LTS

In the aspect of furthering the conversation: Remove "Maybe you don't tank to begin with." - this was started prior to Murray and should not be put on his shoulders. The picks discussion I addressed. The "squandering" of picks in the 2015 draft is largely overblown. An argument can be made for Boeser, but at this point he'll need to sustain his output for it to be legitimate. After all, we've proven on this forum that if a player performs well in their 1st year that we believe the league may have passed you by in your 3rd year if you are slumping. (see: Reinhart, Samson). If you are talking about the 2nd and 3rd round picks that largely do NOT make up your top talent on a team then it's really not a big deal is it? As far as the plan. No one said Murray's plan relied only on getting McDavid. The plan would have been, what to do with McDavid, or what to do with Eichel. The point is, you can ONLY get Eichel then there's not much you can do about it. He did get Moulson to try and teach Eichel and help acclimate him to the league. The right calls have not played out yet so it's premature to say he failed to do anything. We may never know exactly because the team will be shaped by what Botterill can do with what Murray did. Just how it goes. Why should Murray try and hide it? McDavid didn't try and hide it either. There are plenty of emotional people in this world. We blast people for not showing emotion or getting upset and now blast him for doing it. Whatever fits the argument I suppose. Murray was a no-nonsense guy. So be it. As I said before, the plan was not a single player plan. It's a what if plan. Given his preference, he would have liked McDavid.

If only he could wear a mask like that.... oh man...

This is cool news. WNY has some amazing female hockey talent. The 12U Tier 2 team from Rochester (Rochester Edge) is currently ranked #1 in the Nation. I have friends who have daughters on that team. Having a professional female hockey team backed by a name like PSE is a big deal for any young girl who aspires to play hockey at higher levels. The Beauts were already an influence but there is little doubt that they have a greater financial backing now than before. Care to expand on this commentary or should we let our imaginations run wild on what you are insinuating?

Well, I hadn't really ruled out anyone. My son doesn't really have a NMC so I could just take the right deal if it comes along. Honestly, no one in my house is protected except for me. My wife has more leverage due to the buyout option not being financially attractive. I think the uncertainty of where he might end up is what really did the trick. With math scores like that it's hard to think that anyone who is building a winner would want him though. So he realized he either improved and stuck around on my team or he was getting moved to a place that didn't worry about his math acumen as much. ;)

Well, let's be honest here. If you were GM of the team would you want to rebuild with McDavid or Eichel? The rebuild was started before he came on board. He was offered a shot to be a GM, naturally he should take it. For argument sake, let's propose that Murray's scouting report on Eichel is that he is not generational but peaks at very good and will exhibit the issues that we've seen to date. Your report on McDavid is that he's clearly a cut above Eichel. Here you are as Murray, the entire world says Eichel and McDavid are 1-2, you have to rebuild a team and you know one of these guys can speed the process and the other will not. Are you excited when you don't get the #1 pick? This is nothing he could control and now he has to deal with it. Every GM's plan would have relied upon getting McDavid. Every GM would have had to take Eichel with the #2 pick. If you can make a credible argument against that I am listening. This is what I mean when sometimes the cards are not in your hands. I think we can look back at the moment and wish he had drafted McAvoy or Sergachev instead of Nylander. Of course he was trying to up the scoring of a team that couldn't score. So, if you operate under that assumption you look at which player is going to benefit your team the most. Sitting at 8th he's lost out on Matthews, Laine, Dubois, Puljujarvi, Tkachuk, and Keller. The only players after Nylander that I would have considered would be: Jost and Fabbro and neither of them have proven more than Nylander as near as I can tell. Once again, his hands are tied. Let's say the Sabres luck out and are able to move up in the lottery to the top 3. No one here thinks he's picking Nylander right? Again, what choices does he have? I think blasting him on the trade front is a little easier. He had 3 firsts in the 2015 draft. If he had kept them at #21 and #25 he could have acquired Boeser at #21. So, we can discuss now, would Boeser or Lehner be better for this team. I think that's an easy answer based on hind sight. The #25 picks would not have acquired much of anything. It did help get Kane which may turn into something else in the near future. We shall see. Right now, on face value, that #25 pick has netted the team its top forward scorer. I think that has to be considered a positive.

No one here had the credentials to get an interview in the first place. It's not like a chump off the street gets handed the opportunity. Moreover, I wouldn't give anyone on this forum a more than a 1% chance of success in the role. At worst Murray was probably a 50/50 shot. He was also hired by a guy who then immediately left the organization. He's under the rule of an owner who's established a penchant for turning over team leadership staff. He was forced to draft Eichel and certainly no one on here thought he was pleased about that. He goes out and looks for talent that can turn the team around faster and gets it but then he has to deal with a rift in the locker room between the coach and Eichel (a guy he didn't want in the first place presumably). If it's not a healthy situation and you know you can't move Eichel because the owner won't let you then why would you WANT to keep the job anyway? I think there's more to the story of what happened while Murray was GM. I am sure some of it will start to play out in the next year or so and we'll begin to understand it even more. Be honest, if the Sabres win the lottery and they take McDavid do we feel the same way about him? In order to leave bills you have to have credit to be able to spend. In order to get credit and leave aftermath you have to actually do something. Isn't the whole problem with millenials the fact that they want other people to do everything for them? ;)

It's so much more fun to just overreact. I remember when my kid struggled with a few math assignments earlier this year and his grade dropped into the low 80's. I immediately was looking to sell him to some slave trader and get my money back as I certainly wasn't going to waste it on some failure child who could not keep his math grades up. I think he was too entitled and just expected people to do his math problems for him.

It can't be a bad thing for him right? Sometimes a brief change is all you need. It's also an indication of just how young he is... he can still play in the WJC

I think it's improper to fully judge everything that Murray did as GM until you can see where the players pan out. I'm not ready to say he was a debacle when it came to roster management. He did not turn the team around as quickly as people expected and that's fine. He certainly tried to meet those expectations and now he's blasted for making moves that tried to shorten a rebuild timeline. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Lot's of GMs operate on BPA. They may make moves to get to a position where that BPA is the guy they want to draft, but that's nothing to do with their abilities to draft, just their ability to trade. Such a completely ridiculous take. They absolutely expected everything to be given to them. So much so that they made it to be in the top 3-5% of players in the entire world at a sport and managed to get drafted in the NHL. No hard work required.

Ahh Pouliot.. 4th overall pick in 2005. Spent 3 years in the AHL. Career high 36 points in a season, once with the Rangers and once with the Oilers. Currently playing on 7th NHL team in 12 seasons. Sam Reinhart, spent 0 seasons in the AHL, had 42 points in his first year and 47 points in his second year for a team that has been one of the all time worst scoring franchises in NHL history. This year? Pouliot has 11 points and Reinhart has 11 points. Reinhart has played with lower overall talent and STILL has as many points as Pouliot. I like Pouliot, but he's a guy who has had trouble staying on ANY roster and has NEVER reached the point totals Reinhart has already.

Schopp talks a lot especially if he wants to stir things up. Didn't I read some of his magical math in the Bills thread? Yeah. He's a member of the media... go get those stories and photos, publish them, call them out.

I'm not saying he drafted well. I'm saying if he's doing what 95% of other GMs do then he's no better and no worse. I pointed out once before on the Ottawa roster that the team that succeeded so much last year was largely built by Murray's later round picks. Of course were they BPA or close or were they truly insights into what player would be best on the team? Which GMs are truly thinking outside the box and finding talent over just being lucky? The concept of BPA is furthered by the concept that you can trade too many of the BPAs when they occupy the same space on the roster. They are assets for further roster adjustment. If it was draft only then I don't think it would ever be just BPA. I also don't think the BPA gets you a star player, it just gets you what is the consensus best player overall skillwise in the draft at that point in time. The only way to know if that's accurate is to then look at how that player was put into that position. If it was pure analytics that say the 45th ranked player is such and such and a GM drafts him and the player is a bust then either the analytics model was incorrect or a factor was introduced after the draft that rendered the analytics model incorrect. Preliminary research into how CSS assesses players tells me there is a checklist they use but I don't know if the checklist assessment is based on analytics or on eyeballs. For what it's worth Montour has been a healthy scratch lately. I'm not sure if he's made it.

Yea. It's called a lack of team chemistry. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if ROR is the problem. Read the article and look at the group that hangs around together. There was the live stream or other event earlier this season where someone heard a player mocking ROR. Look at Eichel's frustration in Carolina on the first power play when they pulled Reinhart and put in ROR. This group would have to be hanging around in their houses drinking all the time. If they were out partying it up the town would know about it. It's that small and they are that recognizable.

1% makes a difference... ask all those people who are the other 99%. By the way, is it the ad-free Hulu or just the "reduced" commercial Hulu. When I trialed the "reduced" commercial Hulu it was anything BUT reduced commercials and worse yet, it was literally the same 4 commercials over and over and over again.

Well, only some of us. Apparently others, such as yourself, are already down.

He has the extra motivation to really stand out. He knows he's playing in his future city for his future fans (current fans). I hope he has a great tournament.

If we are going to evaluate drafting I think it's fair that when you call out a GM for "missing" that you include whether or not the player selected was drafted around where they were projected by central scouting etc. If the consensus #2 pick doesn't pan out and 95% of the GMs would have taken that player then it's hardly the GM's fault. The player just didn't translate. If a consensus 5th round pick is picked at his projected spot and blossoms the GM does not deserve that much credit. If a GM jumps the board on a player and that player pans out then I think it's fair to give them credit and similarly to blast them if they reach on a player and that player does not work.

For assumption: Kane wants to sign here. Sabres are willing to give him near market value. Then I, as Kane, would request to be traded this season. This assures me that the team I am coming back to is going to get one time benefit from my trade value and it gives me a shot at a Stanley Cup run and experience I can bring back to my team the following season. It happens. I am actually surprised it does not happen more often.

Definitely why I said "Sigh. Let's hope he can make the jump." For some guys their game is close and then a certain league, a certain team/style of play is what really makes things click.

I start to get excited by that.. but you look up two spots on the stats chart and see: Phil Varone: 9G, 22A, 30games And we know what he translated to in the NHL...on THIS team. Sigh. Let's hope Smith can make the jump.

Hooray for hockey. Despite the frustration of watching this team I still get annoyed when they are not playing. Although I did watch some of the Devils vs. Ducks last night. That was entertaining, especially Henrique's goal. So.. go Sabres? Here's to hoping the Risto/Marchand fireworks are good.

A few more notes.. now that I am much more sober. On the first power play I believe they had a whistle in the Carolina zone and they traded out Reinhart for O'Reilly. The camera was on Jack at the time and you could see him put his hands in the air and basically say :"WTF?". I thought for sure it meant they were changing the whole unit out but it turns out only Reinhart was taken off the ice. If you watch Eichel's reaction to McCabe scoring the goal you can see just how excited he is for McCabe. Just things I like watching when you try and figure out what the locker room/bench politics are on the team and if there are issues. On the first goal Scandella got pinched off the D coverage as he ran into the guy in front of the net that RIsto had. It made it easy put back for the Carolina player. Sigh.

That's probably where I would try and go next if I was playing regularly (or at all recently).

Perspective. From the snails point of view the sloth is a speed demon.

When I was 22 and first started playing beer league I wore a half-shield. A friend of mine was cut across the chin two weeks in a row pretty good. I decided enough of that and went and got a cage. The next game I was cross-checked in the face so hard that it dented the cage and turned my helmet sideways. It would have been just below where the half-shield was.... The next week I had a new cage.. but only because I had no dental work to pay for. Last year I played with the damn fishbowl for awhile. It's nice but it's too damn hot. I agree with you 100% about the cage. The vision interference is annoying and it doesn't ever go away. I liked the shield for that, but that against having my face in one piece? That's an easy decision.