dudacek

After that flashy start, Byram wasn’t very good. Not sure his play was much different than it was earlier in the year in Denver though. More than most, I thought his interview was safe and calculated. The closest you got to real was when he talked about how disappointed he was in his own year. He’s right there with his buddies Cozens and Krebs at a crossroads of his career. Lot of skill there. More than most, he needs a big summer and the right coach.

Brutal. There are places that actually lay off doctors? Vancouver Island is actively recruiting.

Wahlberg has a presence I haven’t seen in a Sabre forward since Darcy picked up Dainius Zubrus at the deadline. I mean I saw it playing against kids, but to carry it over against men? Hard to believe he’s 2 months younger than Benson.

So the Wings were smart to lock $30M into Debrincat, Copp, Compher, Chariot, Holl and Husso to not make the playoffs? And Kane “knew something” because he picked the 41-win Wings over the 39-win Sabres? 🤔

Nice choice. You can’t imagine how satisfying it was for a 13-year-old Sabre fan in B.C. to watch his team knock out the Canucks. I got to watch the Sabres a handful of times a year if at all. But everybody in school was watching this. You also wouldn’t believe how easy it was for a young Sabre fan to be arrogantly dismissive of the Canucks back then.

Wait, this story? https://www.hockeyfeed.com/nhl-news/reports-that-terry-pegula-has-sold-the-buffalo-sabres This is literally the headline: Reports that Terry Pegula has sold the Buffalo Sabres Is the curse finally lifted?! This is dead on?

Mitts was beloved, the leading scorer and full-fledged member of the blinding light brigade. Not sure people don’t consider his trade exactly that.

How can he prove he can be above average in the NHL while he’s playing in the AHL? If it’s by being an elite goalie in the AHL, looks like he’s already there. His career NHL stats: 10/8/2 3.06, .901. 5 of 6 start starts this calendar year have been .925 or better. He’s 15/6/3 with a .927 on a Rochester team where the other 2 goalies put up an .891 and an .890. Kid had a rough start and his playoff will probably be a better indication of whether he can be a Swayman to UPL’s Ullmark, but his talent remains every bit as good as we thought it was. I would trade anyone for the right return. But defencemen who have put up the kind of numbers Power has before turning 22 are rare. The team just signed up for 7 more years 7 months ago. It was like the 4th biggest commitment in Sabres history. Do you really think they’d be considering trading him already?

Hopefully. The 4 is coming from the fact they have played 2 years of the 7 they need to accrue prior to UFA status. If the Sabre wish, they can choose to take the Sam Reinhart path of a 2- or 3-year bridge next summer, rather than signing them to term.

We are 4 years from having to pay JJ and Quinn that kind money. If their play forces that to come sooner, that's not exactly a problem.

Too lazy to scroll through the tape, but I'm pretty sure Adams outright said in his presser that was the message he was going to give to the players when he met with them. I agree with this, but I thinking most of this discussion has been about looking for nuance in the comments of 20-something hockey players that probably isn't there.. I've only watched day 1 interviews, but Muel was far from the only one to say 'we need to step up'. I also think "we need to be held accountable" is just another way of saying the same thing. The theme is you holding yourself and others to a higher standard and everyone else doing the same.

I think that the biggest single message coming out of the locker room is “this was on us”. Whether they think it needs to come from within the room, within themselves, or both, they all want a higher bar of accountability set for themselves and those around them. Whether that’s a reason for hope or a scathing indictment is going to be in the eye of the beholder. Don’t take it personally.

It’s never been a question about scoring goals. It’s not even really about working hard, although that wavers. It’s a question about sticking with the game plan, playing with structure, staying focused night after night and taking care of the details. You won’t find very many lists of Sabres that dance to their own drummer that won’t have Skinner at or near the top. When they talk about not being held accountable, which players do you think they are talking about?

Personally don’t think the intent is to clean house, it’s to maximize the effectiveness of what’s in house. Fringe free agents like Robinson, Comrie, Jost and Olofsson will likely be gone. More useful ones like Jokiharju and Girgensons could be. And I would think others are available if it brings in the desired piece, like Mitts was. But I think the focus will be on adding, not moving pieces out. Really curious if they take a look at cutting ties with Skinner because he’s the sole exception I could see to the above. But I just don’t think there’s a market, or that a buyout makes sense. Rather it will more be about how well he can adjust to this new standard in order to avoid becoming next year’s sideshow.

The amount of weight this community still puts on an incident that happened what, 12 years ago - and has happened to many organizations both before and since - is baffling to me. No, I don’t think this is at all different to Aaron Dell wiping out Drake Batherson, or any other of the countless cheap shots that happen in NHL hockey.

Before the myth of Dylan Cozens bad numbers being a result of the fight and resulting concussion takes root, let us remember: He was 3/4/7/ -1 in 11 games leading up to the fight. He was 2/4/6 -5 in the 20 games to finish up the season prior to the 3-point Tampa finale. He was 11/20/31 -1 in the 47 games in between, you know the period 'where it took a long time to shake off lingering effects'. The was no correlation between his injury and his ***** production

Thinking about this in the context of what @inkman was saying about how seriously we should take these things. If I put my PR hat on, I think Adams gave the fans what they wanted: he switched from aw shucks mode to I'm pissed mode, called the players out for lack of accountability, took some personal responsibility and took dramatic, concrete action by sacrificing the most obvious lamb. I don't know that he really could have done much more in terms of getting people to lower their pitchforks. It was a little surprising and very interesting and it set a proper tone for next season. It remains meaningless until they start playing games for real again.

Would you expect them to say that it was? And what what this place be saying if they had?

People bash "traditional media" all the time. And then there's this.

With the possible exception of his rookie year, it may have been the 1st time in Dylan's athletic life he's failed to meet expectations, never mind regressed.

Who are the guys who need to be more accountable in the sense Tage was talking about? To me there are two levels of this: The more experienced guys: Skinner, Cozens, Tuch and Tage himself. To a lesser extent Jokiharju, Greenway, Clifton and even at times Dahlin The kids: virtually all of them save Luukkonnen and maybe Benson. Peterka and Quinn may be fine 'for their age' but that phrase no longer holds water with this team. The bar was not set high enough individually nearly across the board.

He had a better interview than Dahlin, that's for sure. Personally, I thought the Tage interview was the best one. Sounded like the coach's son he is. There's truth here. He remains the one who shows the most leadership on ice.\ Glad to see I'm not the only one. This needs to be the way.

The perfect world scenario is that Kyle Dubas decides it’s time to reset the Pens and fires Mike Sullivan. As our own @Brawndo hinted, the Ventura/Karmanos connection already knows this is coming and has already tapped Sullivan as our new “experienced, structured and accountable” coach. The Dubas rebuild offends the PIttsburgh locker room, leading to the UFA in the above photo to take his tone-setting, faceoff-winning, line-driving, ultra-accountable, Pegula-dog-namesake 1C talents to join the new Ventura/Karmanos/Sullivan axis of evil on the Niagara frontier. It is the off-season, and long-suffering Sabrefans are allowed to dream.

I've been saying all season that this year's team was immature. The last three days have confirmed that. The best thing about immaturity is that for most of us it passes, and usually after life hands us some lessons. Looks like we have to hope that this year becomes lesson learned, and that the new coach is the right guy to reinforce that.

I don’t see that as what Dahlin did there in the slightest. I see a man saying “I wasnt good enough and it cost someone I respect his job. I deserve an ass-kicking.” Like I said, we all watch through our own mirrors.