nfreeman

Excellent post. I agree that Botteril can't just embark on a 5-year rebuild solely through the draft, but I doubt that is the entire plan. I also think you are underrating Scandella -- I think he's a top-3 defenseman here for the next 5-7 years. Another very good post.

The likelihood that Russ played a significant role is regrettably greater than zero, and you are right that that does indeed scare the poop outta me. But I think it's much more likely that the NHL played a real role in TP formulating his list, and that RB did not.

No. Not “because billionaire.” People think he’s a good owner for the reasons I mentioned, and because they know too well what bad ownership looks like. As for JBott — TP interviewed 7 candidates, each of whom was a well-regarded and respectable hockey guy. How do you think he formulated his list? Do you think he was too busy rolling around in a bed of money to consult with NHL people about this? Or do you just assume, because of #narrative #fearandloathing, that he...what, exactly?

More fear and loathing of the wealthy nonsense. How ‘bout this: TP, out of a desire to be a good guy and not blow into town and fire everyone, mistakenly kept on DR well past DR’s expiration date. He then recognized that DR/RR was a debacle and tried to hire the right guys to lead a turnaround. He gave them 2 years, recognized that the train was going off the rails in multiple ways, sent them packing and again tried to hire the right guys. All the while, the checkbook has been open, there have been no inflammatory challenges from him to his underperforming team in the media, he’s funded a ton of urban renewal in a blighted city, he hasn’t demanded that the city build him an arena and he’s generally conducted himself like a gentleman. He agreed to the tank, he retained a lousy GM and hired another lousy GM (and hopefully not a 2nd one), which all turned out to be poor decisions but all of which were reasonable when made and most if not all of which were made with the assistance of knowledgeable professionals — and none of which were made based on greed or dishonesty or any of the other malicious intents that certain trolls for some reason feel the need to attribute to him.

This is exactly my point -- if your plan relies on a perfect storm, you don't have a plan (or you do, but it's a stupid effing plan).

This is the "sell my house to pay for lottery tickets" mindset. It works once in a blue moon but leaves most of its adherents homeless. (The Sabres are in the "homeless" category, BTW.)

Best hope, IMHO, is that each of the following is a reasonable possibility to occur between now and the midway point of next season: - Eichel emerges as a top-5 player - Risto steps up his play and becomes a strong #1 defenseman - JBott finds a good goalie, a good veteran leader who can play and set a professional tone, and another good defenseman this summer - Howie coaches up guys like Antipin, B-Loo and McCabe - Someone like ERod or Bailey or Fasching or Nylander becomes a good top-6 forward Not all of those things are going to happen, but I think most of them will.

What is the basis for your determination that JBott will not succeed?

Unfortunately that sounds right.

Catch on to what?

Took the family to see "Justice League" over the weekend. Pretty entertaining superhero movie. More or less the same as the Avengers. I'll also recommend "Ozark" on Netflix. My wife and I are halfway through and are really enjoying it. I've always found Jason Bateman kind of annoying, but he is really good in this (and I think he wrote and directed it as well).

I beg to differ.

As far as that goes -- it looks like Harrington is retiring, and he spent about 75% of his farewell column complaining about Housley not admitting that Eichel had been demoted to the 3rd line. He never figured out that his beefs with Sabres management about their media communications decisions weren't remotely interesting and only served to make him look whiny, and he never figured out how to contribute some value-added hockey analysis or at least inside info about the team. I hope the next guy is better.

The Drury stuff is right on -- sweating the little details creates focus and a determined mindset, IMHO. I remember one story about someone not using proper form in the workout room and Drury very directly asking the guy why bother doing it if he wasn't going to do it right. There's a reason guys like Drury are always on winning teams.

Serious questions: - do you think Eichel is a top-3 NHL player? Top 10? Top 20? - do you think the "culture of losing" comments that Foligno and Ennis made in TBN yesterday are valid? Not really. They made the playoffs in 2010 and 2011, missed them in 2012 and commenced the tank the following season instead of trying to rebuild conventionally.

Does anyone still think it was the right move?

Yes indeed. Correct.

Here's something that may or may not be fixable, and that may or may not be due to my own ineptitude, and that no one else may care about: on the new TSW, when I try to pull up all posts by a certain member, I get a list of "post previews" -- so I have to click on each one to read the post. It's much clunkier and less user-friendly than the old TSW, which gave me the output I wanted -- i.e. the full posts by that poster, which I could just scroll/page through.

I don't see how you could possibly be sure of this. I would guess in fact that they have not made an offer.

Lehner had one guy screening him on the point shot that went in. I saw no ankle chops or shoves or anything from Lehner to move that guy out. If that guy's presence excuses Lehner from fault on that goal, then NHL goalies aren’t at fault on 90% of NHL goals scored. And I didn’t see an athletic or determined play by Lehner on the 2nd one either. I saw a fairly innocuous shot from a side angle that is almost impossible to score from being converted by Lehner into a great scoring chance by Lehner poorly misplaying it and depositing a fat rebound into the doorstep. I don’t dispute that Lehner fought like crazy for his team and didn’t get nearly enough support, either is his own end or on offense. But he freezes up in crunch time. He does not close out games. He gives up soft goals in third periods and is helpless in OT and the SO. And his teammates know it, which is why they play like they expect to lose close games. So they do.

I’m with We’ve on this. Trading Kane because they are committed to KO and might have to pay Reino would be insane. Overall their contract situation isn’t that bad and certainly not bad enough so that they can’t pay Kane. Moulson, Bogo and Gorges will be gone in the next couple of years and Reino may not even be a keeper, let alone an expensive piece. They are certainly stuck with KO, but they can probably find takers for ROR and Risto if they decide to move on from either of them. The real questions remain whether Kane wants to stay and whether he’ll get into more trouble once he gets a long-term contract. As dudacek says — this is a tricky one for JBott.

I thought both of the goals Lehner gave up in the third were terrible. Was there any doubt that he was going to choke in the third period of a tied game? The Sabres have a ton of issues, but it starts with goaltending IMHO. If Ullmark has a good first half, they should see if he can carry the mail after New Year’s. Lehner is not the guy.

I'm in the "McD must think Peterman gives them a better shot for the rest of this season than TT" camp. He has to know that there is no such thing as long-term job security in the NFL or in a Pegula sports franchise. It's a highly questionable decision, to be sure, but I do respect the fact that he's determined to take a shot at it his way. As for TT: I wouldn't agree that he's gotten a really fair shot mostly because he's had a terrible group of receivers for most of his time here, under both McD and Rex. They lost Harvin early on, Sammy was injured a lot (even in games he dressed for), Clay has also been injured a lot, they traded Sammy this year, Matthews has been hurt as well, etc.

That is a 9500 sf house! OSP's was 2900 sf.

Not sure which one you're looking at -- the first one on my list is a 2642 sf house for $1.325MM but I don't see the prop taxes listed. And I have the same opinion about $70K in taxes on a $1.3MM house!