because while they won their league that year, there is essentially nothing written on the postseason. Tables are useful in season articles of course, but they cannot substitute for writing. In this article's case, a good example to follow is evident in the 2007–08 Pittsburgh Penguins season and 2009–10 Calgary Flames season articles. As a result of my concerns I'm quick-failing this; this can be renominated when it's up to snuff. Wizardman Operation Big Bear 22:18, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:1974–75 Buffalo Sabres season/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Harrias talk 17:43, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Right, first things first: by my reckoning this passes all 'quick-fail' criteria (or doesn't pass, depending on your viewpoint), and I'm happy it has undergone a significant expansion and improvement since it's last review.

Lead
Would be nice to see the lead expanded upon slightly.  I feel that it should definitely include the fact that they finished as Stanley Cup runners-up up (or losing finalists, however you'd rather phrase it).
"After a subpar year in 1974 that saw them miss the NHL playoffs..." – I'm slightly confused by this; do you mean the whole season (1973–74) was poor, or the year 1974 (ie, end of the 1973–74 season and start of the 1974–75 season).  Could do with clarification; if it just means the previous season, it might be better just to state that.
I'd prefer to see 'first' and 'second' rather than '1st' and '2nd' in the second paragraph, and feel that MOS:NUM implies this too, but I'm not going to be picky if you'd rather leave it as it is.
Offseason
The formatting, with the 'Round' column being so wide, and yet the '#' column being too narrow, forcing '29 overall' onto two lines seems weird to me, can that be sorted out to look better?
Transactions
"The Sabres acquired the rights to goaltender Gerry Desjardins from the New York Islanders for the rights to Garry Lariviere on February 19, 1975." – To someone with little or no knowledge of hockey, 'acquired the rights' is probably quite ambiguous, it might be worth expanding upon this slightly, or providing a note.
Regular season
"After starting the season 3–3–1" – "3–3–1" definitely needs an explanation, while it is common usage in American sports, this isn't seen in English ones much at all.
"..an 18–1–3 tear.." – Probably just an US(Eng) / UK(Eng) breakdown, but I don't really understand the usage of 'tear' in this context.
"..the Sabres had the best record in hockey.." – This is very general, I think "..best record in the NHL.." might be needed; after all, some amateur team may have gone unbeaten all season!
"The streak included two streaks of at least 10 games without a loss." – This sounds a little awkward, possibly rephrase it something like: The streak included two unbeaten stretches of at least 10 games.?
"The team posted a season high 6-game win streak.." – Per MOS:NUM, six should be written out.  Also, I think 'season-high' should be hyphenated as in the following sentence.
"..although none of them played 75 of the team's 80 games." – This is a little ambiguous, it doesn't rule out them playing 80 games!  Perhaps ..although none of them played as many as 75 of the team's 80 games.?
"Gilbert Perreault's 8 game-winning goals was fifth." – Fifth in the league, conference, division?  Could you clarify please.  Also, 8 should be eight, per MOS:NUM.
You interchange in usage for 9th, 10th, fifth, tenth throughout this paragraph (and indeed the article).  As I stated in the lead section; I'd prefer them written out, but I'm not too fussy as long as you are consistent throughout.
The second paragraph gets pretty bogged down with stats and records.  I accept this is sort of the point of the paragraph, but it reads like a set of bullet points.  Could you have a crack at making it more prosaic?
Same with the third paragraph.
The fourth paragraph is (I assume) referring to netminders; as a hockey fan this is barely noticeable to me, a lay-person wouldn't have a chance.
Summary so far
I'm going to take a break from this and let you work on the above points.  However, overall I'd say that the article needs a pretty thorough copy-edit.  I'm aware an article doesn't have to be perfect for GA, but I think this article suffers from a fair few technical problems that currently prevent its promotion.  Although there is still a good deal of the article which I haven't reviewed, I'm going to place the review on hold, pending a copy-edit over the whole article, and the specific changes listed above.  I'll be happy to field any queries and should be about most of the next few days. Harrias talk 18:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Actually, I've just read on the rest of the article in more depth, and the more I look at it, the more problems I see.  The tables sort poorly, sometimes completely incorrectly (Birthdate for example) the table headings at abbreviated without explanation, with one of the headers being simply "'" which I don't understand the relevance of at all.  Columns and rows that should possibly be unsortable sort with the rest of the tables, and your two player stats tables confuse me; the top one seems to include regular and post-season, but the second one then includes the post-season stats again (with more detail).  I'm going to fail the article and suggest a peer review, especially given there are some problems pertaining to the prose in later sections.

GA review (see here for criteria)
It is reasonably well written.
a (prose):  b (MoS): 

It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references):  b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR): 

It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects):  b (focused): 

It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias: 

It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.: 

It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):  b (appropriate use with suitable captions): 

Overall:
Pass/Fail: 
Harrias talk 20:44, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:1974–75 Buffalo Sabres season/GA3. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: –Grondemar 12:28, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 Working I will attempt to complete this review in the next few days. –Grondemar 12:28, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
This article needs a significant amount of work in order to reach Good Article status:

I'm sorry, but the prose quality is overall poor.  Just in the second sentence: "After a disappointing 1974 that saw 1973–74 team fail to return to the NHL playoffs as they had the year before, the Sabres finished in a tie for the best record in the NHL in the 1974–75 regular season."  There should be "the" before 1973, "fail to return as they had the year before" sounds awkward, wikilinking 1974 to the 1973-74 NHL season makes the second part of the sentence sound strange.  The next sentence should be rewritten to avoid having to use parentheses.   There are places throughout the article where there are inappropriate parentheses, such as "Two members of the team later coached the Sabres: (Rick Dudley and Jim Schoenfeld)."  There are spaced mdashes, a MOS no-no.  Why is during in italics later on? The article overall badly needs a copyedit from someone familiar with hockey, but I'd first deal with the expansion issues below before requesting the copyedit.
The Regular Season section badly needs expansion.  Right now it summarizes the entire season basically into one paragraph, which mentions several winning streaks but doesn't give a feel as to how the team performed and executed.  I realize that it isn't possible or desirable to give a full summary of every game with 80-odd games played, but perhaps a month-by-month breakdown would be desirable.
There's nothing in the article about playing style or strategy.  How did the Sabres execute their game plan?  It mentions in the lead that the Flyers were brawlers; did the Sabres match that strategy, or did they go for a more-open offensive attack?  A statistical table alone can't answer these questions: prose is required.
You should mention when the arena picture was taken in the caption, since the HSBC Arena wasn't around in the 1970s.
GA review (see here for criteria)
It is reasonably well written.
a (prose):  b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): 

It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references):  b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR): 

It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects):  b (focused): 

It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias: 

It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.: 

It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):  b (appropriate use with suitable captions): 

Overall:
Pass/Fail: 
As I believe the prose and expansion issue will take longer than seven days to resolve, I am  failing this Good Article Nomination.  I urge you to renominate this article only when the above concerns have been suitably addressed.
Thank you. –Grondemar 22:36, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:1974–75 Buffalo Sabres season/GA4. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Grsz11 20:06, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
I'll review shortly. Grsz11 20:06, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

"After a disappointing 1974 that saw the 1973–74 team fail to return to the NHL playoffs as they had the year before, the Sabres finished in a tie for the best record in the NHL in the 1974–75 regular season." - A bit sloppy, as mentioned in the past GA. Can this be reworded?
You mention the "Fog Game" in the lead but never again.
"Various individual Sabres earned numerous accolades." - redundant; either various Sabres earned accolades or Sabres player earned numerous accolades.
The French Connecion, what is it?
Draft: Expand the prose or atleast make a proper sentence. Where did it take place? When? Why did they only have three picks? Stating "overall" in the # column is not needed.
Transactions: First paragraph could use a good copy-edit, remove redundancy, do not need to state Expansion Draft twice. Use chronological order, meaning Intra-League draft is first. And since there is no article, explain what it is.
Transactions: Use the Amateur draft info above.
Transactions: The → the
Transaction: Who did they trade with on October 14; if you give one players position, give them all, or give none.
Transactions: "After 11 seasons in the NHL, 1974–75 was the final one for Larry Mickey." - does that mean he retired? If so, say that. Also, that wouldn't be a transaction.
Overview: 2nd → second (multiple times)
Overview: The second paragaph is all over the place. It brings up a lot of different things, but expands none of them.
Overview: "The team used a several goaltenders."
October-December: "The team also seemed to have mended an apparent preseason fued between Perreault and Martin." The reader has no clue what this means. It needs expanded or dropped.
October-December: "On October 10, 1974..." What is significant other than Gare's first game? Was it first of the season?
October-December: Many grammatical issues in second paragraph, needs copy-edited.
January-February: Canadiens three-game losing streak irrelevant.

As I am not even half way through, it's safe to say this article needs quite a bit more work. I don't think rushing this through is best way to go about it, as few of the issues have been resolved. Grsz11 20:26, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:1974–75 Buffalo Sabres season/GA5. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 22:53, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I am reviewing this article because it was nominated for GA status. I will have a full review up shortly. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 22:53, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I've decided to place the article on hold for the following reasons:
I don't see any justification for the existence of the overview section in the regular season section. Perhaps it could be interwoven with the rest of the section. For example, some of the info is on statistics; perhaps some of that could go alongside the statistics table.

I have rearranged.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR)  04:44, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Looks good now. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 19:15, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
The prose has much improved from previous times (see previous reviews). Nevertheless, in some places complex sentences have subordinate clauses that are at time hard to follow. They might change subjects or go off on a tangent. The simplest way to adjust this would be to cut down on the number of subordinate clauses. These problems are basically confined to the regular season section, as the prose in the lead and playoff sections is just fine.

I did not find much in Oct-Dec, but made some corrections later in that section.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR)  04:51, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
It's much easier to read now. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 19:15, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Also, why isn't there a playoff stats section, just like there's one for the regular season?

The stats are unified on one table.  Look more closely.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR)  04:52, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Sorry about that. My fault for missing it! Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 19:15, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
I also notice that at the GAN page, you have several other other nominations, as well as ongoing reviews. If you feel it is necessary, I am willing to extend the review period beyond a week so that you don't feel rushed or overwhelmed and are unable to give due attention to other matters.

I also have suggestions for further improvement. Since they do not explicitly involve the GA criteria, I won't fail the article for not meeting them, but they would make the article go beyond GA status. My suggestions for further improvement are:

The other ice hockey GA season articles are 1985–86 Calgary Flames season, 2007–08 Pittsburgh Penguins season, 2008–09 Calgary Flames season, 2009–10 Calgary Flames season, and 2008–09 Pittsburgh Penguins season. All off them include attendance stats, at least a season average. If you intend to ever bring this article to FA status, the non-inclusion of attendance will be sure to arise.
Similarly, this article does not include preseason games. Again, if you or someone else intends to bring this up to FA status, this will arise. Using the Sabres' media guide or a newspaper archive (like in a public library) could be helpful sources to resolve these issues.
Other season articles have the game log in smaller type and in collapsable/openable tables. I don't see any reason to have the game log in the typical table format here, while other seasons are consistent amongst themselves. It is reasonable to have the same format for articles on similar or analogous topics, like sports team seasons.
I don't see preseason results or attendance figures at either Hockey-reference or hockeydb.  It may be that such details are not available for older seasons.  Do you know of any seasons from the 70s or earlier that have these details?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR)  13:09, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't know of any off hand. The fact that it attendance was less likely to be easily obtainable, as well as the fact that preseason stats are in some sense less important (you want to be the best team at the end of the playoffs, not before the season started) were the main reasons why I didn't raise them aganst GA status per se, and why I put them under suggestions for further improvement. It's possible some other statistics sites might have average attendance. Searching for it gives recent seasons; the barrier is due to this season being in the past. Old box scores might have them; this would necessitate a newspaper archive. For Sabres games specifically, you would likely have to use a Buffalo or New York newspaper. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 19:15, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
:::If I were in Buffalo, I might try to find all this content. From Chicago, I will not be able to as easily. Can you evaluate the article as is.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR)  20:35, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

In addition, 1985–86 Calgary Flames season does not have game-by-game attendance either. I am not interested in creating double standards for GAs. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 21:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 03:11, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Having rereviewed the article, I now believe that objections have been adequately dealt with and that this article now meets the GA criteria. For that reason, I am going to promote the article now. Suggestions for further improvement were given above. I hope that you will keep up the good work on WP, and will keep an eye open for information on pre-season stats and attendance. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 21:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)