Ifs and buts.
Botterill isn't Terry's boss, and if you want to be fair to Terry, the Sabres are a small market team not unlike some of the other teams who you say were unwilling to pay the bonus too.
String Terry up if you want, I wont stop you. But to say Botterill should have been able to will Terry into paying O'Reilly's bonus with cold hard logic is to oversimplify the realities of how people, especially business owners, make decisions.