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I can't name a single defenseman who played for those dallas teams - and i know they had lehtonen the entire time and while he played a lot of games, at his best he was not a top 10 or probably even 15 goalie in the league. The best season in jersey was when they had a healthy and motivated Dougie Hamilton. The season after that he missed time, and Ruff was fired.

He crossed my mind last night. Now that I think of it Madden would be another.

I think they bungled it last year pretty badly. Levi making the team and then being a backup was just such a weird decision. If Levi makes the roster, i would assume it is to start because you believe he is going to give you the best chance to win. I also feel like... i don't want to say quick to hook - but you can't just have another completely lost season by january. This is (should be anyway) a season where likely the entire coaching staff and management are potentially let go if they can't get the team over the hump.

LOL we are out here calling the Granato/Wilford youngest team in hockey a structured defense now? I’m trying to be funny here… UPL’s one “good” year was an average year for an NHL goaltender. 16th in save percentage and 16th in goals saved above average. He got hot enough to be NHL average for 50 games. Unfortunately, the only thing we have in the crease right now is hope.

Since Lindy Ruff was fired as Sabre head coach in 2012, here is where his teams have finished in expected goals against all situations and goals against above expected all situations (source is MoneyPuck, the 1st # is expected goals against and the 2nd # is goals against above expected; 1 is the best, 30-32 is the worst). 2013-14 Dallas: 25 / 7 2014-15 Dallas: 23 / 29 2015-16 Dallas: 20 / 23 2016-17 Dallas: 29 / 20 2020-21 Jersey: 27 / 27 2021-22 Jersey: 15 / 31 2022-23 Jersey: 3 / 14 2023-24 Jersey: 23 / 27 2024-25 Buffalo: 28 / 25 Averages: 21st in expected goals against and 22nd in goals against above expected. This is the guy that Pegula and Adams were so sure would bring structure and defensive focus to a group of young players craving to be held accountable, that they eschewed an actual coaching search and just hired him. We are learning, I think, that there is more to defense, structure, and accountability than just yelling at players to manage the puck better. The good news, I guess, is that that there are two big outliers. We can hope that some combination of our goalies does for the Sabres what the Dallas goalies did in 2013-14 and they far out-play the defense in front of them. Or, we can hope that we somehow just play most of the season in the other team's end, like Jersey did in 22-23. Goaltending absolutely needs to be better. Under Ruff, goalies typically need to have near heroic performances to overcome what happens in front of them.

I would not want to work in the Sabres season ticket office….how do you sell tickets with no excitement?!?! Pegula can fire his entire Marketing staff since they have nothing to do.

I know these are all player moves, but my vote for worst move was to hire GMKA.

I ended up not saving money on my car insurance when i switched to Gieco.. and it turns out the 'Car Warranty' thing... was a scam LOL

Here is the chart...

Couple of honorable mentions... I personally hated trading away Zadorov... we could use his nasty Not signing Ullmark I also think was a major screw up Clearly the biggest after the Eichel mismanagement was not hiring a tenured experienced GM after Murray and Botterill both failed... instead we got a guy whose claim to fame was re doing the bathrooms in KBA... which is impossible to believe until you realized they hired a Soccer executive from England to coach the team... and of course listening to Phyliss Housely preach to the team about "getting to the tough places" was interesting as well...

What's so dismaying about this owner is the unwillingness to have serious hockey people run the franchise. For the most part, he has clung to second-rate organizational structure staffed by many second-rate hockey people. There is an ingrained stubbornness to TP that is hard to penetrate. The hiring of KA to be his GM was bad enough. But keeping him in that position after 6 yrs is beyond odd. Most people are willing to give some forbearance to a new owner in the learning-curve phase after buying the team. However, when you are in your 15th year of ownership and still haven't demonstrated a much better understanding of the business you bought into, then how much can there be left? Is adding Jarmo to the staff a good sign that he is willing to get away from his insular approach to ownership? I'm not sure because I don't know how much influence he or even Karmonos has. It's become such a drag to watch this same self-sabotaging behavior continue to exist within this failed franchise.

It is interesting. There are two approaches one could take to these details, both quite reasonable. 1.) We are sleeping a bit on Doan. He is far from a throw-in. He has the potential to be a force in the middle-six as soon as this year and may have much higher upside than fans are generally crediting for. And/Or 2.) We are probably higher on Kulich than the rest of the league is. The idea that he is a near untouchable piece is a bit absurd. The way to get better is to do what Utah did and trade two pretty good players with upside for a player who has already figured it out. We should have packaged Kulich in a deal for the better player, rather than deal the better player for a couple of guys with upside.

In other words, you have to try to be this bad.

There are so many reasons for the losing. To me this kind of disfunction starts at the top - Terry and Kim were way over their heads and never trusted anyone qualified to run the team. They tanked and built a confusing and bloated organization right from the start, they hired bad GMs, then they leaned it down too far and continued to hire unqualified people in key positions. The player trades, the drafts, the poor contracts, the losing - it’s all a result of what has happening at the top.

Terry Bradshaw is kind of a cartoonish character now

Not signing him when his contract was running out and he was willing to sign an extension was a clear sign that being fiscally tight was how this franchise was going to be operated.

Bringing back royal blue?

This is a great write up. The Bills drought felt way more hopeless than comical... especially because there were only 6 teams per conference allowed in for the entirety of their dry spell. At no point during the drought--aside from the very beginning when Bledsoe was at QB and they came up a game short vs the Steelers--did it feel as if they were better than 10 other teams in the conference. In the NHL though, half the teams make the tournament. Simple odds would seem to dictate that at some point over a decade and a half, you're going to be hanging around the middle of the bell curve long enough to catch a break and land the 8 seed. It's actually quite a remarkable statistical feat... to the point that it makes me wonder if we're "in for a penny in for a pound." As I've said in other posts--if this is a tear it down to the studs and then build it back up rebuild, then might as well see it through.

I'm trying to think of a list of 10 good moves they made and all I can come up with is the Risto trade and maybe trading for McLeod.

Don't be so sure about Philly. I mean probably, but Ersson can be better than UPL and Vladar can be as good if not better than Lyon. Problem they've had is the 2 Russians were awful and Ersson got burned out. Ersson with a lighter workload could be better than UPL. The possibles are all possibles except for Silovs. I really like him and think he might be pretty good. Other teams would say the same thing you say about Gibson about UPL. I think the bottom line is IF goaltending is the key factor to making the playoffs we won't.

Oh no I'm sure he will score some. Might even have a high scoring stretch, but I don't think anything will be radically different from what we've already seen from him in Ottawa. Oh I know. I like Kulich. Always have if you've noticed, and as usual I do think we are rushing him.

That was,…

ROR Would’ve made no difference either way the team was set up imo

Bump. Sure we got some venting here