LTS

Jesus christ... this thread is bad.. I can't even imagine the Bills thread based on readings. This is one of those situations where everyone needs to leave their "jump to conclusions" mat at the door and just let the situation play out. The key here is to be happy with the bottom line, Russ Brandon is no longer involved in these organizations. Why is there a need to debate speculation? We are privy to certain information that is stated by the parties involved. There is other "innuendo" but in this day and age anyone can say anything and many people will believe it. We're losing our humanity. The guy is gone, be happy with that. If it comes out that he abused his position then judge him for that. Right now all anyone has is that he had an inappropriate relationship. That's it. I'm pretty sure the line on what is "inappropriate" will not be defined the same amongst people. Now we have people talking about Kim with no experience. At the same time people on here keep talking about how to not hire from the establishment when it comes to coaches and GMs. Stop just spewing BS to fit a narrative and stick to a principle. You don't need to wrap this crap up by midnight... just let it play out. Seriously. Russ Brandon has resigned and that's all that really matters. So many people thought he was already a POS... so if he's a POS who also harassed women does that change anything for you? If he's a POS who didn't harass them but really engaged in a relationship with a subordinate against company policy does that matter to you?

Having just looked at the front office arrangements of other teams in researching the President of Hockey Operations I would expect that Kim will be President of PSE and will have oversight of the various teams as reported. I think this does actually create an opportunity to bring in more people on the business side to be President of Business Operations for each team. I saw quite a few of those positions. I wouldn't be surprised if Botterill is granted at least Alt. Governor for now and then perhaps based on performance is given President of Hockey operations next year. Frankly, he's the President of them anyway at this point. Should be interesting to see what changes occur and frankly, if the reports are true, I think there's something to be said for having Kim as a replacement for him.

The biggest impact is when having to work the puck along the boards. After that it doesn't make much of a difference except when it comes to one-timers. At least for cross-ice passes because it's next to impossible to one-time a puck that has to go across your body. So, if you deal with picking up the puck on the boards in either zone, getting it on the back hand can cause a problem and make it harder to move. The playing catch piece of it really isn't that big of a deal as players, especially in the NHL, should be able to catch a pass on the backhand easily. In a lot of cases, if you are playing on the off hand then you put your body between a forechecker and the puck and still play it on your forehand as well. Bottom line is I think it boils down to the preference of the player, but since many players are slotted into the left or right by coaches they grow accustomed to playing one side.

Kane can certainly choose to come back here on July 1 if the Sabres wanted him back. He'll know definitively that Dahlin is coming because the Sabres will have drafted him.

I'm not sure he counts. He's got the same title as Russ Brandon does for the Sabres. In addition, the strength of the Bruins, at the moment, lies in players that pre-date Cam Neely joining the organization. Marchand, Krejci, Bergeron, Rask, and Chara were all there before he joined as VP in 2007. So, Toronto does not have a President of Hockey Operations either. I was wrong even in talking about them. Shanahan is Russ Brandon. Lou was the GM. Taking my time now to do the research I said I would, teams that have a President of Hockey Operations: Boston - no Buffalo - no Carolina - Senior VP - just announced, but they had one. Columbus - John Davidson, also he's an Alternate Governor, but he appears constrained purely to hockey operations as they have a President as well. Chicago - SVP Hockey Ops - Al MacIsaac, but Stan Bowman is SVP/GM. Seemingly peers. Colorado - no Anaheim - SVP Hockey ops - David McNab, Bob Murray is EVP and GM. Not sure how that reporting structure works out... Arizona - John Chayka is GM and President of Hockey Ops.. Detroit - no Florida - Dale Tallon, GM and President of Hockey Ops New Jersey - no NY Islanders - no Dallas - no Minnesota - Brent Flahr, Acting GM/SVP/Hockey Ops Calgary - Brian Burke is still listed. Edmonton - Peter Chiarelli - GM and President Hockey Ops Montreal - Rick Dudley, SVP HOckey Ops... (seems like that might be an open position now) Ottawa - no NY Rangers - no Philthadelphia - no Smashville - David Poile , GM, Alt. Governor, and President of Hockey ops St. Louis - Doug Armstrong- GM & President of Hockey Ops Los Angeles - no, although Luc Robitaille is President and Alt. Governor San Jose - no Tampa Bay - no Toronto - no Pittsburgh - no Washington - no Winnipeg - no Vancouver - Trevor Linden - President Hockey Operations & Alt. Governor Vegas - George McPhee - President Hockey Ops, GM, Atl. Governor It would appear that the specific hockey operations title is used in only a few instances, (Carolina, Columbus, Chicago, Anaheim, Calgary?, Montreal?, Vancouver). In other places it's combined with GM title. Brian Burke has stepped down.. we'll see if Calgary replaces him. Was it a success? Calgary has promise and questions. Montreal seemingly has lost Dudley to Carolina in what appears to be a lateral move. Will Montreal replace the position? That said,, I think we can say it wasn't a success in Montreal. Columbus - Davidson started in this role with the Blues.. moved to Columbus. He brought in the GM. it's clear how that structure works.. I wouldn't call them a failure. Chicago - not enough information on how that relationship works, but they've been successful. based on his description, he's just a guy who's been around a LONG time and has been rewarded for it.. he was drafted by the Sabres in the 12th round in 1987 (stupid random things I find in researching) Anaheim - I'm pretty sure Bob Murray has control there. McNab has 25 years with the Ducks and was an AGM but was promoted. Sounds like MacIsaac situation. Vancouver - Other than Davidson this might be the pure definition of the President of HOckey Ops going to a former player. I wouldn't say it's been bad... I wouldn't say it's been good. Clearly Benning reports to him. What does all of this mean? Bringing in a President of Hockey Ops for Buffalo would interject someone into the command structure for the team. The President of Hockey Ops should have control of the GM and since they just hired Botterill it seems like that would be a sure fire way to really cause problems. Bottom line? When they move Botterill would be the time to consider that position.. they didn't exactly hit a home-run the last time they tried it.

So, the President of Hockey Operations reports to the owner. The GM reports to the President of Hockey Operations. Who else reports to that position? I'm not even sure what teams have a President of Hockey Operations anymore. Has any team that has had one ever been successful in such a way where you could say it was because of that position? For every person who has held that title that I can remember, it seems like it was a way to pay some old-timer hockey guy or a former player to be a "consultant" and that the GM still reported to the owner. I suppose if your owner was extremely hands-off in the organization the President of Hockey Ops might have a reason to exist. It seems rare though. Without doing research I want to say St. Louis has one... is it John Davidson? That might be a viable situation there... I'm going to have to spend some precious working time today researching the situation. :)

I've never been sold on "President of Hockey Operations". It's a generic title used to pay someone to inject their mindset into the organization. The concern, for me, is whether that organization needs another mind in the room. Having too many brains trying to decide the direction is a recipe for disaster. Look at Toronto right now... they brought together a veritable all-star cast of managerial talent and now Lou is the first one out the door. My concern with bringing in ANYONE is the potential to upset the balance in the room. Ron Francis has a mindset and unless that mindset is simpatico with everyone else currently running the Sabres it really only raises the potential for in-fighting and confusion at the top. I don't think the Sabres need more people in the front office trying to figure out how to improve things, at least from a hockey operations perspective. From a business/game presentation perspective I think they need a lot of help, but that's not something Ron Francis is going to do.

Nah. It was more like they asked him to go to the AHL. He countered with an acceptance of an additional $500k salary and being the first call up if Bogosian gets injured. The Sabres agreed. He's a smart guy that Pilut.

I think at this point "phrases used in the business world" varies greatly. Even phrases used by business people in other "worlds" varies greatly. In short, there's a large segment of society that really isn't into "proper communication". There's a large segment that wouldn't understand it anyway. He could have said "We gotta get gooder and there would be a good portion of the fan base that would have said, "Right on, Bruh!"." We're that screwed as a species.

Out of curiosity.... why? Why would the Sabres need this?

Damn right. Although... I would probably laugh a bit too. I understand where you are coming from on that. For me, the contact of saliva to another player is the problem... It's certainly a fine line.

14614 is the zipcode of Blue Cross Arena. Just saying.

If I recall correctly, Ott didn't make contact with the player... or do I not recall correctly? Perhaps I should have been more direct with the spitting... and said "spitting ON someone"

It's funny regarding the call from the NHL, but honestly not sure how he's allowed to do that and not get suspended. How is it any different than spitting at someone?

Yea... I'm still up. This is still awesome.

Regardless of what happens... at least the Sabres have started out the 2018-2019 season with a win. Awesome news.

If you have to move a salary then ROR is an attractive piece to another team such that they may take on Bogosian's salary. I don't want ROR traded. As for the Tavares comment, I said, if he's available. As for assuming he doesn't want to come to a last place team... I can't answer that, you can't answer that. The point is, to all of what i said, is that if that were to happen I would think that the Sabres would then look to move ROR. I think Scandella was brought in here to do exactly what he did. It makes him a core piece of how this team will be built. He was targeted by this GM. The same with Mittlestadt. Reinhart I could see but truthfully they aren't moving Reinhart and getting back anything better for him.

It blows up because when someone suggests that telling someone to get lost might not be a great course of action people begin to rise up in opposition. Call it the Zach de la Rocha maxim.... "F you I won't do what you tell me." No one said you can't talk about Matthews sucking in the playoffs. Really.

I won't try to quote everyone... The statement was "tearing the team down to the studs". There are 20 players on the bench. How many of them are the "studs" on ANY team? The players who aren't the studs are the drywall it would seem. There's more drywall than studs in any build. I don't think it's as extreme as Friedman makes it out to be. The players who are the "studs": Eichel, Reinhart, ROR, Mittlestadt, Okposo, Ristolainen, Scandella, McCabe" Eight players of 20... the remaining 12 are open to be drywall. You remove any more of those studs and the house falls down. Now, it might require moving ROR and Bogosian to get him off the books. Hopefully the team gets the right player back in return. Perhaps, if Okposo isn't on the list you'll need to bundle him with someone like Ristolainen to get the salary dump. However, it won't be easy. Pominville and Moulson just need to get buried again. The cap space isn't required yet and they're gone after next year. The only way this entire plan changes is if they are going in on major UFAs this season and they need to move people out. (ie. Sign Tavares if he's available and then move ROR and Bogosian, etc.)

Totally uncalled for. He raised a perfectly good point. Matthews is only 20. Don't be an ass about things. I am pretty sure the counter-argument to your point is Eichel can't get his team in the playoffs, so at least Matthews was there. There's no need for this crap. You aren't making fun of the Leafs when you tell someone to get lost. Make fun of the Leafs, we all do it. Rooting for a team to fail is not the same as telling someone to get out of here and not be part of the give and take in what should be a light-hearted battle of fans. If you feel so strongly against the Leafs that you want to tell a single person, who has represented himself quite well, to get lost then you've lost sight of what this is about and more importantly what life is about. Damn right. You know what I am dealing with today? A message written on our HS bathroom wall yesterday that something bad was going to happen at our HS on 4/27. At this point I couldn't care less about the Leafs or the Bruins because in today's life that kind of threat carries the potential for media vans to be swooping in on my little town this weekend. All of this crap starts because we don't WANT to act civilly towards each other. It's all either "I don't care what you think, I am going to be me." or "I don't like what you think, you shouldn't be here." The truth is the answer lies in between. The two scenarios described above are the opposite, extreme ends, of the spectrum. Get along, have a little bit of fun, we're all going to die soon. A friend of mine wished his daughter well as she left the house the other day... 12 minutes after leaving he received a phone call that she was in a serious accident. Thankfully the car was only thing seriously damaged. This is the life we lead... we should have a lot more respect for it and the lives of others.

There are many other factors that go into the lottery system. Because contracts are guaranteed in the NHL it makes things much more difficult in regards to changing out a roster. In the NFL players are dropped and added all the time because contracts aren't guaranteed (well not 100%, all the time). I don't particularly like the lottery system. I could see a system that moves a team from picking in the top 3 in back to back years and forces a team down the draft order if they finish worse than they did the year before. So, if a team drafted 6th the year before and they finish in a position to draft 5th this year they would be moved back to 7 and the 6 and 7 teams would be moved to 5 and 6. A team that just misses out on the playoffs should not have any shot at a top draft pick.

Many of them... sadly. I wish they would move back to Philly.

Bolded 1: It's almost as if we didn't just have a thread about this based on an article from only 16 days ago... http://buffalonews.com/2018/04/04/whats-next-for-buffalos-aging-keybank-center/ https://forums.sabrespace.com/topic/25717-game-experience-russ-brandon-weighs-in/ Bolded 2: What's the alternative? What makes it "enough" in your eyes? Any of the ideas you posted would have come from challenging your staff to be "better"... certainly not from asking them to care less. You lost me on your entire response at bolded 1 and cemented it with bolded 2. The sense from your response is that if he had said he was lowering ST prices by 5% next year you would have said it should have been 10%.

If the Sabres had hired me for their CIO position when it was open a few years ago I would have instituted programmatic version control on twitter and One Buffalo App to scan for crappy English and immediately reject the post/send. :) Just saying..

So it's clear no one here really watches Sabres games. Not one suggestion of Napoli's? ;)