dudacek

/sarcasm

Sabres now winless in 10 without the captain. As if we needed more evidence of Kevyn Adams failures, just think of where they would be without the two key players on the team he didn't acquire.

Sorry for triggering Promo because that was pond hockey, but the difference between being a starter and being a JAG is making saves. UPL hasn’t made enough of them this year. I haven’t given up completely on Jack Quinn, but if I rewind the tape over his NHL career, it seems he only has games like that against teams who are playing like that. I really wonder if he will ever be strong enough and fast enough to play the style he wants to play against good NHL defence.

***** Toronto media bias. Completely ignoring the Sabres are rolling along better than all the pretenders at 6-4

Can you convince him to make Pegula an offer?

He means consensus among the Sabres staff. As in, Belluz was the highest ranked player on the Sabres board, but they went off the board, to the surprise of most of their in-house staff. LGR says he knows for a fact it was Forton's call but he got mad at me when I asked for his source.

If it was me, I'd flip UPL, pick up a mid-tier guy. Sign Reimer or someone like him in the veteran insurance role. And let Levi steal their crease if he's good enough. Raztlaff and Leinonen can fight to earn their ice time. But why pivot when things are going so well? *** As for Leinonen. Of course this is what you do when you invest a 2nd-round pick in a goalie and he is coming off a good season. Whether he should have been drafted is irrelevant. It's about whats best for the team right now.

Someone else mistakenly conflating team defence with defencemen and team offence with forwards I agree Thompson is not getting traded and Norris, Greenway and Zucker are highly unlikely given their recent moves. McLeod only moves if his contract demands are silly and/or he's the centre going back in a deal for a better centre. Leaving these three as the most likely to be traded: Quinn because he was a dismal failure as 2nd-line winger, and next to 2C his was the most obvious forward slot needing to be upgraded Tuch because he is an impending free agent on the wrong side of their window who has good value and may not want to re-sign at a price they'd like Peterka because he is an RFA, might be hard sell to stay, and has the most value among their large group of smallish, skilled wingers That's 8, leaving Benson and Kulich as the leftovers. Neither was good enough to be in the top 6 this year. Both, like Peterka and Quinn, represent what the team has a lot of. Do you want one of them handed the role Quinn failed at? Do you take the risk they do the same, or do you acquire someone more proven? And if you do, do you need to keep them both? On top of Peterka and Quinn? Especially with Rosen, Helenius and Östlund coming? When you know what's needed is a more disciplined, veteran, hardened group? Nobody wants to trade their favourite kids, but if you really want to change the mix, one or more has to go. Me, I'd dangle Peterka because he's the one that could result in the most impactful return. But really it's should be more about trying to acquire what they need to acquire and acknowledging that in order to do that, somebody's got to go.

I'm starting to feel like I'm the only one who thinks Norris was just a first step, and the Sabres are actually going to shake up the forwards this summer. Thanks for this. I'm always amazed at how little attention fans pay to ice time. Post trade deadline — particularly with the issues of Norris, Zucker and Greenway — the Sabres seem to be on a bit of fact-finding mission: How do Benson and Kulich look higher up the lineup How does McLeod function as a 2C Can Quinn find his game reunited with Peterka Can Samuelsson find his game reunited with Dahlin What does Byram have to give without Dahlin What do they have in JBD Is Kozak a potential Sabre to start next year I think culture, in the context of the video, is not about anything more than "these guys aren't playing as good as we think they should." Personally I think its mostly a way for the coaching and management staff to avoid admitting they were wrong in how they evaluated and/or coached their prized kiddie corps.

I think we've reached a point (again) where everything the Sabres do will be automatically criticized because that's what their track record has earned. Personally, I'm tired of anything other than play to win every game that's in front of you. And if that means picking 8th instead of 3rd, I'm more than fine with it. Reimer has clearly been better than UPL, he should play. That's the message the young players need to see.

Pegula is not reluctant to make changes. He’s hired and or fired Ruff, Regier, Rolston, Lafontaine, Patrick, Nolan, Murray, Bylsma, Botterill, Housley, Krueger, Adams, Granato - that’s not an abnormal amount of key leaders over 14 years for a pro sports team. What’s weird is why he fired them. Darcy was never fully explained but he was canned 20 games into a tank Pegula ordered, so that wasn’t about performance. Patty left after some secret behind-the-scenes meltdown Murray was canned, basically, for embarrassing behaviour. Botterill for insubordination and “poor communication” None of these guys were cut because of performance. As I’ve said many times, pro sports is a results-based business. It’s the crucible that forges both the athletes and the people that guide them. If you’re looking for what’s been lacking in the Buffalo Sabres “culture,” I don’t think you need to look much further.

Was posted somewhere the Sabres are one of just 3 franchises he follows on social media, the others being the Jackets and their farm team.

More than most that video avoided the true story here. This trade wasn’t about the Sabres deciding they needed Josh Norris; it was about the Sabres deciding they needed to move on from Dylan Cozens. It was pretty clear between the cuts that an organizational decision had been made that they wanted to move Cozens and that he was being shopped around the league for the best return. This was a building block player they had signed to a $50M deal just two years before. We didn’t see the debate leading up to the decision Cozens had to be moved We didn’t see how he was being shopped and what the other offers were We didn’t see the debate about those offers We didn’t see the other players who may have been shopped for similar reasons My takeaway is that discussions upstairs have centred around figuring out why their plan has failed and what they need to do to fix it. ”Culture” seems like convenient code for “players we might have been wrong about”. And they do seem to be leaning on Lindy as a bit of an external arbiter for those decisions, since he doesn’t own them. Tim Murray got fired in part because he apparently was surprised by his own mistakes and had no plan to pivot. Not sure why we should expect Kevyn Adams to be any different. We didn’t see everything, but what we did see did not look like a confident bunch.

Kevyn Adams should be fired because his plan has objectively failed and that is how pro sports works. It’s not personal and it’s not complicated.

They thought they had 3 top 6 centres and 3 top 4 D. They thought they were trading from a surplus to address a weakness. Whether they were right or wrong - Power, Cozens and Samuelsson didn’t live up to their expectation - the reasoning wasn’t mysterious.

How is it disingenuous? The 15,000 was pre-lockout. The season post lockout was 16,000 and something. The 2018 was after 6 straight years of no playoffs. The point was not about Buffalo’s attendance not growing as fast as the rest of the league, or about how it compares to Boston, we are discussing a fan mutiny and I was giving relevant context.

its not that I don’t see these things happening, it’s that I have seen them happen before and I think we tend to feel them more sharply when it is happening to us and those around us. And it’s certainly true that every wave of mutiny further erodes members of the fan base beyond the point of no return. And the failures of each rebound reduce the likelihood of the next one igniting (or re-igniting) new fans. But I think that following that process through to its nth degree does not end with pressuring Pegula to fix the Sabres, it ends with the Sabres ceasing to exist. It’s open question how resilient the fan base is, but the evidence suggests it is stunningly resilient. It’s still averaging 16,000 fans a night after the most stunning run of ineptitude imaginable. 14 years? And this team is actually better than about half of the other teams they’ve iced over that period? This ain’t Phoenix. The business may have bruised K-9 and many other hardcore fans beyond repair, but how many of the 1 million or so potential fans they are selling to are actually so embittered that they won’t buy a ticket if next year somehow turns into another Drury/Briere type run? People forget that the average attendance 20 years ago was a shade over 15,000 and the Sabres put more butts in the seats during the awful 62-point 2018 season than they did during the glorious 2006 season. Breaking this fan base would be the height of enormity. Call me stubborn fool, or call me a sucker. I’m not going to argue. I’ll endure the best way I can. But they ain’t going to break me.

What battle are you talking about? The battle to get the GM fired? The battle to get Terry to do something? The battle to keep your self invested as a fan? You’ve got power in all those areas. If you’re talking about the battle to fix the Buffalo Sabres you have about as much power in that battle as you did in the Sabres win last night. And no, that doesn’t mean you should stop trying. I may disagree with how that trying might manifest itself, but I don’t believe that even the biggest eeyores on this site have done that.

What is actually different from last year around this time in terms of fan attitudes? They re-ignited us a little by hiring Lindy. Just like they reignited us before that with all the goals and the mad dash to 9th by Granato’s kiddie corps And with Taylor Hall and smiling Ralph Krueger And by adding “generational defenceman” Rasmus Dahlin To go with “franchise centre” Jack Eichel And Kyle Okposo and Ryan O’Reilly and Ristolainen/Zadorov and… Fan outrage and apathy probably will force Pegula to do “something” but fix the team? I don’t buy it.

I’ve seen this movie before. I think the “I just want them to burn so badly he’ll be forced to fix it” posts are silly. If he knew how to fix it, he would. From Terry’s point of view, I’m pretty sure there’s not much difference in the state of the fan base now and when he fired Tim Murray. ”Mutiny” and “some hope” have been nadir and apex we’ve vacillated between ever since as we’ve cycled between promises and failures. Neither has “forced” Terry to do anything. He’ll do what he wants for as long as he wants to.

To me it looked like the Tkachuk line dominated whoever they played against. It also looked to me like Lindy was willing to live with that because he thought he was going to win the battle against Ottawa’s 2nd and 3rd lines. That was about as evenly balanced as you could make the Sabres top 3 lines. Ive been wanting a Benson/Thompson combo to be a thing forever; their skill sets match so well and that’s currently the franchise’s best hope for growth up front. I forgot how much chemistry Quinn and Peterka have. Brought me back to their Rochester days and hoping I might see it replicated in Buffalo. McLeod is a good choice for their centre, but I hope Lindy can shelter them a little better. And maybe the option of a healthy Norris/Tuch combo on the other line would allow them to do that? *** Note to reader: this does not mean I think we’re suddenly on the right path and everything is fine. I’ve watched 60+ games and read the board too and believe me, I do not need anyone else reminding me again it’s not. Forgive me for interjecting a bit of “maybe this might work” into our regularly scheduled “it’s never going to end” programming. The opportunities have been few and far between.

The Toronto based Insiders didn’t watch Dylan Cozens play for Buffalo the past 2 years, but they did see him fill the net at the Worlds and the World Juniors, and the draft hype documentaries about the Workhorse from Whitehorse. It’s not a Canadian bias so much as a bias toward what you've seen and how it made you feel, amplified by your neighbourhood echo chamber. So basically no different than any other segment of society.

Lot of overthinking here. McLeod seems like the definition of a good 3C. Pay him like one, use him like one, support him like one.

Yep, don't read that as 4 stars, and don't read it as in addition to what we have now. Don't focus on the exact trades here; I'm not even sure I'd make these moves, it's just a rough illustration Three moves: Peterka and Samuelsson to the Rangers for Will Cuylle and K'Andre Miller. Byram to Calgary for Rasmus Andersson Sign John Tavares 3 years $7.5M Don't get bogged down on the moves themselves. I'm not trying to make you like these particular deals. It's really more about proposals that aren't outlandish: the types of players we might be looking for, approximate values our pieces might return, and changing the identity. The trades are kinda modelled on Cozens for Norris — good players who come with question marks. Let the GMs figure out the sweeteners. If we've got one thing it's the throw-ins pieces to complete a deal. Cap's not a worry. These moves leave you with about $16M to re-sign McLeod, Miller and Cuylle and to add pieces around the edges. To round out the lineup, you could plug Benson in as the final top 6 forward, shop Quinn for another blueliner, and make Kulich wait his turn, or force his way past the rest like Krebs did this year. You've got Norris, Tavares, Cuylle, Andersson and Miller instead of Cozens, Quinn Peterka, Byram and Samuelsson. Can't guarantee this improves the overall talent level of the roster, but it significantly changes the identity. I'm just trying to show Swamp the possibilities, assuming we've got a GM who can identify what might actually be the right moves, then execute them.

Been there. Done all that research, but you're fighting a losing battle. My favourite is "Alex Tuch is a 3rd-liner on a good team." Alex Tuch is the 10th-highest scoring Right Wing in the NHL over the past 3 seasons. Stanley Cup champion Florida's 7, 8, 9 forwards in scoring last year got 35, 27 and 15 points (Lundell, Luostarinen and Cousins) respectively. None of that matters. People think it's still a 21-team league and Stanley Cup winners have 3 20-goal scorers on their 3rd line.