dudacek

Any confidence? Yes, some. I am big fan of his choices with young players — both who he has targeted and how he has developed them so far. I think he has made one egregious error so far — his handling of Ullmark and his replacement, but generally speaking our team is better then last year, with considerably less talent. I think he has been smart with his contracts, the types of personalities he has acquired, the front office decisions he has made and the culture he has chosen to emphasize. I think he has chosen the right path. I'm OK with more short-term pain for long-term gain. A franchise as downtrodden as ours cannot be fixed overnight. I also think that he has proven absolutely nothing yet. The team has to continue to improve. Just like Jason Botterill, I'm not going to have strong opinions on Adams until I see whether the seeds he is planting blossom or whither on the vine. GMing is a long game.

I don't, but is seems @GASabresIUFAN might.

And I'm not arguing that. His roster building skills are showing in the standings. Just pointing out that roster building and player evaluation are not the same thing. Flipping Alex Nylander for Henri Jokiharju is excellent player evaluation. Running a D corps with Henri, Bogo, Risto, Miller and Montour is bad roster building.

Hoped, sure. Counted on, no way. Probably pointless to argue what defines a JAG in a league that budgets nearly $3-4 million per roster space (23 players, $82 million cap), but it seems like the crux of this discussion is that I believe Adams regarded most of the players he has acquired as short-term roster filler and you don't. I can't ignore how many players Adams has acquired who are on expiring deals. He's made a significant commitment to exactly two players: Tuch and Dahlin. Everyone else has been either cheap.or short-term. Most of them have been both.

Like I said, JAGs at JAG prices. Do you think that Adams intended any of the expiring contracts on the Sabres this year to be anything other than one-year roster filler?

Some may think I’m splitting hairs here, but I’d say it’s his ability to bring in good players that has been lacking. The truth is that based on the contracts he has handed out, and the assets given up for the players he has acquired, his evaluation has been pretty solid. He’s acquired JAGs at JAG prices. I’d say Anderson, Hinostroza, Caggiula, Pysyk have certainly earned their contracts. Hagg and Hayden are within reason for what they bring. Eakin, Dell and Butcher have been misses, but aren’t anchors. Asplund and Thompson have been good deals. Tuch, Mitts and Joki are TBD. None of them except, obviously, Tuch, have cost much in assets.

But you know that it’s not a given. And that it’s harder to sustain when you aren’t good enough, and when you don’t trust your goalie.

I’m sticking with my earlier opinion: the Sabres arent talented enough, but work hard enough to be competitive when they get goaltending.

Peca is one of my all-time favourites. Was just trying to point out how much the game has changed.

Ah the ‘90s. That hit was so ridiculously late. And the announcers don’t even notice.

Just to clarify, you want Granato or Okposo to unleash a rant in front of a camera or a microphone about the offside call?

Gary says it’s up to the players. https://www.vancouverislandfreedaily.com/sports/bettman-nhl-continues-to-have-real-concerns-regarding-olympic-participation/

Obviously, best case scenario for a Sabre fan is that UPL is up for good and provides Buffalo with solid goaltending for the rest of the year. Because I don’t believe he (or the Sabres) are advanced enough for that to happen, I hope Subban is back today and UPL gets sent down. Success in 2 NHL games is exactly what he needs to boost his confidence for a good run on a good team in Rochester, which could set up him up in a place where the next time he gets called up, he gets called up for good. Being asked to carry the Sabres now is not going to be good for him mentally.

Glad to see people are finally starting to pay attention to the liability Olofsson has become to our offence. He can’t shoot right now. And he’s blowing the opportunities Tage and Dahlin and even Skinner - especially on the PP - are giving him because of it. Maybe it’s time to take him off the top line and reunite him with Asplund, whose offence has also completely dried up. They both played their best hockey of the year together. Not sure who would replace him with Skinner and Thompson, because he still thinks the game better than any other winger in this team, but he really needs to get healthy.

UPL made all the saves he had to make, and a number that he didn’t. Yes he could have done a better job with the rebound on goal #2, but close to the body off a quick wrister blocker side is not the easiest shot to direct. More to the point, he looked like an NHL goalie is supposed to look: big, solid and in control. Again. Pleasant surprise. Given his skittishness over this calendar year, and fact we were playing the Rangers, I fully expected him to be lit up like a Christmas tree.

Certainly that’s what Adams believes and it’s working down there. Just wanted to point out that the Amerks just won their fifth in a row and are in 7th in the AHL (13/6/0), 1st in goals for. They’ve played league-best 17/1/2 Utica 6 times already, handing them 2 of their 3 losses. They’ve won their last two without leading scoring Jack Quinn and their #1 goalie UPL. Their #2 goalie, Dell, is with the Sabres, as are top six forwards Murray and Jankowski. They are also missing top 4 defenders Davidson and Schuldt, as well as speedy rookie winger Linus Weissbach. Their best defenceman, Matthias Samuelsson, has also missed time. Veteran forward Andrew Oglevie and rookie winger Lukas Rousek have been out all season. They’ve battled CoVId, that saw games postponed and their coach quarantined. That’s a lot of adversity through a 1/4 season and they haven’t really missed a beat.

That’s a great question. Probably? I think we can agree that the majority of the hockey world ranked Dahlin as the guy and would have been shocked if Botterill had picked anyone else. Hindsight so far has shown it wasn’t the slam dunk we thought. I think we can also agree that Power was the consensus #1, just not as highly thought of, or as much of a slam dunk as Dahlin was. Time has yet to give us much perspective. What do you think?

I think you're right about the disagreement. That said I agree with you. It's not that last year doesn't count, but I don't think he fully started being a GM the way Punch was the GM, or Scotty was the GM until Krueger was fired.

One thing Adams has done significantly better than Botterill is that he has tended to invest $750,000 and no assets into one-year contracts for his JAGs like Hinostroza and Pysyk, rather than $10 million and picks into long-term deals for JAGs like Sheary and Miller. Seriously @GASabresIUFAN, how can you get upset by Butcher and ignore that?

They weren't on the NHL roster Adams inherited, which is where this conversation started. I agree Botterill did a pretty good job drafting. His track record at developing is questionable (Mitts, Tage) and his ability to acquire existing NHL talent was pitiful. So far, Adams ability acquire NHL talent has been pitiful as well.

Agree entirely with your conclusions. Think it’s ironic that keeping 3 of Botterill’s pickups (Olofsson, Asplund and Girgensons predate him) is somehow being used to defend his roster-building. 35 players played for the Sabres in Botterill’s last season. 10 of them are still with the Sabres. Joki, Tage, Casey, blind man pick Rasmus Dahlin, depth defenceman Colin Miller and Jeff Skinner and his immovable contract are the only ones Botterill brought in.

We NEEDED to go on a long-scale rebuild because Jack Eichel demanded a trade, full stop. The fact that Reinhart and Risto were the only other veterans worth much and didn’t want to return either cemented that. I gotta say that what we learned from Jack post-trade cleared away my most significant concerns about Adams.

Samuelsson is a man in a man’s league. He’s physically more ready than most of our NHL roster. Krebs plays a man’s game with a boys body. He’s going to look like Cozens did last year. Peterka is faster than most of our NHL roster and can skate through checks. He’s close, physically and mentally, but he needs more time. Quinn is the hardest to project for me, because he still has a boys body, but his hands and his mental game are so far above AHL men his physical weakness doesn’t matter much. It’s hard to say whether that will be the case in the NHL. To be clear, any of the above is good enough right now to be a Sabres regular instead of some of our JAGs. The question is are they much better?

I think what’s different between Adams this year and Murray in 2014/15 is that for Adams, the development of young players already in the organization supersedes a higher draft pick. The JAGs were hand-picked to be known “good guys” and they were sold on the idea that “come in, conduct yourself like a pro and you will get a great chance to resurrect your NHL career.” Which is a heckuva lot different than “just guys” just brought in and basically given the message “zero ##### given” about you now, or in the future, or on anything other than finishing last.

Agreed. Mostly. The caveat for me is that I don’t think Adams is operating under the stark premise of “winning doesn’t matter” right now even. His premise is more “winning now doesn’t matter as much as winning in the future.” The crux of this discussion is that there is a sliding scale to that. We are fully on the “future” end of that scale right now. But we have to be moving toward the now. For me, the “how fast” has yet to be determined. But next year, it definitely has to be closer.