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Playoff baseball is killer

Puck battles has been the issue for years. They are soft, they quit on plays, they won't battle hard, they won't pay the price. It's not a coincidence that in Bruins discussions they often get to "Mittlestadt doesn't battle hard enough I'm worried about him" and he's actually getting better but is still the most Sabre like. Jokiharju seems to have grown a pair and that might be because he's playing beside Zadorov. To the last sentence would Geertson pummel Zadorov? Chara handled him in his old age. Zadorov isn't Chara, but he's younger and he fights pretty good: Zadorov holds his own against Olivier (who I think is the best fighter in the league): But Zadorov was smart. Why fight a loser fourth liner? The chirping was hilarious.

the most salient element however is that Adams deserves to be fired..so he should be fired. Even leaving aside the fact it could be reflective of a change of mindset for Terry, or that he could get lucky with a new hire, or that there literally can’t be someone worse - it at the very least shows some element of accountability. That this element is somehow underplayed well escapes me: THE BIGGEST issue with the sabres is lack of expectation and accountability. That’s what put them in this mess. People keep taking about culture - without a level of accountability that doesn’t exist. Adams is demonstrably bad so he deserves to be fired. “But will the new hire even be better? Terry sucks!” is an elementary level diversion. Of course Terry is the big bad. It does not change the fact that Adams deserves to be fired we learn at like age 5 that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Avoiding firing Adams cause it “might not make a difference” is bottom of the barrel thinking. He doesn’t deserve to be GM.

Great post. People as a rule seem to have difficulty seeing nuance And this

This place is is so tired of us being right they’ve decided to paint us as the villain. I honestly just feel bad for the fans doing this

Fear

Good luck

In a word. Well done, Pimlach.

The issue is Tage doesn’t know any better. He could be that leader, but he developed in this mess and what he sees is normal to him. Same for Dahlin. We need a leader to come from the outside. Preferably with the coach and GM that made him a leader.

And that doesn’t solve anything

A change desperately needs to happen. Unfortunately there is a scenario where we end up with GM Jerry Forton and HC Seth Appert, if Jarmo says no

You need to fire the entire front office including a lot of these scouts that keep pushing soft players!

Why single out Tage? They all did and Okposo let it go.

I would love to know the rationale behind the red Xs about Tage. This is the guy that took absolutely no responsibility for sucking when the fans started calling for Donnie's head, and instead decided to stop the post game salute as punishment. That's not a leader.

That’s a really good point. Let the smaller market teams line Buffalo lose so the bigger market teams can make the NHL lots and lots of more money.

It's difficult to develop that 'hate-to-lose' culture when ownership/management keeps moving the guys who truly hate to lose out of the organization. O'Reilly hated to lose, put that feeling into words, and was traded. Eichel and Reinhart were sick of losing and didn't want to go through another rebuild. Adams claimed that they didn't want to be here, traded them and then proceeded with his idiotic and doomed rebuild. It's difficult to build that hate-to-lose culture when you label those players who voice dissatisfaction with losing as dissenters to the cause, and then move them out of the organization.

It’s a leadership issue all around. Dahlin is a talented player who leads by example, but this team needs an alpha male with a strong personality as a co-captain. Still confounds me Ruff didn’t replace the Assistant Captains. Not a one of them has the right stuff, imo. Want a jolt? I would strip them all of the A and give an A to Zucker, a guy who isn’t infected by losing and last season’s debacle who has the ice cred to get the attention of the group.

They’re down 3 forwards from their planned opening roster. I doubt Geerston being in the roster was the plan. Him playing each game certainly wasn’t. Keeping him around once the ***** hit the fan and not calling up a better option? Yes, that one’s on Ruff. If they’re ever fully healthy, I can’t see the numbers working out to keep him up. But hey then we can be scared of the waiver claim that’s never coming.

Oh I understand now... yes I was being dramatic about that i should have said Buffalo and qualified it with relevant free agents ... now I get the roll thing too... "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor!" "Shut up he's on a roll" ... lol well played

This is my view from 15 years of playing hockey (not counting beer league) and a dozen years of coaching youth hockey--and just generally being a rink rat: Granato was in over his head, but he had the locker room behind him (until the end when it was apparent he was not coming back) and managed to get the most out of every player on the ice as a result. Lindy has the experience, but I don't think he has the buy-in and he is not getting nearly 100% from the majority of players. Granato was not a good strategist. His game management and inflexibility toward trying new lines (or anything new, frankly) being two notable shortcomings that no rose-tinted glasses will favorably color. His line deployments were, at least at times, best described as "questionable." Yet the team consistently outperformed--or, as you pointed out, at least 'met'--expectations. That's because he was the motivator that Ralph Krueger was supposed to be. The problem is that Granato was simply over his head at the NHL level. And this is where it gets most frustrating for me. As time has passed, it's become abundantly obvious that Granato was a good coach--just not at the NHL head coach level. Firing Granato and bringing in Ruff was a nostalgia-driven attempt at bringing in an NHL-level coach, but it ignored the consequences from the team morale side. The roster construction has improved since the time of Granato, but the team itself hasn't because Ruff doesn't connect with the players the way Granato did. I firmly believe if Granato had the current defense--and I'll even take the goaltending tandem of Lyon and completely-unproven-Ellis with it--he could get the Sabres into the playoffs. While we have 100 different things to scream about over the last decade and a half, one continuous tie-in is the assistant coaching. Granato might have succeeded as a head coach even in spite of the roster construction if he had a "game" coach on the bench with him who could have directed/advised him on strategy--even Mike Peca could have probably filled this role despite him also being a relative rookie. Granato needed someone to help fill in the strategy side for him. Shockingly, the powerplay extraordinaire, Matty Ellis, wasn't able to do that. I mean, ideally, Granato would have been an assistant coach and Buffalo would have hired a serious head coach, but that would be asking too much. Thing is, and to circle back to your closing point, I don't think replacing Granato was itself a bad move because, much like everything else, it's just a small part of the bigger issue. Granato wasn't an NHL-caliber coach, but he might have become one if he was given the support he needed and he'd have done it with (or in spite of?) the "in-house" roster Adams constructed. It's the same reason why so many of our players find success elsewhere. The organization doesn't understand support.

Good. How are you not on board with this? I'm not trying to be antagonist, it's a legitimate question in the hopes of discussion.

Because free agents sign in new York state every off season, that's why it's odd