darksabre

It was a perfectly good period until the very last second.

Thanks to Hoss for helping me find it. 12-22 pregame before Anaheim. Talking about how Carlyle is big on details and likes to get his matchups. Housley basically waves it off and says they aren't going to do that. 3:00ish https://www.nhl.com/sabres/video/phil-housley-pregame-122218/t-277437090/c-64223703 I think what got me is that Housley acknowledges that Carlyle is studious about details and line matching, but his response is "we're going to roll 4." The line change is super important and this is Housley basically saying he doesn't care.

I caught that!

I'm digging through the podcasts on WGR. It's neither of the two I've posted so far. Still looking.

Possible 12-11 with Howard and Jeremy before the Kings game? https://wgr550.radio.com/media/audio-channel/12-11-sabres-head-coach-phil-housley-howard-and-jeremy Or 12-5 after the Leafs game? https://wgr550.radio.com/media/audio-channel/12-05-sabres-head-coach-phil-housley-howard-and-jeremy

My buddies are saying it was WGR, so it must have been one of his appearances back in either November or December.

You'd think a guy who is used to having lawyers solve his problems would know that multi-million dollar fast food corporations do the same thing.

Yeah. I really don't remember when it was. I just remember thinking it was weird. I think someone asked him, maybe on WGR, what his plan was against the opposing coach. I really want to say he was talking about Babcock. Someone with more time than me might be able to dig it up. I can't have been the only person who heard it.

I forget when it was, but it was maybe back during the streak, or shortly after? I think he said it in a pre-game interview somewhere. I remember hearing it and being stunned. It was something to the effect of "the other coach likes to match lines but I'm not worried about doing that". He made it sound like line-matching was something fiddly people do. Might have been the Toronto game after the streak?

Interesting. So Mitts, Erod and Nelson are quite good at contributing to winning even though they aren't putting up a lot of points. Meanwhile, Scandy, Risto, and Okposo are the some of the worst at scoring but not helping the team win. This matches a lot of eye-test observations around here.

Throw the power play mess in there and that would be my one-two punch of coaching criticisms at the moment.

Agreed. We're basically playing catchup from Darcy, and it's worse because GMTM messed up so bad.

This is why you never go out on the pond alone.

Housley is on record as saying that he doesn't line match.

It's about possession. You can skate hard all you want, but it's better to have the puck while you're doing it. You can't just be going up and down the ice giving the puck away and taking it back.

The problem with the Sabres tanking when they did was that the cupboard was bare Rochester. If they had tanked while keeping good players in Rochester to develop and then brought them all up a few at a time after the tank things would probably have worked a lot better. Darcy started the tank, but the aftershock is owed to his YEARS of poor drafting that we are only just now recovering from.

Shut up, I want to play pond hockey this weekend

The Oilers game is a weird example to get too hung up on. I know they got crushed on the score sheet, but offensively they played a pretty good game. They had a lot more opportunities from the slot than they had in previous games. They equaled the Oilers in shots in the slot at 14. The problem is that the Oilers scored on 7 of the 14 shots they took from the slot. Buffalo scored on only 2 of 14. Defense/Goaltending/Puck luck is what killed them. They need to clean things up in front of their goalies and they need their goalies to be a little better/lucky.

Don't hit me with them negative waves so early in the morning.

According to the charts, it's the most must win of all must wins so far.

(I actually thought Sobotka looked okay on Skinner's line with Jack out...) *ducks*

I think the no-confidence vote succeeds tomorrow.

Phil: "I tried something new one time and it didn't immediately work so I'm never doing it again." Give. Sam. His. Own. Line.

There does seem to be some precedent for this. https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/real-reason-donald-trump-always-eats-fast-food.html/