Mango

This cannot be driven home any harder. For a roster built on vibes, Tuch is the damn holding back all the water. If he doesn't re-sign we are 100% losing Dahlin and Thompson in short order and then there goes our best 3 players by a country mile.

If you told me that in a job interview with any seriousness I would decline the offer letter (assuming I could get an offer letter of similar value). There is no real world applicability to this for anybody's resume is in demand. It is like Westinghouse telling you to ignore the fact that they have been trash for eternity, knowing full well you could just go make the same money at LG, Samsung, Sony, etc. And frankly it is a total bottom tier move for anybody to try and ernestly sell an employee otherwise.

I think the thought is that if Tuch is extending, there has to be some hope and positivity to turn this thing around. Outisde of Terry stepping away or selling the team, Adams being pushed out is the next best thing by a country mile.

Honestly, maybe I'll hate them less if they leave and come back. Unsure if three years is enough time for that.

Where is Daddy Danny Wegman?

The team sucks, nobody goes. I don't believe the attendance reports. The place looks 25% full for any game not against a Canadian team. Just move the games to the Harbor Center until the thing is knocked down and rebuilt. But seriously, maybe play at BCA in Rochester temporarily?

And nobody should ever ignore the fact that Pegula has been responsible for the maintenance for 14 years now. He's a huge part of why the infrastructure sucks.

They're one of the biggest problems with the Adams era. They perform near the bottom rung but they're amongst the most expensive in the league. They're a terrible unit and they suck up more resources than like 30 other teams across they league.

I think it was purposely misrepresented to casual fans as a 10 year agreement to extend the lease on the arena. They called a full county presence and put on a drone show as if the Sabres committed themselves to Buffalo for 10 years. They didn't.

This doesn't change my cynicism around the arena and the weird gaslighting around the naming rights. Doing absolutely nothing and just letting the lease roll over to year to year, or 5 years, or whatever the agreement says happens without a new proactive lease isn't a commitment from ownership. It's happenstance.

You are welcome to rewind the clock 30 years and come up with a super stable organization whose having fireworks over a naminf deal on a place nobody wants. And what makes it unstable? Well the owner has been bottom of the league in spending the last 5 years. Our entire staff is a bunch of yes men that ownership keeps doubling down on. It's the worst run of ownership in the history of the league. The owner keeps divesting from other sports ventures not named the Buffalo Bills.

I mean, frankly outside of Arizona, I'm not sure that there is less stable "home ice" situation than the Buffalo Sabres. Pegula also made a big deal about the roof Nobody wants KBC. The county has noped out. The city says the don't have the money. Poloncarz implied that the Sabres would continue on as year to year for the time being. Creating loads of hoopla around a building sponsorship for a building nobody wants to own is about as close as one can get to being a gong show. I can't think of a comp in recent memory to the Sabres/KBC (including nobody wanting the arena with an expiring lease) across any of the major sports leagues.

They put on a drone show in the sky last night. It sort of had the fanfare of a Wish NHL hockey club. Which the Sabres are.

I don't care what the stadium is named. What is total BS is the dog and pony show that is clearly Pegula gaslighting the fanbase into thinking "10 more years in Buffalo" by having a named sponsor with a quickly expiring lease for a building nobody really wants. Maybe I'm wrong. But this seems like a giant nothing burger meant to create vague headlines about "Sabres ink 10 year agreement at KBC". When I. Fact they've done approximately nothing to stabilize the future of this team in Buffalo. (As of late) This to me is the "new roof" pitch to fans but slimier.

Pegula had a clause in his renegotiated BCA contract to nope out of the arena. Marrone had a clause to nope out of his Bills contract. Do you think that Key Bank entered into an iron clad contract with no out for an arena with has no owner or lease holder? Lol.... I would bet my mortgage that this is about as non-committal an agreement as they get in pro sports.

I believe, like BCA in Rochester, they will need to sign a new lease agreement with whoever takes over the arena.

They actually didn't. A year to year agreement with the Sabres is not out of the question. A 10 year agreement on naming rights doesn't provide any stability for the org in Buffalo. In fact, I would argue that making a gigantic deal about the naming rights without releasing any info about long term plans for the actual franchise and/or the building they play in should be a warning sign that the franchise isn't commited to the region at all. Pegula tends to telegraph his moves with the Knight Hawks, Amerks/BCA with a bit of gaslighting, I am struggling to see this as any different. (at the moment)

October 2025

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. We have a 10 year named sponsor for an arena whose lease/future is in limbo? How Sabres-y If this is true, what an absolute joke.

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.