All Activity

I do wonder if some of the reliance upon rush scoring was causing defensive lapses and bad turnovers. I feel like some of the problems in the offensive zone caused lots of issues defensively too. We were bad against the rush of opponents.

I always felt bad for Pirate fans when their homegrown stars would always leave for greener pastures when they became free agents. Unless they drafted perfectly, they never really had a chance because the top FAs would never go there to replace the departed. Now I know exactly how those fans feel. They don't have hope because they know it's impossible to compete for anything other than maybe a miraculous playoff spot once in a blue moon. Buffalo may be in an even worse position because of the reputation of the organization. There is a stench that other players and management talk about when discussing the Sabres. Some fans talk about hope, but come on, there is no end in sight. You see a team like Vegas land the top free agent in Marner, and the gap just gets wider and wider. Anyway, how about this freaking weather?! Go Bills!

I feel like when he’s on in the morning they can get passive aggressive with him (rightfully so) and it goes over his head every time. It’s wild that he continues to be their primary Sabres guy.

Smarter decisions instead of dumb decisions? Eureka!

I no longer see content posted by certain members, but to say this is “Schumer’s shutdown” is just an absurd regurgitation of right wing talking points. This shut down is about healthcare and dems not being included in the negotiation process. If I were a Dem, perhaps I’d have more to say about it. But it ain’t worth my time.

I don't believe Terry is pinching pennies. He has a larger coaching and front office staffs than most teams. You point at $5MM in unspent cap as some kind of proof while he's paying for 2 GMs (Kev & Jarmo) and a half dozen assistants. If he was that cheap why does he do that? Did you know Jan and her $60K salary costs Terry over $90K when you add in unemployment taxes, benefits and employer contributions? If you've never hired people you wouldn't know that. I don't know how many people work for the Sabres and what expenses beyond salaries there are. But I can be 100% sure that the player salaries are not the teams only expense.

Ticket sales 60 million. Napkin math. Low confidence I am even close lol.

I appreciate your comments on the disparities of revenues and costs with influence on competitiveness. We both agree on that issue. My general point is that how a franchise is managed is a component of that issue because of the impact on revenues.

Regarding those many interactions that end up in murder, the majority are committed by people the victims knew and presumably trusted to some degree.

There are any number of things the Sabres could have done, starting with simply making smarter decisions. Take your pick as to where those smarter decisions could have been made. From front office on down, smarter decisions could and should have been made. The caveat being we enjoy the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

I would love to see the revenue breakdown for $180 million.

To be blunt, you don't understand. I'm not concerned with Power having x number of hits. He does not play hockey with aggression which is something Lidström certainly did. He's passive, it's a huge problem unless you're good with him being a mediocre defender with 40-50pt upside.

Agree, relatively speaking our playoff drought is actually shorter than other teams - when you factor in revenue, that we are in no way responsible for, it becomes clear that the competitive disadvantage foisted upon us leaves us in an indisputable “what could the sabres have even done?” situation

At least Howard didn’t decide to do it at halftime in a game.

I appreciate what you’re saying, but my point had nothing to do with the obvious ineptitude of Pegula and how much revenue he’s earning or losing. I was merely underscoring @PromoTheRobot’s point that player salaries are only one component of player and other franchise operating costs and how disparities between what percentage of revenues teams spend on those costs can create competitive advantages/disadvantages.

The Colts are a dumpster fire?

But, he needs to be OK with physical contact. He needs to push people out of the way so his goalies have clear view of shooting lanes. He needs to use his size to pin people to the boards, rather than let them loop around to the front of the net and set up easy 2 on 1 opportunities, and he needs to grab people after the whistle. Those are all things accomplished by the players you listed, even Teppo. And it wouldn't hurt to end up with over 1100 points, +450, with 4 Cups and 260+ career playoff GP --- all with the same franchise.

Meh... instinct might be the wrong word but I know what you are getting at. Example below. A young female walks down a mostly deserted street in a nations capital, 6 hours after darkness falls. She has earbuds in and is staring at her phone. Is this naive? In the United States, one might think so. However, when I was in Stockholm I saw this in reality. There was a street, the only person I could see on it was me and this woman walking toward me. She did not even look up. I don't think is naive but a testament to the difference of crime rates and social experiences. Similarly I navigated the Stockholm public transit system at 2:30am without even remotely feeling in danger. I would think many times over doing that in most cities. It's not so much the instinct but the educated understanding that things work differently here. The situation is pretty much identical except for the society it happens in. We learn to fear things because we live in a culture that supports the behaviors we need to fear. In small towns in the United States people don't lock their doors. They don't fear having their house broken into. Common sense does come from life experience. Life experience is highly different for people. Your experience tells you to always distrust others. It does not mean it's the correct behavior. For the number of people you "don't trust to value life" how many of them actually don't? There's no way to tell of course. But, you can play the odds by assuming others don't and so this lowers your native trust.. We see the news and hear about how many interactions between people end up in murder. What we don't put into scope is the number of interactions between people that day that did NOT end in murder. We focus on the negative, and without context it drives our perception.

The lack of an opposing viewpoint in this thread is noticeable. Is there any support for the actions of the Democrats here?

The most impactful thing that the franchise/owner can do to increase revenue is to have a consistently competitive team. And I’m sure you aware that being in the playoffs increases revenue and profit margin. What’s sad to see are the empty seats in the arena at the home games. What’s even more discouraging is that it is not unusual to see a sold seat end up being a vacant seat. That’s a loss of in-house revenue. As you noted, there is no question that because of the astounding amount of tv money shared by all teams in football that hockey will never have the ability to generate such an amount of money. But it’s indisputable that this lagging franchise has lost a lot of potential revenue due to its own systemic ineptitude.

It never dies but lies a dormant volcano... for at minimum 14 years.

In 2006, Hank Tallinder had 43 hits, Teppo Numminen had 10. The following year Teppo had 37 and Hank 26 (in 47 games) Nick Lidstrom routinely put up 40-something hits a year. Teams need physical defencemen, but idea you need to be physical to play good defence is utter fallacy. Owen Power doesn’t need to punish anybody, he needs to use that reach, those feet and that vision to kill plays.

Good point. Many times I tried to point this out to people over at TSW, but they just didn’t want to hear it. It was all “Ralph is cheap.” Bottom line is this: if one team’s operating costs represent X percentage of revenues and another team’s operating costs represent 2X in player costs that team is at a competitive disadvantage. The example I would point to is that the Cowboys were spending 35% of revenues on those costs while the Bills were spending 65%. A common push back would be “but all the salaries are paid for by TV revenues” but as you point out, salaries are only one component of operating costs.