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Slick people know how to take advantage of the loopholes. Officer asks the stopped driver have you been drinking. The driver says yes. How much did you drink? I only had one glass of wine, and I spilled a lot of it. Okay, that sounds reasonable. Here's your license back and drive carefully. Thank you officer. I want you know to that I support the men in blue. 😄

I've been thinking about what Stanley Cup champion from recent memory compares with this Florida team. They are just incredible. Is it possibly the Bruins in their recent heyday? How many Cups did they win - just one? I'm mostly wondering whether Bergeron is comparable to Barkov, then with Marchand being comparable to ... Marchand, etc.

Adams: “Hey Rick Dudley you just won back to back Cups. Do you want to come home to Buffalo and work directly for me? Hello….Hello…. We have Seth Appert lined up as next coach….Hello”

Competent ownership and management and coaching are the issues. It is not hard for me to imagine Thompson scoring 50 and being an offensive juggernaut, and a physical menace (not in the Bennett sense), playing on the first line of a cup winning team. Likewise, I could easily see Dahlin having a Conn Smythe level playoff performance for a cup winner. I can’t see it happening here. Not with this regime in charge. The big question at this point, in my view, is do Adams and Ruff get fired before Thompson or Dahlin demand a trade?

But he didn’t do enough to win it all

I think people would have a much easier time letting go if the team did anything to rectify their toughness issue. It was a problem 15 years ago. It’s a bigger problem today. Every player with an ounce of aggression and toughness has been jettisoned like they took a dump on the logo in the locker room. Even the mildly tough guys we’ve brought in, like Lafferty, Malenstyn, Clifton all play with a significantly less amount of aggression once they don the blue and gold. The roster needs to be gutted. It’s a sign these guys a) don’t really care about their teammates and b) don’t have the proper character this team desperately needs. You can’t have a roster entirely built with snipers, danglers and offensive D. They’ll get eaten alive by anyone giving two shits. Mediocre to bad teams like the Bruins still laugh at and toy with the Sabres. They are taunted right to their faces. They get treated like children, in part because they are. The roster needs an infusions of grown ass men who don’t need to be told to stand up for your teammates. I want guys on the roster who see one of their own laying unconscious on the ice and start committing assault on every opposing player. Even if their line mate tripped and fell, start swinging and ask questions later.

Go look up who won the Conn Smythe last year and then delete this.

The strategy to rebuild or not and to what extent is not what has strangled this franchise. Even if there was no complete tear down strategy but rather build on what you already got, a competently managed franchise would today have a relevant and competitive team. The owner hired an ill-equipped person to be his GM, a person no other owner/franchise would have considered for the position. After five years at the helm, we are not much farther than when we started. This mediocre fellow is still at the helm. Again, no franchise would have retained a GM with such a record. That's not the case for this bedraggled franchise. What's the hope now? It's that the senior advisor brought in will help buck up the GM that has driven this franchise into a ditch. That's not how a normally run NHL franchise functions. And the beat goes on and on. Imprisoned by one's own generational foolishness.

I fixed it for you

Best damn farm team in the NHL!

If he had went to the Sabres he probably could have won 2 by now for the Panthers.

If you told me back a few yews ago when they were in the Sabres that Eichel, Reinhart and o’reilly would have 4 Stanley cups and players from the 2017-18 would have 11, I would have been elated, thinking the Sabres won the Stanley cup 2 times. sad and pathetic franchise

We're a farm team. Denial just makes it worse. " See the future winners while they're here ! Buy your tickets today ! "

Competent ownership means “the extent of the rebuild” would not have been a tear it down to nothing effort. Who knows if we even draft Sam and Eichel at that point? The team wouldn’t look like you think it would. Everything would be very different.

Cripes...it's not like I lose sleep over it. But thanks for telling me how to feel about it. I needed that.

Partly that was to trade away Muel with it

So this mcdavid guy…… one more year till UFA. Will he re-sign with the oilers? Would be a fun offseason if he didn’t.

that's why I specifically said " let's Assume the Sabres had competent ownership, mgmt and coaching. Or are you saying it would have been impossible for them to get to the level of players they've become if they stayed in Buffalo? If that's the case how do you explain Tage's progress and Dahlin becoming one of the top defenders in the league Not to mention both Sam and Jack were pretty good as Sabres and neither had hit their "prime" before being traded away

Both Eckel and Reinhart are great players, but the difference between their failures in Buffalo and successes after Buffalo are directly related to their surrounding cast. Florida and Las Vegas built winning rosters, winning coaching and winning management. It is what it is.

I feel sorry for McDavid

Oh the NHL doesn't care who wins (usually) and they are most definitely in the entertainment business but that league view is different than a team's view. The league just wants things it can sell, be that McJesus or other superstars or even Rat Kings. They will market whatever is going. A team however needs a winning culture and a belief that the team is doing all it can to try to win.

How did this become this?

Then we can watch the next group taking turns winning the cup. There is no mystery here. Post-Regier, Pegula hired Tim Murray, Botterill, and Adams to be his GMs. And head coaches included Housley, Krueger, and now Ruff at the end of his career. Pegula has simply hired the wrong people over and over. It’s not the players.