Mango

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.

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.

The numbers around players who go to arbitration and then stay with their team past that season is super low. I assume the numbers around "threatening" arbitration are better if they never actually go. But I'd be very curious to see that broken out. That said, it just makes the whole JBD thing look dumb...again.