Drunkard

I'll believe he's our 3rd or 4th best defender when somebody else is playing his 24 minutes a night instead of him. Maybe when they can show over a season that he's that far down the depth chart it might make sense to move him, but definitely not before hand. It would be smarter to make sure Montour or whomever they choose to slot ahead of him on the right hand side is capable of handling the minutes with better metrics before we ship him off. At least that's how I see it.

Maybe "change is inevitable" was a reference to Housley getting canned. We don't know for sure. Even if he was dejected, the guy was thrown into the deep end as basically a rookie and despite several coaching changes he's been left there because we've literally had nobody else even close to competent enough to replace him even though he struggles in the role. 6 years of that has got to weigh heavily on anyone. Can you imagine how pissed off everyone would be if they did that to Dahlin? They'd be reading Botterill the riot act, not trying to parse his end of season interviews into a justification for running him out of town the way they did to "he who won't be named". It drives me nuts that people want to run him out of town without a proven replacement already on the roster. Here's a novel idea, how about finding someone better than him, before they run him out of town? Sure they brought in Montour but he seems much more of a puck mover than the stay at home, put him in against the other team's best guys type of dman. The way to build quality depth isn't removing your best players and hoping the replacements are better. Maybe if they brought in people who could actually push him down the depth chart, they'd still have him available if his replacement shows he can't handle it either.

I think a 15 team NTC means we don't have to waste a protection spot on him.

Fair enough. Would you prefer Nathan MacKinnon then? He was only 2 drafts ahead of Eichel and he signed a much more team friendly contract.

And Eichel's contract looks bad compared to Bergeron and Scheifele. Sometimes teams get lucky on long term deals. Seth Jones probably isn't available and if he was you'd be giving up Reinhart, a 1st, plus whatever else to get him. I'm sure the next contract for Jones will go up significantly as well. On a team that has been littered with bad contracts over the years (currently Okposo, Bogosian, Sobotka, and recently Pominville and Moulson) Ristolainen's contract is not the issue. I'd argue that he's one of the few players on this team not in ELC or RFA status that actually earns his paycheck.

Do you dump all over your boss and company when you are looking for a raise? I don't think most people do. Every player who signs with every team either talks about winning or being part of the group that turns things around. O'Reilly talked about being part of the group to turn things around when he got here. It doesn't strike me as some great character trait. I'm still glad he's signed, even though we'll probably regret the contract in the last few years. That's just the price of unrestricted free agency.

Or maybe losing doesn't bother him so much because he's getting paid. He got plenty of time to get used to it in Carolina.

His contract is great. I wish it had 3 or 4 more years of term on it. $5.4 million for a right handed defenseman in his prime that can be consistently be relied on to play 75+ games a season and put up 40+ points of offense on a team that has trouble scoring goals. Plus he doesn't bitch and moan despite the fact that every single coach he's had in Buffalo seems to treat him like he's Shea freaking Weber in his prime when he clearly isn't. Could you find a better defenseman than him? Sure you can, but you'll probably have to pay him close to double what Ristolainen earns right now.

Noted. I'm pretty sure we gave up 1 or 2 picks in 2020 as part of the Skinner deal though, but I guess it wasn't a second so the Kapanen offer could be extended.

Didn't they give up their 2nd round pick this year in the Skinner trade? If so, they'd have to get it back before they could even offer that contract to Kapanen and even if they did, Kapanen would still have to sign it.

Frasier and Lilith are an excellent example of the Chet and Muffy type although I always pictured Chet as more of a Donald Trump Jr. type. Your example is probably better.

I see Muffy as being the air headed self entitled trophy wife type but it's definitely open to interpretation. I see Chet as being the male counterpart to that. The air headed, self entitled, bosses son type who was born on 3rd base but thinks he hit a triple to get there.

You don't have the hips to be a Muffy. Sorry.

You're welcome. And I agree. RaKru is horrible and it's hardly any shorter to type than Krueger or Ralph. I generally go with Kreuger or RK.

I've been vehemently opposed to trading Ristolainen for a mediocre #2 center, but I wouldn't be opposed to picking up a guy like JT Miller if we could get him for cheap. It looks like half of the Tampa D are pending UFAs, maybe we could help their cap out and give them a 1 year stop gag defenseman by taking Miller and Callahan off their hands (about $11 million in combined cap space) in exchange for someone like Scandella or Bogosian.

I think it came from the movie Mean Girls, but it was definitely in the response to the OP trying to get everyone on board with calling Ralph Krueger RaKru.

No problem. We can agree to disagree. After 23 and 48 left and seeing what it did, I will always prioritize centers over wingers. The vast differences in the 2 contracts just magnifies it even further in my eyes but everyone sees it differently.

Fair enough but I was just responding to a question posed by another poster up thread. He tried to merge all the moves together like they were a single mega deal so I gave my opinion based on his parameters. O'Reilly's contract was much better for the Sabres than Skinner's.

It wasn't an either or situation. We had the cap space to have O'Reilly and Skinner last season. Or O'Reilly could have been moved to Eichel's wing at any time but they never even tried it because he was needed at center and now we're still looking for a #2 center. Until that's fixed the Sabres will continue to tread water at best.

Not true at all. I liked the trade that brought in Scandella and Pominville and I liked the trade that brought in Sheary and Hunwick and I've said as much. I also liked the trade to bring in Skinner even though I don't give much credit to Botterill for it because Skinner held all the cards and Carolina's only two choices were trade him to us or let him walk. The O'Reilly deal is by far the worst part of his tenure but it's causing a ripple effect that is still causing damage to the team going forward. Skinner's contract is too much money for too much term and full NMC protection is a prime example of it. He had no choice but to give Skinner everything he wanted because trading O'Reilly absolutely crippled our scoring depth. If Skinner didn't have ALL the leverage he probably would have only gotten overpaid in terms of 2 of the factors (money, term, and NMC) but not all 3.

The first part of that video looked like Bruins fans fighting against each other. The real question is how can you even tell if a Boston fan has brain damage?

My apologies. Botterill is awesome and it's nothing but blue skies and smooth sailing ahead for the Sabres with him steering the ship! Life is beautiful. Pass the kool aid.

I'd rather have O'Reilly with no trade protections for 4 more seasons at $7.5 million ending at age 31 than Skinner for 8 more seasons at $9 million ending at age 35 with a full NMC. The rest of the pieces involved are immaterial. I'll be more fun once Mr. Cap Genius is fired and replaced with someone who knows how to negotiate.

Because it gives Skinner complete control over if and when he is moved and it has the potential to completely suppress any return we could get from trading him if he agrees to be traded down the road, just like it did when Carolina traded him to us. On the bright side I guess it doesn't matter because Botterill wouldn't know how to leverage it anyway since O'Reilly had zero trade protections and we saw how that turned out. It will hamper Botterill's replacement in the future though.

I didn't even realize it when I typed it but you're right. I remember him saying something along those lines either after 9/11 or before we were gearing up to go to Iraq back when he was Secretary of Defense under Dubya. It's true though.