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If the country cared about and paid more attention to the NHL, "Pegula" would be a verb right now.... When a new owner buys a team, the local media and fanbase can say "Just don't Pegula things up" When an owner makes big time changes, hires an uknown coach or GM (stuff like that) and not everyone agree with them "He's going to Pegula the franchise up" Alas, the majority of the USA doesn't know the Pegula chapter of the Sabres story for that to likely catch on.

So if the glass is half-full then we have 14 more years to go?

And yet every single day that passes brings them that much closer to their next playoff berth. (Glass halffull indeed.)

He may have bought the team in Feb 2011, but the team from Feb 2011 to the end of the season really wan't "his" team. If was in the offseason he started to take control in a way that impacted the team, roster, and front office. That basically will line up with the peak of that graph. It was very VERY close to the start of the downfall the moment Pegula started to 'exercise' his power as owner.

Pegulian just sounds right.

My above post was intended to be sarcastic. I think that when the Rigas corruption scandal and the NHL take over that was the original lowest point. The Golisano era revived things and the Pegula era pumped everyone up for a very short time. In Pegulian times the abrupt leaving of LaFontaine started a downward trend that reached a new low when they tanked and failed to win the lottery twice. New lows were achieved when ROR was dealt away for hating to lose, and then again when Eichel was dealt for away under the EEE plan. New lows have been then norm since the Adams Benchmark 91 point season. Since we are setting NHL records and I guess you can just say that each playoff miss adds is the new lowest point.

Some in the Houston game were from immediate pressure. Anderson abused a 1 armed Spencer Brown like a rented mule

Needs to be a tshirt and worn by everyone attending a Sabres home game

It should be colour coded. It took him not even half a season to make his mark. Buys the team in Feb 2011, they fall off a cliff from Oct 2011 to today

I dunno. I thought of you when he said it.

By the way, I had to work 7 hrs today to make 40 for the week, I was scheduled for tue., wed., thur. 7pm to 7am, only, the company pays 11 instead of 12 for shifty’s, something I’m told will be corrected after the 1st of the year, long story unto itself there but trust me when I tell you it’s not a win. Anyways, I had the company town hall today which they’ve turned in to a training session. And like The Fat Electrician always says, that inner smart arse all us vets have in ourselves came out. They did a D.E.I. Questionnaire, my table nominated me as the spokesman. I stated I work with a Swede, 2 Mexicans and a Philipino and we do a dam fine job in the E&I dept. Everyone laughed, the plant manager was writing notes, I expect a meeting when I return from vacation next Monday 😂

It won't. what are the odds he even knows they are playing tonight?? And if he does know they play tonight, does he care?

Do you know what Temu is?

I'm off today (sure, I'm off every day; to be more precise, I officially own my testicles from 230 to 1030 today). I started a pot of homemade minestrone soup while listening to some Best of Paul Simon. It feels shockingly cold today, and I have no knife skills, and I have no roly poly little batfaced girl, but things should work out for a tasty bowl or three during the first intermission tonight. I had to go to Walmart to get soup stuff and test strips and lancets for my elderly diabetic cat. The Salvation Army bell ringer let my ears have it as I approached, and that shook me, but not as much as what I saw inside. There's something wrong. People in scooters checking out their own giant plastic jugs of Ragu and box after box of Hostess Christmas Tree Cakes. I joked with a guy in an Eagles Starter jacket but secretly wished coal, if not a slow and painful death, for the rest of humanity under the fluorescent lights. Am I any better with my Aveeno moisturizer and Peanut M&Ms? Maybe I should look in the mirror. I did. I completed a Six Month Smile/Eff You, Orthodontist program 10 years ago, and now my teeth are slowly retreating to their original positions, a dental drop pass on the power play -- and I still won't smile. Soon you can call me UP AL. After Kodachrome, an ad for a newfangled glucometer played on YouTube. Geez, I didn't even take my phone into the store. At least They don't seem to know my cat has the Wilford Brimleys, if not the Marty Wilfords. Celery seed? Why the ***** not? I have nothing to lose. And garlic powder, just to make Eleven and Weave clutch their pearls. It'll all come out in the wash, but is there really similar hope, hope, maybe the best of things, for our teams? The Bills still have Josh, who might yet fulfill The Dream of My Father, who shook his Gator Produce keys to four straight Super Bowls. The Bills led XXVIII at the half until my sister in law stole and hid the keys, and my dad secretly hated her for it until he drew his last breath on a substantial morphene drip. He got married after the big war, young, in a Catholic Church, then after the inevitable divorce, could not marry my mother in one. The rest of his life, he waived off not only the faith but every priest who tried to visit him in one of his many hospital stays. After his last words to my mother were... You're My Sweetheart... my older brother called in the amiable Father Leo to give my unconscious dad The Last Rites. Wait. Where am I? I mean, where was I? Oh yeah, the soup. Cannellini beans and ditalini pasta (but not too much, otherwise it'll be Minestrone Mush and please don't look that up on Urban Dictionary) still to come. Sabres, too. Hope? I have the Gator keys now, and they were in the kangaroo pouch of my Sabres hoodie the last time they won. Maybe I'll put them in there again tonight. I miss my dad and Rick and myself, but I have reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland.

The coaching staff or becomes GM? He became GM at about the same time on the chart they changed to royal blue...the last dotted line on the right.

You can see the Pegula point without the reference marker.

Thanks for posting this. You are doing a lot better job explaining it than I can and I agree with most of it. I don't go to analytics first for my opinions. I see something and then I'll try to go to analytics to see if they support what I think I saw. Starting last year, I saw with my eyes that UPL was letting in a lot of bad goals, and all the other Sabres goalies that played besides him weren't much better (althoug it seems like when a goalie has a good week, this forum is quick to annoint him..."He's the #1!") expected goals is not a perfect stat, but it is a LOT closer to perfect than almost everything that has been used over the years. And when someone points out a flaw in the stat because of an individual event, usually those 'individual events' even out over time. Maybe expected goals doesn't give you a good picture over the short term (a game, a couple games) because of those individual events, but those events get smoothed out over time in the numbers. As has been said many times, the Sabres 'bad defense' is factored into the numbers. If is the 'bad defense' that leads to 'good chances against' that cause that expected goals against number to go up. Back to the goalies...None of them are good, UPL has been average-to-downright awful the past 1.5 years or so....that is what MY eye test tells ME, and the numbers back it up.

Thats the one. The sub .500 section in the beginning, everyone was still in love with the team and was hopeful. The 16 yr falloff is still trending down. Yeah, we are at a lowest point. Unfortunately, LTE and Thorny are also correct as the next game is going to be another lowest point, and the next one after that.

That would be a real shame.

Good. Let them lose 3 of their last 4. 4 of 4 works too. 😉

Yeah. It felt wrong, because it was a qualification round, but they did have to track the stats somewhere. Like, if someone had had the Hasek-Brodeur game and it was the greatest of all time and then you tell your kids about it --- and it didn't happen. So, postseason it is.

Muchas gracias

I feel like people are assuming a Baltimore loss.

IF the Cheats lose to Miami and Buffalo and both win all their other games, why? If the Cheats beat the Fish & or the Bills, yes, Buffalo will need more W's than the Cheats to get the division.

Stand corrected. Danke.