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The new roof leaks

Who doesn't want to win trades? That said, didn't Kevyn overpay a bit for Beck Malenstyn? Many thought Savoie for McLeod was an overpay. (Results now vs results in the future.) Norris/JBD for Cozens/Gilbert was a more or less an even hockey trade.

They needed more than just Dahlin staying healthy to make the playoffs this past year. That was just the biggest of the things they needed to break there way but didn't.

LOTs of players are great people when not on the job but manage to turn on an inner arsehole when earning their paycheck. Chara could very well be a great guy off the ice. Don' care. On the ice, he was a dirty arsehole. Peca is an interesting case. Much like Scott Stevens stuff he did back in the day was perfectly legal (the vast majority of the time) but with the new rules a lot of what he did would've warranted suspensions. Peca, due to his size, would extend from low to high to forcefully put his shoulder into his opponent's shoulder / chest. It was very effective. Of course, if he mistimed the hit, the Ohlund hit immediately springs to mind, he'd be airborn by the time he made contact. And he got suspended for that one and took a fair number of penalties too. You are correct, don't feel the same way about Peca as Chara for at least a couple of reasons. 1. He RARELY hit guys in the head, but Chara routinely elbowed them in the head and got away with it. 2. Don't recall any of Peca'a hits essentially ending a guy's career or literally having had a very real chance of having paralyzed the guy for life. Apologies if black and red glasses are coloring that memory; but can absolutely recall times that Chara did those things. Dirtiest Sabre of all time. Will give 2nd place to Barnaby. (Being psychotic, and you have to be to get punched in the face by a guy twice your own size and smile while it is happening; and it explains his Jeep excursion too, tends to be somewhat mitigating IMHO.) But Brad May wins it hands down. Anyone remember how he broke his hand? He did it suckerpunching Ulfie. And in a LOT of his fights, he wouldn't square up with his opponent, instead he'd wrestle them to the ground and THEN start throwing haymakers. He also was the guy that goaded Bertuzzi into nearly killing Moore. Realise that's not a choice that will get much traction; but May was a seriously dirty player.

The situation became untenable, simple as that.

I've been suggesting this for years. He wants to "win" trades and that's his focus rather than solely on making the on ice roster better. He most definitely has more faith in his own picks and players he traded for than players who were here when he got here. This is not unusual for GMs but it's not a good strategy. A good GM recognizes a mistake and tries to fix it asap.

Pretty much how I feel on the bold. I was goalie, D man for Power, 2 way checker and a tough guy before free agency started and he didn't get it done. Also, he did nothing to try to right the ship mid season or in the losing streak. They just let it keep going with their "we believe in the players in this room" bs. The Dahlin injury is an excuse. It's funny but I don't see any Boston fans saying if we'd only had McAvoy and Lindholm we'd have made the playoffs. Injuries are going to happen every single season and if you sign the injury prone (Norris, Zucker, Greenway) you increase that possibility further. I can see this excuse already built in to next year. Depth is part of a GMs job as well.

This is where we will disagree (forever). I've heard him speak and seen what type of person he is and I do not believe he went out to intentionally injure anyone. Sure, he hit hard, and sometimes crossed the line in the heat of the moment but he was not an intentional dirty guy. I think Bennett and Tkachuk intentionally do things to try to hurt people. Marchand used to but not much in the last part of his career. Mike Peca laid people out and I bet you don't feel the same way about him as you do Chara. Which brings to mind a question though. Dirtiest Sabre of all time? Who would that be? Off the top of my head maybe Barnaby, although if you go way back there are other candidates. For example as much as I loved Dudley, he was dirty af.

Hopefully it's far more successful than Tim Murray's attempt that accomplished nothing and took a fantastic prospect pipeline and left the cupboards bare with nothing to show for it once he got fired.

I like listening to him, but it seems like his 'sources' get things right 10 or so times a year, but he puts out hundreds of 'possibilities'. What he says is entertaining and occasionally correct, but you could make a lot of money betting against him all the time (maybe more so than other sources out there).

I bet it's an analytics move. Someone went back and looked at what other former Sabres did the very next season after leaving (and some the very season they left.)

Whether there was a chorus of misinformation or not from a variety of sources still didn't mean that the Sabres had to trade Eichel. He was under contract and was bound to this team. The player let it be known that he wanted out but still it was the organization who decided to trade him.

Even the smartest GMs in the business are wise enough to seek advice before making consequential decisions. Very office the best advice is a contrarian advice because it forces you to look at an issue from a different perspective. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room to make the best decisions. Surrounding yourself with talent and an ability to listen to others can serve you well.

The only person less respected in the entire league than Kevyn Smithers is the moron who hired him.

I think I grabbed the wrong quote my bad.

What excuse are you talking about?

I think fans are just making the reasonable assumption that after missing the playoffs by one point followed by back to back years of moving further from the playoffs, that the GM has failed to make the needed moves. What moves might have made a difference is fan speculation (I’m guilty as charged). But I refuse to believe that the situation was beyond hopeless, and that no GM could have produced a better record the past two years than Adams has. Perhaps I’m wrong and this is just as good as we can reasonably expect from the Sabres.

For the Oiler’s sake, I hope Nugent-Hopkins is just getting a day of rest. If they go down Hyman and Nugent-Hopkins, that would start to be a very tough hill to climb.

Skinner getting his shot…maybe

Lindy as POHO blocking Adams from the role based on circumstance, firing Adams, with Jarmo as GM and Deboer would immediately bring this franchise back into respectibility. That said I expect an Adams extension any day now.

Yep. He did make some good moves but needed to make so many additional moves to get a critical mass of things aligned correctly and he never came close to that. Had EVERYTHING gone right, the team might've (heck, they would've) snuck into the playoffs. In the real world everything doesn't go right and from the moment Dahlin tweaked his back 5 minutes after stepping onto the ice on the 1st day of TC things already weren't going right. When he was out for ~10 games, the season was doomed. Had he done more to address the goaltending; had he gotten Power a legit partner LAST year; had he/Ruff brought in competent ACs; had he been able to bring in say 1 more Zucker and 1 more Greenway rather than Lafferty and Aube-Kubel by spending some of the money he saved by punting Skinner; THEN MAYBE they could've survived Dahlin's injuries. But he didn't.

The Sabres (and darn near every other team as well) could absolutely use a version of Chara. Doesn't change the fact that on the ice, the original was a dirty mofo that learned what the NHL would allow him to get away with and took full advantage of it.

No way! I would guess steam is wet, but not ice. Not sure I understand wetness then, lol I did know this though: “water can simultaneously boil and freeze under specific conditions known as the triple point. This occurs at 0.01°C and 0.006 atmospheres, where all three phases of water (solid, liquid, and gas) can exist in equilibrium”

I never bought that KA over-values his prospects and won’t make deals as a result, but that’s been a theme with both media and fans alike for a while. Glad you cited Eichel for a couple reasons because imo, Eichel couldn’t be over-valued and also because the Eichel situation perfectly illustrates how teams and agents manipulate media to try and ramp up pressure on other organizations. Friedman, especially, was a big mouthpiece for the misinformation being peddled at the time.

I wonder if he could pull off another deal like the Savoie - McLeod deal with a team in cap trouble.