darksabre

It's all meaningless lol

This is essentially the long and short of it.

Extremely weird stuff. No mention at all of where Lance said that stuff and when, if he truly said it at all.

What Mitts did last year really doesn't matter to me. Either he was in the AHL not helping the Sabres, or he was in the NHL not helping the Sabres. Either way the result of last season is roughly the same: he got pro experience. AHL points don't mean anything to me, so it doesn't matter to me that he wasn't down there scoring more of them or whatever. What matters is how he performs this year. That's all there is to it. Where he played his hockey last season is pretty much irrelevant.

Weird. It's almost as if "rushing players into the NHL and ruining their development" is a myth created by fans to excuse the fact that their young players simply don't pan out sometimes. Mittelstadt's talent is undeniable. The only thing he needed last year was NHL seasoning, which is what he got in droves. It will have clarified his off-season goals and with any luck he's working his nuts off in preparation for the grind he now fully understands. Sometimes you just have to throw guys into the fire. Some even thrive on being in over their heads.

It's got nothing to do with belief. Lysowski simply hasn't posted anything anywhere that says that.

I mean, sure. But that's different than a beat writer actually saying it.

I don't see this anywhere.

It's funny. Bylsma, I think, had a good idea what was wrong with the team and basically coached to try to cover it up. Housley appears to have had less understanding on the team's problems and basically expected them to do things they couldn't do. Both philosophies ended in essentially the same results. Now Krueger is going to come in, with a better roster than either guy had, and has the opportunity to combine the good parts of each coach to better success. Krueger might get called lucky. I really don't know what to expect from the roster as it is currently set. It's going to be a weird October.

That said, it's hard to build a team with a culture based on things like individual accountability when the talent simply isn't there. You can't expect a player to do things they simply cannot do.

I don't think anyone is in denial about the fact that he's lost his touch a bit. He has good games and bad games. But the key point here is that most of us don't care that he's not the same old RJ all the time. It's not sad yet like it was with Van Miller, so screw it. I don't feel like taking Grandpa's car keys away yet.

The one thing I expect from Krueger is a focus on individual responsibility. Soccer is the kind of game where there's a lot of field to cover and you need to play your role with minimal in-game coaching. I think he'll take a similar approach with his hockey players.

That would be tremendous.

God I hope Olofsson turns out to be like... Kotalik or something. We really need that to happen. It would change the entire landscape of this roster.

I'm pretty good at fantasy hockey. It's a sickness.

Botterill is assembling an NHL team like I assemble a fantasy team. Give me all the guys with "C, LW, RW" next to their names!

No one here wants to sit with RJ and that's a damn disgrace. You should all be banned.

I just feel like the things people want sorted out, will sort themselves out. It's just not going to happen until October.

I think Ralph will decide their fates pretty quickly.

I think this is probably fair, in that most GMs seem to accept that even bad NHL players are better than no NHL players. For example, the difference between Scandella and your Tennyson-types is enough to make Scandella a roster player (for now).

He's not going to Rochester.

I think Botterill is in the same mode a lot of other teams are this time of year: let's see how things look in camp.

Not by me. Other people here seem to think Botterill is content to do nothing, so it's for them.

Anything can happen.