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If I get Kesselring I'd look at Doan's kid

Who are the other Jerry Forton specials? The Sabres reached just a bit when drafting Rosen. McKenzie's final rankings had him at 18. Rosen at 13, was not a huge reach. In my view, Rosen has been a bit of a victim of the organization he was drafted by. Somewhat weirdly, the "no blocking" philosophy has blocked Rosen. The Sabres routinely had 6-7 forwards under 24 on their roster this season. They were already too young. Yes, Benson and Kulich passed Rosen on their respective paths to the NHL, but we love those two players. I'll compare Rosen to Mackie Samoskevich in Florida. Samoskevich was drafted 23rd by Florida in the same draft as Rosen. McKenzie had him at #33. He is a late birthday and is 5 months older than Rosen. He is 5'11' / 180. Last year in D+4, Samoskevich had 22 goals and 54 points in 62 AHL games, quite comparable to Rosen's 20 goals and 50 points in 67 games. In 7 NHL games last year, Samoskevich had 0 points. This year he made the jump to the NHL full-time. But, he was one of only two forwards under 24 on the Panther roster. And, Florida was up against the cap and needed his ELC. He had a solid rookie season with 15 goals and 31 points in 72 games. What's important here, is that Samoskevich's most common linemate this season was Sam Bennett. He played over 250 minutes at even strength on Bennett's wing, with Evan Rodrigues being the other winger for the majority of the time . Rosen, in his time up with the Sabres this year, never came close to being paired with a single player or to having two regular linemates. His most common linemates were Malenstyn and fellow rookie, Tyson Kozak. Adams has set all of his young players up to fail. Some have risen above this. I'm not predicting anything when it comes to Rosen, and his value is likely pretty low. But I think it is far to soon to write him off as a bust.

Pity it wasn't another Canada U.S. mega game but Tage got a taste of winning that's cool. Maybe he brings an "I want more" attitude with him to camp and it rubs off on the others. Likely got him onto the Olympic team too.

Good lord, the dissecting of and arguing over the cause of the suck makes me want to commit seppuku. ***** this team. ***** Adams, and ***** Pegula. Do something.

Trade for Adam Larrson of Seattle.Team him with Power. Keep Bo Byram. Find a good goalie that you can count on.

Golden goal for Tage. That's awesome.

Two things about Levi, and they are the same things as when he got here. He's small and he goes down in that sort of butterfly to cover the bottom of the net but that leaves a huge upper area wide open. He also cannot see through traffic. Fatal issues for the NHL. net front and turnovers cost them same way it costs the Sabres. here's your lowlights:

As of right now the members of the front office you really do not want making decisions have taken the lead on a potential Byram trade

If he did Kevyn will tell us how impressive it was soon enough😃

Did Terry fly back to Montreal? Pretty close to Laval... Would explain a lot 😁😭 maybe a patented pep talk

The current stated goal of ownership is Efficient, Effective, and Economical. There’s been no public messaging from the owner since 2020 regarding the team. Until the owner says otherwise, the goal still isn’t to win, it’s just to maintain lifestyle and yacht in this tricky Covid economy.

Uh the answer is in the room. Dear Leader told us this.😛

Rosen was always a pick that was based on the idea of him being an earlier version of Eklund in SJ. They tried to get to Eklund and were unable to get there. After all that was the original Reinhart trade, moving up from Philly’s 1st to LAK’s 1st using Reinhart as the piece. We don’t know what else was involved. However the guy LA liked fell to them so they turned us down and we pivoted to the Florida offer of a 1st the next year and Levi. In that regard it wouldn’t have made much sense to draft another goalie at 13? since we had Portillo and Levi(to be) already on the depth chart but both had College careers. Rosen reminded them of Eklund from the year prior and thus they took him with the hope he’d take a similar path.

It was also great for Tage to play in some meaningful games.

Re: Levi there was certainly a level of belief at the time that may have suggested his that while his roster positioning was reflective of being a symptom, the approach to the rest of the roster illustrated how much Cause was in play, too If we were willing to count on him to be a starter, that soon, that unproven, i shudder to think of what may have been expected of him when he was hitting his stride If anyone doubts how much belief there was in him being a very real potential answer in the now, you are probably misremembing the time of hype

Yes, if it’s a complementary goal it’s not THE goal and that is what I am saying was necessary. You aren’t disagreeing with me you are just starting your posts with “no” for some reason My point is precisely that the future goals should be subservient to the goal of right now as until we build the now no future exists a’tall

Good for Tage. Glad USA finally broke through.

It does come with an asterisk, but it's the same one that this tournament comes with EVERY year, so good on Thompson for playing really well against the best of the players that play in Europe through the winter and a handful of really good NHLers. There's a reason Europeans care way more about this tournament than Canadians and Americans care about it.

I’d say today buried the last excuse for not bringing in a goalie, but who am I kidding?

Again, no, he didn't say the goal was to "probably" make the playoffs. It was the complementary goal to the the goal of perennially contending for the Stanley Cup and it was making the playoffs. Meaning, he wasn't going to sell off large chunks of the future to make playoffs happen. You can say then playoffs wasn't a goal, it was merely something he hoped would happen; but personally don't believe that was the case. (Sorry, kind of skimmed over the paragraph where you essentially agreed with that.) And again, believe his and Granato's hubris about that 91 point season is what doomed the next one. And that's how he managed to sell to management to punt Granato without anyone else going. Personally, still not understanding how Adams didn't take a fall THIS off-season. But there was A firing after the expectation of playoffs was not met. (Agree 100% there should've been more and am as frustrated as any (maybe even moreso than most) that there has been NO accountability THIS off-season; but you can't say there were no firings when the HC was in fact relieved of his duties when they missed the playoffs when the playoffs were the ST goal.) And, yes, the focus SHOULD have been on the playoffs more so than it was. The issue, and the one we ALL get to suffer for is, am 95+% certain that Adams sold Pegula on he (Terry) and Regier having been on the right track when they went for the tank but that Murray's rushing the rebuild is what caused the suffering to remain on a continual loop. And the Kevyn plan included (quite wrongheadedly, as they refused to weaponize ANY of their capspace the past 4 years) keeping cap for the home grown talent that would earn raises pushing them organically to a cap team and only trading away youth for players that would still be fitting into the long term vision of what the team is/ was becoming. So, though the ST goal WAS the playoffs, Adams little plan had set up constraints that didn't allow for veering from the plan even when a modification to the plan was warranted. The ST goal was secondary to the LT goal. Now, personally don't know if the playoffs were a Pegula goal. Am suspicious that it isn't nearly as high on his priority list as it was/is for Adams. Expect he still believes in that vision that Adams sold him after tagging along on the out of town trip back in the '19-'20 season which is likely the biggest reason that Adams still has a job after 5 failed kicks at the can. And heading into that off-season personally wanted to see a lot of things happen, pretty much none of which did, which would've made it extremely likely they'd've needed a lot to go wrong to not make the dance rather than staying where they ended up with needing a LOT to go right to make it. And with Quinn breaking in the off-season, they already knew at least 1 of the things they'd banked on to go right wouldn't. And, neither here nor there, knew the Sabres had made the wrong call in choosing Botterill over Zito back when a successor for Murray was needed. Hadn't realized Zito didn't take the Swamp Cats job until about 5 months after Adams had been hired to replace JBots. The Sabres actually had another opportunity to make the right decision and didn't make it then either. This off-season is soooo truly beyond frustrating.

I didn’t see Adam’s give Levi a 5-year $25M contract He absolutely overrated Levi, but it was symptom, not cause. It certainly wasn’t the only swing and miss and it’s not the only reason he’s failed to build a playoff team. He banked a numerous youngsters to get good. Most of them haven’t.

I was laughing today seeing disgruntled Philly fans (they hate everything) suggesting they'd feel like they got the dud ex Flyer when Brind'Amour gets fired. Maybe this is what Boston's waiting for. 🙂

Really quickly, I want you to look up Bennetts size and Marchands and get back to me.

*So, in the end, a drastic failure of both execution and concept. The proof is in the macro statistical pudding. The 78 point average for 5 seasons, that sort of *drastic* failure (we haven’t just missed we’ve generally missed badly) is the natural result of poor planning AND poor execution. like I always say with the tank, they made their own degree of difficulty for the actual rebuild after the fact way harder by enacting that strategy. Adams refusal to prioritize the now, the “floor”, the unwillingness to put the team in a place reflective of a GM who feels his team MUST make the playoffs, a team with, perhaps, a little standings points breathing ground rather than always being in “if eveything goes right mode”, leads to rosters against the 8 ball with question marks from day 1 that look really bad when they DO fail.