Mango

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.

He seems to be talking A LOT about effort, grit, etc. He even mentioned that it was a problem day 1 of training camp.

"This team is craving accountability and structure" Ouch, what a shot at Donnie.

Adams is very fiery. He is either getting this thing under control or he is spiralling. Either way the success or trainwreck should be entertaining. I would prefer an absent Pegula. A highly involved Terry is bad for hockey in this town.

My very spicy take is that I do not believe that Terry's management style has changed pre and post Kim's health concerns. He has still be present at nearly Bills camp and Bills game, no? Still at the draft table on draft day for both orgs? Sitting in on player interviews during both combines?

It was speculated fairly recently that Briere requested the same autonomy from Ter-Bear and he declined. But again, that is speculation, so maybe he is wising up? I can dream I guess.... The one advantage that McBeane have is that they have a nearly 10 year working relationship from outside the org before they ever shook hands with Terrance. There is no weird flat management between them and Terry because of it, and even if we move on from McDermott Beane still has the upper hand at this point. I think Ter-Bear fails miserably if tasked with a Bills rebuild (sans Allen).

For those who keep saying "There are only 32 NHL HC jobs in the world you always take it if offered". David Carle is saying exactly what I have in this thread, that for some coaches the right opportunity is more important than the next opportunity.

It is not about "the roof" that has been leaking on fans in the upper deck for YEARS. It is about the willingness to invest and solve in the most basic solutions facing the team and the fanbase. The NHL is set up for bad teams to have great prospects and good teams to have bad prospects. It is because the worse you are the higher you draft and vica versa. Buffalo has been the worst franchise in the league by P% since Terry bought the team. They are supposed to have decent prospect. The only notably achievements are when teams like Ottawa have really bad prospects or last years NJ Devils were ranked super highly. These rankings also flip quickly. NJD went from a top prospect pool to a bottom prospect pool pretty quickly. If the Sabres don't get over the hump their prospect pool ranking will tank in short order. You can claim it is not about saving money all you want. But Pegula himself has said that the franchises goal is to be efficient, effective, and economic. It is really difficult to separate a failing building, minimal spending to the salary cap, and one of the smallest scouting departments in the league from that statement. That is a bridge too far for most people.

The biggest issue won't be the roster. It will be the unwillingness to fix a leaky roof for years, having half the scouting department other franchises do, and an unwillingness to spend much of the cap.

Institutional support is a very real concern. It can be managed or even improved upon, but it is a reasonable concern for any candidate. Imagine being an assistant basketball coach at UConn and you get an opportunity to take over Dayton (ranked 24th). But Dayton only has 9 scholarships (EEE) out of the maximum 13 and the roof of the arena has been leaking on fans for years (just like the KBC). Staying at UConn isn't an issue with the candidate it is an issue of a track record bad institutional support.

Turn down interviews or turn down job offers? I am mostly speaking to job offers. I am not an NHL or NFL coach, but have worked with the NCAA and USOC. There are 2 types of coaches that will turn down a chance at a HC position at National Championship/Olympic level. 1. Senior Head Coaches with accomplished resume's. They will take a year off, work as an independent contractor, advisor, etc. before the enter a program without institutional support. 2. Assistants in top tier programs. Those coaches have stability and are already competing for National, World, or Olympic Gold Medals. At that point in their career they will hold out for the right promotion, not take the first promotion. Of course there is a whole slew of coaches who don't fall into either of those buckets who would certainly take the first NHL HC job offered to them. But the rule you are playing by is not hard and fast. Sometimes no credit is better than bad credit. The Sabres seem to have the stench of "bad credit" at the moment.

I think there is some grey area between the "There are 32 jobs, you take one if offered" and "Nobody wants to work here ever". If you are a long time NHL coach with a background of success who is on a lot of teams shortlist year after year it isn't crazy to turn down job offers. SImilarly there will be assistants in very stable organizations who compete for championships and see a path to a HC in their future without tarnishing their reputation who won't want the Sabres position either. Sometimes "no credit" is better than "bad credit". There will be coaches old and young who view the Sabres as "bad credit" and dangerous for their career going forward.