nfreeman

Good win. That was JA's best deep throw of the season -- and another very nice play from Brown on the catch. Singletary reminds me of Joe Cribbs. Good for Shaq in his contract year. It's hard to really believe in this team until they beat a good team, but 8-3 is still enjoyable.

So my wife and I finished binging “Succession.” I think season 2 was a bit better than season 1, although still not quite as good as the hype. Still pretty good though and very funny. Solid B-plus. We also saw “Ford vs Ferrari” last night. A bit corny but pretty enjoyable. Matt Damon was very good. My wife thought Christian Bale was really good. I think he’s a good actor but find him kinda annoying. In any case I give it a B-plus. BTW, we saw it in a theater with reserved seats — it’s pretty nice to go to a sold-out movie on a Saturday night and not have to worry about getting there early to not get stuck in the first row.

Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine.

This is a great post. I had not heard the bolded previously. Was that published somewhere reputable? If so that was a huge blunder.

This sentiment is more than fair. If we haven't arrived there yet, we're very close to the place where JB does not get the benefit of the doubt. But it's still based on the assumption, which can't be known and is quite possibly false, that there was at least one trade available for one of the Sabres' defensemen that would've improved the team. You're far from the only one making this assumption, and it might very well be true, but I think we need to remember that this entire line of thinking is entirely based on a huge unknown element.

No. When I look at Mitts, I think "bust" and "a nail in JB's coffin." It's too soon for those to be fair evaluations on my part, but I think a bad outcome at this point is more likely than Mitts developing into a top-6 player.

I'm hoping you can arrest this temper tantrum before you fly entirely off the rails. I have posted about a hundred times that Reino is a good player. I have no interest in dumping him as part of a housecleaning, and in fact I said I would probably re-sign him, despite my opinion that they'll have to pay him more than he's worth. That doesn't mean he's a great player, or that he's as good as Draisaitl, or that he's a good skater, or that he doesn't make critical mistakes -- because none of those things is true.

I've been wondering about this myself. I think TP really, really wants not to have to fire JB, and will not do so if the team gets to, say, 85 points this year. That would make it 62 pts in JB's 1st year, then 76, then 85 -- which I think TP would view as a respectable enough progression to justify bringing JB back. But if the Sabres can't find their way out of this death spiral, and they continue to lose 80% of their games, and are DFL or bottom 3 at the all-star break, and the arena is half-empty in February, with no noise other than booing at the end of each period -- I think it's quite possible that JB doesn't make it to the end of the year. And that fate will be deserved. Behaving in a professional manner isn't enough. The results matter.

I will also note for the record that Boston's 1st goal last night was a direct result of Reino losing a puck battle on the wall in the D-zone.

Well, wife-beating is unacceptable, and Brown is a bad guy, but double homicide is still an entirely different kettle of fish IMHO.

Help us Obi-wan -- you're our only hope!

Yes -- he's a serial wife- and GF-beater.

Let's chill out a bit in here please. TTBOMK, no one here is responsible for the Sabres stinking yet again.

This is the most important development of the year, IMHO. He has borderline-miraculously become a very good passer on the short and intermediate routes, including the intermediate-to-deep sideline routes where the ball travels a pretty long distance. Once he gets the deep routes down, he's really gonna be something.

I listened to this (and I agree about his segments being good generally). His comments about Dahlin were pretty alarming -- i.e. not only is he shaky in the D-zone, but his offense has completely dried up, and the team doesn't produce any offense when he's on the ice. Yeeeeeesssshhh.

There is NFW that Calgary trades Gaudreau.

Mrs. Babcock's shopping budget won't be affected a-tall. Mike's still going to get the cash (almost said "Benjamins" but that's not correct here).

This has also occurred to me and I agree that it's the most logical and likely explanation.

OK, so here's some positivity: I think there's a reasonable chance that having Bogo in the lineup will inspire his teammates and help stop the team's nose-dive. Bogo is a tough, big SOB who clears the crease, plays with fire in the belly and stands up for his teammates and is well-liked and well-respected by his teammates. He's also in a contract year. I don't disagree with the roughly 14 million posts in the last couple of weeks decrying the Sabres' lack of scoring depth at forward, but I think the primary issue right now is between the ears. They are tentative, scared and feel in the pit of their stomachs that they are going to lose. (That's what the tank does. Hello @LGR4GM.) It takes a primal force like Jim Kelly to blast that fear to smithereens. Bogo ain't Jimbo, but he'll die trying and it might be the spark they need. Go Sabres.

OK, so here we are, 11 months later, and Mitts still looks terrible. If we exclude 2 assists in the opener and goals plus an assist in back-to-back games on the West coast roadie, he has contributed zero goals and 1 assist in 19 games this season, including zero goals and 1 assist in the Sabres' swoon over the last 12 games. (Although, to be fair, he set up Parise beautifully for Minny's 1st goal last night.) I'm starting to think of Mitts as the new Grigorenko -- a much-hyped and allegedly highly-skilled center prospect who likely was promoted to the NHL before he was ready and is unable to do a GD thing at the NHL level. Mitts is faster than Griggy was, but at this point I see no functional difference between the 2. It's far too early to give up on Mitts, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if he turns out to be a complete washout. In the meantime, I'd like to hear a good reason for him not to spend the rest of the season in Rochester, at least once the Sabres have 12 healthy forwards.

... and he chose the wrong coach, and the wrong goalie, and created a dysfunctional atmosphere, etc. I have been thinking though that even if the Sabres finish this year well out of the playoffs, JB might still be the right guy. I think slow, steady, methodical and professional is what this organization needs after the upper-management dysfunction and coach/GM revolving door of the last 5 years or so. As @dudacek has ably noted, though, we still don't know whether JB has the mission-critical skill of talent evaluation. He's had some successes but quite a few misses as well. Separately, and with apologies for derailing the GDT, here's why I keep bringing up the tank: it is the central defining fact of the franchise now and for the last 6-7 years, and will continue to be so until the Sabres have an extended run of good playoff appearances. It's like a close friend getting laid off at his job, and instead of pounding the pavement and looking for a better job, he decides -- against prudent advice -- to throw himself in front of a truck in the hope that he wouldn't be badly hurt, that the truck would be owned by a rich company, that the friend would win a lawsuit, that he would receive a huge award in the lawsuit, that the award would be paid quickly, that the company wouldn't appeal, and 10 other contingencies that need to play out exactly right. Sure enough, when we fast forward 7 years, he's still out of work, and is badly hurt, broke and bitter with dim prospects for improvement. And yet some of his dudes are still insisting that his plan was a good one.

The bolded is ridiculous on its face. As I have said multiple times: the point of the tank was to get Eichel, and thereby to become a good team. If becoming a good team weren't the entire point of the tank, then no one would ever pursue a tanking strategy. The reason I and many others opposed the tank is simple: as a strategy for a bubble team to become a cup contender, it usually fails -- and it usually results in semi-permanent residence in the basement. This is exactly what has happened to the Sabres. The reason tanking usually brings these disastrous consequences is that it is too difficult and unlikely to climb from the basement to cup contender. There are too many moving pieces and too many things have to go right. In the meantime, losing has been internalized as the expected result. So saying "they screwed up the rebuild" isn't an accurate description of the post-tank era. It would be more correct to say "their plan relied on a 50-1 longshot paying off, and it didn't pay off." It gives me no pleasure to say it. But when I see/hear utter nonsense like the bolded, or other defenses of the tank (and you are far from the only one), I feel like there is a real risk that the team will just repeat the same idiotic tactic, and a decade in the desert will turn into 20 years, which will in turn lead to the team leaving.

The late and sparse GDT is a symptom of a broader malaise IMHO. It's not the fans' fault, but I'm sensing a growing fatalism and "whatever" attitude in the fan base. The arena is pretty quiet and there are thousands of empty seats. Stubhub has tickets in the lower level at center ice for $34 (face value is presumably 3x to 4x that amount). The hardcore fans here are pretty close to writing off yet another season (in freaking mid-November!). And it's hard to feel any optimism about a turnaround anytime soon. Behold what the tank hath wrought. A great franchise has become a joke and a great hockey city doesn't give a crap. It's an abomination. And don't kid yourself and think that we've made it to the other side and annual improvement is assured.

Holy mackerel do we need this kid to be both a great player and a great leader.

Here's something positive: I think last night was ERod's best game of the season. He skated well and created a number of chances. Getting him back to the 50-pt pace (or thereabouts) that he had in the 2nd half of last season would be a big help.