Mango

I'll add to this that sure, the doom and gloom isn't "universally" shared. But that's basically a technicality. If you asked my 100000 year old grandma about the Sabres she'd talk about what a nice boy Alex Tuch is. But if you asked 100 people on the street about the Sabres 88 of them would say "they suck". So sure, there are a couple of "Grandma Mango's" in every group. But it's still "universally agreed upon" that the Sabres suck.

If you told me that 30 people traveled from Buffalo to Vegas to watch the Sabres I'd be flooded.

Karmanos has entered the chat. Somebody might be trying to make enough improvement to get a new job ASAP.

This is easily one of the worst social media posts from a professional sports team in recent memory. Just soooo incredibly dumb and lazy. I agree. But also this is just the schedule release. Good team, bad team, whatever, this is about as bad as professional sports social media gets. Like somebody should maybe be fired for how absolutely terrible this is.

Canadian kids don't have to take 5 years they can graduate in 4. It's super common, and basically the norm these days. American students have the same options with prep schools as well. The USHL and CHL only exist in the way they do today because there wasn't enough college investment like other sports. And now that it seems there is some increased college investment people are clutching their pearls that the junior leagues might suffer. I think there is an important place for juniors. But I think it's demoted. The potential ceiling for development and conglomeration of skill is way higher at the NCAA than the NA junior leagues. That doesn't mean I love everything about NCAA football and basketball. And frankly I don't think that's a concen for hockey (at the moment). If the NCAA can get the best 18-24 year olds in the world playing together, working at real facilities, with professional full-time trainers before they are drafted and not living on shirty greyhound buses, playing in empty arenas then I am all for it.

I think that Terry Pegula has proven that the NHL doesn't need a team in Buffalo for Buffalonians to take in the NHL. My tinfoil hat is that Sabres viewership is dropping quite a bit and that there are a measurable part of the reason that MSG Networks threatened to declare bankruptcy recently. The Sabres were a steady and reliable viewership/revenue stream, and their dip causes loads of instability for a regional network. I have literally no data to back this up other than knowing that Buffalo is a major NHL TV rating for the NHL but attendance and fandom is way way down. I'm assuming that has started to leak into engaging in the teams on air games. I wouldn't be shocked to hear that Buffalo is watching a lot of hockey, just not Buffalo Sabres hockey.

I don't think that this is in opposition to the Shanny report. My quick $0.02 on Pegula-Adams is that they are in lock step on almost everything. Adams operates rather independently but everything he does Pegula is in agreement with and visa versa. So Pegula doesn't want a new GM/POHO to disrupt that.

Right, other schools and conferences will adjust. Penn State won't be the only one for very long.

That won't happen. As somebody who has done a lot of college recruiting, other major sports colleges will chase internationals.

The resources at the NCAA level are much higher than juniors. Let juniors be actual juniors and let kids develop in college like every other sport. A strong NCAA hockey league is much better for the NHL than a junior league. I'm a big proponent of taking this a step further. If a player is too young to play in the AHL, they're too young to be drafted. The only reason it's a thing is to protect the juniors leagues revenue.

No. But the draw of an American degree for international athletes is a huge safety net and the major factor for global recruiting.

I think it will be more of a shot across the bow for OHL, WHL, USHL, etc. Which is totally fine by me. Talent gets spread across everywhere and you can't ever see your prospects play. Filter everybody through the NCAA -> Draft -> AHL -> NHL. Just like every other sport, intrnationals are all welcome to get a free American education and make a couple of bucks if they're lucky. Also add the AHL to the NHL Center Ice Package. NCAA is already part of ESPN. The NHL desperately needs to make hockey more accessible and do a better job of player access and story lines. That's especially true since you can draft a guy and never ever be able to see him for 3-4 years...if ever... The NCAA is the second best league in the world for loads of sports. It makes sense for the NHL to capitalize on it.

I agree with your overall point, but also we have fought for the most expensive blue line award the least season or two and our blue line pretty much sucks. It's already money poorly spent. Everybody gets paid and nobody plays defense.

The Sabres are a bottom 5 destination in the NHL full stop. A franchise that was once (the day Pegula purchased) the 4 most winning franchise in the league (total P%) has plummeted to 14th in 14 years. I don't think you understand just how consistently bad a team has to be to do that so that me explain what it would take to try and climb out of that hole. If you took Scotty Bowman's 10 best individual years as a HC, and you linked them allllllll together for Buffalo, the Sabres still wouldn't get back to 4th. You'd take the 10 best years ever, from the best NHL coach ever, win 6 Stanley Cups, and still that would not be enough to correct this teams historical stats. That's insane. The Sabres under Pegula have literally been worse than Scotty Bowman was great. So much worse that the greatest 10 year run to ever (hypothetically) be coached wouldn't be enough to average it out. If we're not the Coyotes then we're pretty effing close.

Not aware of the post covid era numbers, but I believe that pre covid taking a player all the way to arbitration all but guaranteed that they weren't staying with their org longer than they were required to. I think the number of players that sign another contract is pretty small.