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Personally, I don't begrudge people who might accuse Jack of seeming uninspired. However, I don't blame Jack for being uninspired. His uninspired play is still excellent play and while it certainly can make the long list of things wrong with the team, it's pretty near the bottom and likely easily addressed by fixing things way above it on the list.

You know there is a bunch of guys out there playing against him, right? That they're told what to do by people whose sole job it is is to figure out how to stop him from doing what he does? If the other guys Eichel relies upon for help aren't helping and the coaches aren't changing the strategy to adjust for the job the opponent's coaches are doing...uhm...I got nothing.

Chicken or egg?

I would imagine he would be better than a point-per-game player if the rest of the team pulled its weight.

Eichel isn't "the engine". That doesn't even fit the original axiom. At best he's the Chief or second Engineer.

A +3 with 2 points since being with Nashville isn't "quite bad" for a fourth line role.

When you have Wayne Simmonds penciled in on your forth line - you're doing something right.

In case anyone else follows Nashville: Forwards Filip Forsberg - Ryan Johansen - Viktor Arvidsson Mikael Granlund - Kyle Turris - Craig Smith Colton Sissons - Nick Bonino - Austin Watson Brian Boyle - Calle Jarnkrok - Wayne Simmonds Defense Roman Josi - Ryan Ellis Mattias Ekholm - P.K. Subban Dan Hamhuis - Dante Fabbro Goaltenders (starter not announced) Pekka Rinne Juuse Saros

"Skinner-Rodrigues-Okposo" What did Skinner do? Has he decided to test the market? Does Phil not like pirouettes?

I think Risto and Bogo play a role but not directly. I think Phil uses them wrong. Both players are pretty bad at maintaining possession; both clear the puck willy-nilly. I think one of them has to go in order to balance out the D. You're not wrong with Skinner. His role here is to score goals, and ideally those come when we need them. His record is like the 10-game streak. However, those goals did contribute to a winning look for the first half of the season. It's not unreasonable to assume that if the team were stabilized or played .500 hockey more consistently, Skinner would have more goals.

I don't think your average NHL level hockey player would use "hate" this way. Like I said, by this time in their careers, they know the difference between "hate" and "don't get along with" or "not a fan of the guy". The latter two of which, I think is far more likely anyway. The tweeter more than likely used "hate" colloquially when the sentiment is probably something else. Still, by posing it the way you did, you're waving off the importance of that tweet, if we can assume it's true. If we assume it's true, then most of team "hates", "strongly dislikes", or "doesn't respect" Phil and that's a problem.

I don't think anyone is looking past Eichel's flaws. His flaws aren't the reason for the second half season collapse. The sum of his flaws don't equal a player who should be removed from the team because of them. There is no reason to discuss his flaws at the moment, except when someone thinks he should be removed from the team because of them.

Nashville is going to eat up and spit out the Sabres. Unless the Sabres start the game truly motivated, surprising Nashville, and getting a few goals early and hang on to win it by the skin of their teeth. However, if Nashville is gearing up of the playoffs and not taking it easy, they will embarrass the Sabres, which, you know, can be difficult to do at this point.

"Hate" is a strong word. By posing the question in this context you're impling that all players hate coaches. If the hate flowed, as you seem to be implying, there would be requests for trades happening far more frequently. Maybe not since hating coaches would be the norm, then no matter where a player went they would hate the coach. If the players truly hated the coaches, then the coaches wouldn't get much production out of them. The whole thing flies in the face of biographies and the words coming from players mouths who always find a coach or two at every level to praise. Frankly, when attaining the NHL level, I'd like to think that if there's hate for a coach by a player, the player has enough experience and wisdom (despite being young) that the coach has likely earned the hate.

It's just Twitter, but I'll just put this here:

Is that Walmart?

You should consider re-thinking you analysis. The quality of callers is generally low as a rule. Not too different, actually, than message boards. We are lucky here that our board is significantly above the average in terms of an internet message board. I don't post or even visit other boards for the same reason a lot of quality people don't call radio shows. I have no problem they using that moment to attract attention - that's the kind of thing they should be doing.

I think our one-dimensional style, lack of real talent and inexperience all played a hand in this. Once the book was out on how to discombobulate our D, there were never adjustments made to counter that book because the focus was on execution. But they're not going to get Nashville-style execution with the lack of talent on one side, and the inexperience on the other. Goal-tending suffered, then, because a lot of the shots against were either high-quality, or took advantage of the chaotic D. On the last point, there were way too many "flukey" goals for them to be random. I guarantee part of the book was to lob the puck from below the dots 90 degrees at a Sabres D man in front. Both goalies were sufficiently rattled starting in late December and never recovered. While the latter half of the season has shown us our goalies do not have the mental fortitude or technical skill to be number ones, I think nearly any good goalie would have looked bad in front of our D. Injuries, lowering confidence, inability to maintain the appropriate pace throughout the season, and general positional and in-game strategic confusion was added to an already teetering D core, which features a lack of appreciation for puck possession, an inability to control zone exits, and at least half who can't stand the thought of laying a hit or receiving one to make a play.

I already posted this here:

I think this is germane to the conversation. Howard and Jeremy pretty much nail it about why the Sabres are where they're at. At least in my opinion.

Surprising, yes. Refreshing? Why?

I don't disagree with you overall on over-valuing the roster. No one has come here and with specificity (other than arbitrary, made up percentages) has told us HOW a good coach can help the team. No one here really knows what impact a different coach will make. Not a one. However, it has become quite clear that along with major roster changes, there does need to be a coaching change.

That was most likely not his call to make. More evidence to submit at the re-trial.

This interests me. I didn't watch his presser. Can you elaborate?

I don't think the player interviews are necessary to justify Phil's release. They either do it or don't. With Q and AV on the market, if they're going to make the move, they need to move right away. Firing him before the last game, though, would be a bad look. After that, not a soul in the universe would blame them.