PASabreFan

If SabreSpace had existed in the summer of 1977, it would have been consumed by talk about how the Sabres were regular season overachievers, how Imlach was not good at constructing a contending team, how the core was not getting the job done, etc. Fans are fans.

Heart disease.

Barrie Moore will be making a statement at 2:30 p.m.

The Depression preceded the post-World War II economic boom.

Only if the Red Wings had a plan they were enacting for those 10 sucky years, and only if Pegula is another Ilitch, and only if Eichel is another Yzerman, and only if Botterill is another Devellano, should anyone take any solace in your analogy.

Build from the goal on out? Better add UPL to the timeline theory.

Thorny pretty much nailed it. I'm accused (rightly, probably) of cherry picking Skinner's recent numbers (though his production over the course of that many games, with the season starting to swirl down the terlet, seems fair game), but it's also cherry picking to only look at the Sabres' last 10 games (record-wise, anyway) and draw conclusions about Krueger, Botterill et al. Randall's grocery lists are fantastic. Father and son are in the same tortured place. We both know certain someones at One Sabres Drive who are killing our team, and few are totally behind our crusades. (But, slowly they are coming around.) One of the great SS developments in another trying season is the occasional emergence of Punch's voice, from beyond the grave. There are some former employees who might disagree. But, totally, Botterill knows, either directly or indirectly, that he has plenty of time. He was Terry's hire through and through (Terry's first real GM hire, if we are to believe him), and there's no way Terry will want to face the music if he fires him (someone take that sentence out back). Also, and this would be a very reasonable position for Terry to take: we really can't keep firing people every couple of years.

Gather round children and let us elders tell you a story of olden days when these commercials would supply the necessary stress relief, if just for 30 seconds, during the emotional maelstrom of something you might have heard of: the playoffs.

And the Sabres are barely out of the playoffs a quarter of the way into the season and it's already time for I told you so's, Krueger is no better than Housley, Botterill can't construct a lineup... Why? Some are clearly weighing the last 10 games more heavily than the first 10.

I hope you get your way next summer so we can have a good old-fashioned science experiment. If the team still isn't any better, you'll have to look at the top-end talent, which is not nearly consistent enough.

Skinner has two goals in 11 games.

I was always a little suspicious about Rutherford pushing both Bylsma and Botterill on Pegula. But, for Terry, Pittsburgh is catnip.

"About to..." After next season. I think the roster you and Randall and others envision would cost about 200 million dollars a year.

Isn't that his job? We're about to almost 40 million dollars in Reinhart, Eichel, Skinner and Dahlin. They have to lift the rest. I'm not about to blame Vesey for any of this.

There is that.