Mango

Adams looks rough. Just like...dude, you make a lot of money, get a shirt that fits properly. The Seinfeld second button episode comes to mind.

Shots fired at the locker room by Lindy. "The first part of accountability is holding yourself accountable. Did you show up to training camp in shape. Did you do everything you could to make sure you were prepared. The last person to hold somebody accountable is the coach". (Paraphrasing)*

Despite the Appert succession plan rumors I really believe that Adams just hired his new boss. Because if this goes exceedingly well Lindy will still be employed by the org in some senior advisor/POHO role. And if this thing fails, Lindy will be leading the search for a new GM and Adams is out the door.

I would assume W% is just straight win/loss otherwise it just becomes a weird variation of P% For reference here is the P% of the same guys plus a few some wanted: Craig Berube .584 Gerard Gallant .576 Pat Burns .573 Darryl Sutter .570 Al Arbour .564 Jacques Lemaire .563 Dick Irvin .557 Pat Quinn .556 Lindy Ruff .552 Mike Keenan .551 John Tortorella .542 Paul Maurice ..536

I would be shocked if ti wasn't live on Twitter and FB too.

I think the short answer is “it depends”. The long answer is that if somebody is getting fired it will 100% be Adams first. And Lindy will likely either hire his own GM or move to some POHO or Senior Advisor role. And if this is successful Lindy likely eventually moves into a POHO or Senior Advisor role and picks his replacement. I think Adams neutered himself.

This is a "fine" hire. I am not super excited and not unhappy with it. I think we definitely could have done worse. Outside of actual coaching I like this because I hope it sets the tone for a POH and push Pegula a little further away from hockey meetings. Either everything works great, Adams completes this roster, we are competitors, and Lindy eventually retires in some senior advisor role. OR the roster crashes and burns, Adams is fired and Lindy is moved to President of Hockey Ops and hires a real life NHL GM and runs the org. Both of scenarios are upgrades to the current. I will say it for the 100th time, but any hire for HC has to meet the center of a venn diagram between 1. Best candidate 2. Willing to take the job 3. Terry is willing to offer the job. And under that criteria I think Lindy is likely in the top tier of candidates available. What I am upset about is that there seemed to be no legitimate coaching search. Granato was fired 6 days ago. It feels like Adams didn't even effing try and put together a stack of candidates. Either that or nobody wants to work here. Probably a little bit of both.

I haven’t looked into for the NHL. But the threshold for a positive test for USATF is literally “Don’t be high at the event”. I would imagine the NHL is similar at this point.

Nothing says "I don't care" like bringing up a conversation you aren't having just to tell everybody it is a topic you don't care about.

In the last 7.5 moths Pegula told Rochester that - Dissolving PSE would be a change in name only and wouldn't effect the operation of BCA. (August 28,2023) - Backing out of the lease didn't have anything to do with his commitment to Rochester. Both teams would be staying. (April 2, 2023) - He is selling the Knighthawks but only because he doesn't want 2 NLL teams so close to each other (April 18, 2024) Based on that it seems like the Buffalo Sabres are very likely open to hearing offers.

Levi's sample size is half of UPL's. UPL has been the better overall goaltender by some margin this year.

It has been clear for some time Terry needs some more cash. I think he is likely over invested in sports and the Harbor Center and doesn't have enough liquidity. "Nothing to see here I am not selling anything everything is cool. The years of a leaking roof, keeping the scoreboard for 2x the factory recommendations, bottom half spending across the NHL for a few years, and getting out of any major contractual obligations are just happenstance" - Terry Pegula "I am selling stuff"- Also Terry Pegula

Cozens was plagued by gripping to tight and playing soft. Booing and losing don’t help. But professional athletes gets boo’ed and lose a lot. He’s got to do whatever he needs to to get over that. Incense in the locker room, bang a fat chick, see a psychologist, whatever. But going through that and getting over it is part of the gig. A lot of really talented athletes in a lot of sports can’t shake the yips often enough. It is certainly a skill.

I was happy to catch some of the early clips from locker clean out. But man, the more I hear the more I am a little irked. Basically we’re hearing 2 things. We need somebody to make us work harder and we don’t need any outside leadership to show us how it’s done. I get one is a coach and one is a player but it’s weird. Also, often when you coaches get fired guys stand up and say “if I was better coach would still be here”. Not the case here. Maybe I am just broken from the last 13 years but the more this team talks the last few days and the big picture comes together the more I’m a little weary that this locker room is too entitled. Coach be damned.

I like that you responded to yourself here. Haha. I think I generally agree here. Worth noting that I believe Adams said something along the lines of "getting cute" as opposed to "grinding it out" or "making it hard on the other team". The team didn't seem prepared to play starting game 1 in October. They need to be in better shape when they come back to Buffalo later this year.

That is a lot of data points that I did not collect. Overall the "analytics" people seem to be left some sites team personnel entirely or even rolled into other departments. That maybe includes Buffalo? And we know that every franchise is using analytics so zero is not a reasonable assumption for those websites where it is left off. But at a quick glance a scout heavy team like Pittsburgh (23) lists 5 people under their "Hockey Research" Department. At a broad view it doesn't seem as though the Sabres are investing in analytics in any way that would counteract their lack of spend on scouts compared to the better funded orgs in the league. Using Pittsburgh as a high water mark again they have 8 people under player development to the Sabres 4. I don't know that Buffalo is 5. Could be. I know the Athletic reported Sam Ventura would oversee 2 people. Maybe the people under 'Strategy and Analytics role up to him as well? But that group is under ticketing and marketing and one of those people are the CRM admin which certainly isn't a hockey ops role. Without going back to collect a comparison to all the development, positional, and player analytics/data science roles across the league, it seems the Sabres are a good distance back from some of the top franchises in head count in each of those departments.

I was just going through some data points in another forum. Cap friendly is by far the best NHL cap resource, below is the team spending going back to 2015 when they first started. The Sabres have been spending bottom half of the league 7 of the last 9 years that they tracked. Another (not so) fun fact is that the Sabres scouting department is tied for the smallest in the league with Ottawa. The Kings and the Jets don't list their scouts, which is super weird, even if they have less the Sabres are in terrible company with those three teams. 2015: 27th 2016: 24th 2017: 19th 2018: 6th 2019: 4th 2020: 18th 2021: 32nd 2022: 32nd 2023: 31st The scouting department, roster spend, plus the lack of arena maintenance should be major question marks for any high sought after candidate. There are a lot of data points that point towards lack of institutional support.

Great, him and Matt Ellis can fight over coaching the power play. /s I think Berube is a different class of coach than Bylsma, but there’s something about winning a Stanley Cup as an interim rather than building a Stanley Cup winner that scares me with this roster.

I was using it as a defense for me not being Ter-Bear or Kevyn Adams. But I am going to hang your free internet point you gave me on another comment on my fridge so you’re not totally off base.

This is amazing. I am only calling Adams Howdy Doody from now on.

Interesting that @Derrico and @Sabres73 are silent during this presser...

I have been calling out a number of posters as being a Pegula or Adams burner account this year. Not me dude. ...or is that what Terry or Kevyn would want you to think?

Based on this pressers focus on effort I am hopeful.

Clearly he has been reading my whining's about Dylan Cozens because he called him out specifically at one point.