darksabre

There's a much simpler explanation and it's just that this is who Skinner is. If you look at Skinner historically, he has had other seasons like this. And it has tended to be on teams that were not good. Which thing begets which, I don't know for sure. But Skinner has always been inconsistent season to season. Now, changing directions towards the conspiratorial, part of me wonders if Krueger somehow believes that Skinner, at 27, still has more growing to do as a player; that he can develop more consistency in his game, and that this demotion of sorts is his way of basically forcing the issue on Jeff. Perhaps Krueger looked at his roster and wrote this season off in October just like the rest of us and decided that the best thing for this team was to get Olofsson as much development as possible on the top line and see if Skinner can become a more dependable player. Whether or not Botterill wanted it this way is anyone's guess, but Krueger must have a reason for this, right?

Your first mistake is thinking that Buffalo tanked "correctly". They did not. They didn't have a farm system with some depth players ready to make the jump, they didn't keep any of the vets that you need during a tank recovery. Now they're playing catch-up because they didn't set themselves up for success.

The Sabres are boring too.

Agreed. The whole "kicking motion" rule is meant to stop players from swinging their skates around near the goalies during scrums around the net. That play was definitely more "directing the puck" than it was "kicking motion". His whole body was moving forward.

"Blackjackets take it back again" Rick's already moved on to the casino for the evening.

I think he was trying to bounce it off the goalies leg pads to generate a rebound for whoever that was going to the net. Unfortunately he doesn't have a hard enough shot.

My favorite Sabre shot selection is the point shot into the shin pads that is so hard it ricochets back up the ice, over the blue line, and onto the stick of an opposing player who has cheated up ice and now has a breakaway.

I'll give erod credit for one thing though, he actually managed to shoot from a high scoring area, which the Sabres are consistently bad at.

Probably not, and all it takes is to look at the way the Islanders spend their money. https://www.capfriendly.com/teams/islanders They've spent heavily, but not wildly, on good forward depth. They've limited spending on defense and goaltending. This is exactly what I advocated for in the Dahlin trade thread.

That was a terrible goal to give up by the BJs goalie lol

I joined this forum in the middle of the 06-07 season and look what happened lol

It's entirely my fault.

Schfifty

Graphic Design is my passion. Just bulking up my portfolio so I can apply for a job at PSE.

Missing the playoffs for 9 years in a row is also outrageous, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They should just not hire anyone. Let a bucket of rusty water run the team for a few years.

You got it dude. We were sitting here in the summer going "he needs to do something in August" and then it was September, and October, and November and... Nothing. The things that were broken are still broken. And then new things broke on top of that.

There's no reason not to suggest these things. This team has patted itself on the back repeatedly for hiring "great hockey minds" only for them to turn out to be huge boobs. Making Krueger a GM and coach is not an outrageous idea given that, at this point, a child with a magic 8 ball would probably have done a better job than these hand-picked "hockey minds".

I've been fine with this coaching and the dude was a chairman of a Premier League team. So I think he can handle a sh*t-stain NHL franchise just fine.

This, ultimately, is the root of the problem. The O'Reilly trade is never going away now. It's become a massive stain on both Botterill and the Pegulas. If Botterill makes that bad trade all on his own and sets the team back years, then at least ownership can point the finger at him. But they were very clearly involved in that trade and they can't hold their own GM accountable because of it now. Bad stuff.

PSE's version of damage control is just amazing. How many people are being paid exorbitant salaries to sit around a room and say "how can we make this worse?"

I'd be fine with Ralph doing double duty as coach and GM. Just give him enough assistants to delegate to. It'll be like managing a soccer team again.

From Vogl in The Athletic today: https://theathletic.com/1574432/2020/01/31/the-sabres-are-a-broken-organization-and-one-fans-radio-rant-has-given-a-voice-to-everyone-who-is-sick-of-it/ Hi @PASabreFan

Can't even blame this one on Hutton

The last couple minutes have been okay.