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Making a mistake with a non first round pick is not something to be exercised over. There are plenty of other issues to draw one’s attention to.

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Take the pile, throw them on the ice come camp time, see who is ready to play, in shape, making things happen on the ice, whether it is scoring, forechecking, banging bodies, making skilled passes, and not coughing up the puck; then set the lineup. Make them earn it. That will be Lindy's job. If you don't compete, take a seat.

A lot of ranger fans seemed to like the guy 🤷‍♂️

If you stop and think about it they traded Jokiharju away for a 4th and then gave up a second for his replacement for the balance of the season. So they traded a 2nd round pick for a 4th round pick. They still think they know what they are doing.

He can’t believe he signed up for this.

I’m fine with the JBD explanation. Makes more sense than the idea of Benson starting in the top six 😂

Relative to the goal and how disappointing and unacceptable it is to fall short of it, our current group is worse It’s a more flabbergasting set of players

Moulson 29 Hodgson 44 Ennis 43 Ott 20 Girgensons 22 Stafford 34 Foligno 19 Leino 15 Flynn 13 D’Agostini 11 Ellis 6 Scott 1 Are you in middle school? 😜 And Moulson got traded and only played 44 games. I think we’ve kinda flushed those teams from our memories.

The funniest part of trying to being sarcastically hyperbolic about Adams and the sabres is that it doesn’t work because you just hit the nail on the head

Goaltending outlook…bad Defense…good overall: a punch line Can you *imagine* if we didn’t luck out with Tage becoming a 40 goal talent (Adams was initially exploring trading him haha)? We have absolutely nothing aside from him other than the two first overall talents on D we literally got FROM being terrible what a gong show lol

Not even really about F prospects just not at this particular shindig either https://www.eliteprospects.com/team/53/buffalo-sabres/in-the-system looking at this it’s basically… Helenius and Östlund. its weak - - - The totality of our future forward impact upside is essentially Benson Quinn Helenius and Östlund that’s really it my god

Yep, it’s only glaring given the roster

Crazy thin, Chad was pointing out it’s a growing issue, and may not be a quick fix given Kevyn’s propensity for missing or burning 2nd rounders. We need a few of the pro guys to start hitting so it won’t matter as much.

The pod also had some interesting tidbits on Danforth and Doan. I’d have to re-listen for the particulars, but the gist was that they are at the high-end of NHL forecheckers; I think they said Doan’s retrievals per 60 were at a stand-alone level, almost literally off the charts.

What a barren forward group, just noticed

I’ve heard this from a few informed sources. There’s a minority opinion out there that the great unwashed may have an inflated view of Peterka and don’t know how good Kesselring is. Even most of these people still think JJ is the best player in the deal, so it was interesting to hear Fairburn - the most credible of the Sabres beat guys - say it may end up being Kessel. Wishful thinking I’m sure, and I’ve had a lower opinion of Peterka than most.

Is this edit also true?

Expected Peterka regression (not unfair) and ascending Kess as a player isn’t exactly a hot take. The Baker Fairburn Hockry Show is a decent listen either way. Kess is a high character guy and a major position of need.

Yes, things seem to be going rather well on the contract front. The Sabres had potentially one of the bumpiest contract situations in the league and I’m starting to see Adams has actually done a pretty good job of negotiating it so far. Better cap minds than me did a good job of showing last year during the Skinner buyout talks how the Sabres would actually be in a rather precarious position under the cap this year given all their pending RFAs. Priority one was getting a framework in place with Byram, Peterka, Quinn, and McLeod in order to get the starting point needed to chart his course of action, which clearly he was able to do. Then he needed some certainty before July 1 with at least one of his 2 difficult negotiations, which he got with the Peterka trade. He then neatly knocked off Quinn and McLeod early, and to reasonable deals to avoid distractions while shuffling the fringes of the roster to free up the cap space to ensure he kept his leverage with Byram. He added the big right-handed shutdown D, 3rd goalie option and forechecking badgers he wanted, and dumped a couple of role-playing too-pricey roster failures. Now he can deal with Tuch and Levi at his leisure while still being able to complete any further tweaking after the Byram situation settles. On some level it’s actually been a solid bit of business. He may have actually had a plan and has mostly executed it. Too bad on the hockey level it doesn’t appear to have included any appreciable roster improvement.

Did Fairburn provide reasons? Is it worth the listen?

Meh. He was purposely antagonizing with his 'why' question with no further context. He knows it. He wasn't being innocent.

I am also signing off on the concept of Kess. In his latest pod, Fairburn said the best player in the trade may be Kesselring. I’m optimistic. Losing an unhappy JJP seems to suck right now, but we could be laughing all the way to the bank on this one. Here’s to hoping (which I recognize is a ***** strategy).