In The Buff

Me neither really. But in all the fire Phil threads & posts, rarely will you ever see anyone come up with a solution or replacement, hence why I was asking for other potential coaches we could bring in. Its one thing to fire Phil for the sakes of firing him, its another thing to bring in a quality coach who can take us to the promise land. If anyone ever does name names, Coach Q is the name most spoken. Then McLellan or Vigneault who I wouldn't want. And then you'll hear Sheldon Keafe once & awhile, who hasnt ever coached in the NHL before & i really dont think we need another rookie coach right now. Just curious if anyones got a potential coaches name to hope for haha

Those of you who want PH gone, given Pegulas respect for ex Sabres at the helm with PH & JBots, do you think they'd look at bringing Ruff back to coach? And #1 would you want Ruff back here & do you think Lindy would accept the job? Ruff may not be a great x's & o's guy, but he wasn't a mannequin behind the bench & his teams always seemed to be disciplined with regards to the system & played hard. Even though i think the game has passed him by at this point. Btw it just goes to show how bad things have gotten here to even consider it. I'm just thinking of who i'd want here to coach. I'm not a big fan of most of the available coaches out there. Maybe Quennville since he's an intense guy or Rikard Gronborg who's the coach of the Swedish National team since we have so many swedes here lol. Just curious what you guys thought as a replacement, those of you who want to go that route.

just from watching this season progress (regress), it just feels to me that around christmas this team needed an injection of help. Whether it be Oloffson or Nylander or from a trade. And when that didnt happen, our top line slowly disintegrated, either from the pressure of having to carry the whole team or from exhaustion, or a combination of the 2. By the time the trade deadline came & went & no offensive help came this way, its been going thru the motions til this season was over. I don't think PH is the reason our season has gone downhill. If anything I blame JBots for not recognizing you need more than 1 line that can create offense. He must really be firmly committed to his 3 - 5 year process of developing players thru the draft & Rochester, because there were opportunities out there I'm sure to bring in another forward or 2 to help with our secondary scoring & he trades a 1st for Montour. I just hope with how bad this season has ended it'll light the fuse upstairs that we need to be more aggressive in adding more talent to this team. And if theres a better coach out there than PH then by all means i'll take it. I just don't know who that coach is atm.

ive seen Okposo cough up the puck at the blue line that exact same way at least 50 times this season

hey at least its not a shutout

hearing that crowd being so into their team has me feeling jealous & depressed. Only time we hear anything remotely close to this at home is when Leafs fans pack into our arena. JBotts & the Pegulas better do something this offseason. We the fans deserve to be as excited about our team as these Isles fans are right now

man how many goals this year have come from us shooting hard & wide & resulting in a break the opposite way? At least 3 from Eichel that i can remember & now Oli tonight Hey at least we came back to tie it & didnt completely roll over

With the last line I agree to a point but i think you could make that comparison to other young players as well. For me where that comparison ends is in their measurables. Tage is 5 inches taller & some 15 - 20 pounds heavier than Max & with that I don't see him like Max at all. Max on the ice was like a dart & flew around the ice like a bat out of hell, knifing his way into scoring positions. He was also twice as productive as Tage was when he got here because he was a sniper & knew how to use his good shot. Maybe Max never lived up to what we thought his potential could be, but i don't see how putting up multiple 20 goal seasons can be labelled as terrible. This year I'd kill to have someone else on this team that can put up 20 goals. Tage as a player isn't like Max imo. He doesn't have the shiftiness or speed that Max had, nor Max's ability to score so early in his career. Physically they are 2 very different players. I'd try to make a comparison to someone of Tages size, to get an idea of who Tage could be in the future. Someone the size of Getzlaf or Blake Wheeler. Tage's game is pretty raw right now, but with some proper seasoning perhaps he can be a player who uses his size & raw skills to his advantage. But if Tage were Max level right now, putting up 16 goals & 35 points at this point in the season, i think we'd be quite happy with that production. Wouldn't you?

yeah you'd expect more out of Eichel. His 2 errant passes killed half the penalty on his own

Ive said it before in other Risto threads. Seems like a new one pops up once a week lol. But i see a lot of similarities with how we've handled Risto as we did with Tyler Myers. Since Tyler's been gone he's went on to have a pretty decent career.... on the 2nd pairing. His last season with us he was a -26 +/- & shipped out of town. We probably overused Myers & misused him much in the same way we're doing with Risto. And imo its because we havent had better options. Since he's got here he's been placed into that #1 role... at age 19, & as fans we expect him to succeed in it. And when there's problems we blame him. You put Risto on the 2nd pairing & improve the team in front of him with players that can score & I believe you have a pretty good physical puck moving 2nd pairing dman. And imo we don't lose games because of Risto, we lose games because we can't score consistently thruout our lineup. Until we improve in that area we as fans are just gonna go around in circles with this stuff.

I dont care about the Leaves. Its why you don't see me making threads about them ?

1st try & we moved up to 2nd... I'll stop there & take it. Just for the superstitions in me so it becomes true. GO SABRES!

Nothing like waiting til the final 2 minutes of the game to have a good shift

This game looks like 1 team has something to play for & the other team is just going thru the motions. Avs are fighting for a wild card spot & we're just trying to get this thing over with i guess

i just tuned on the game. We're getting outshot, 35-9 & its halfway thru the 3rd period? Man talk about checking out of a game huh? Surprised its not 5-0 right now

Ukko looks to be the real deal. I have a friend who lives in Finland & he's excited to see what UPL can do for our team. He's probably a year or 3 away from the big club but I wouldnt mind seeing him sooner, especially with how our goaltending has been as of late

Cant be a good feeling being Hutton & walking back into the dressing room after getting smoked 3 times in a row.

Are we really winning this 2nd period? Crazy!

Ive read on this board that people think Risto doesn't hit anyone, but in truth he's got the 6th most in the East & has the most hits on our team by far. Next guy down has half the hits as he does which is Girgensons. Just goes to show how soft this team is in general & how much this team depends on Risto to provide some form of physicality. Often to his detriment, as Risto finishing his checks often puts him out of position. I think Risto would be better served on our 2nd pairing, with reduced minutes overall. But for lack of any better options he's been the go to guy ever since he came here. I see a lot of similarities between him & Tyler Myers in terms of how we've handled (mishandled) him.

and there's tons of people who want to fire Housley, because with lines like that, surely we should be one of the top teams in the league! Good to remember there were tons of people who thought the world was flat too... heck there still are some of those around ? But yeah GO SABRES! Win this one in Chicago or lose for a better draft pick... either way we WIN!

You two guys with the 2nd line / 3rd line thing. What we can all agree on is our middle 6 is what the issue is & in that you're both right. We need a better 2C since Mitts isnt ready yet for that role, and we need another winger or 2 that can produce now for the 3rd line. Ideally we'd want to have 4 rolling lines, 3 of which that can score. As opposed to what we have now with just 1 top heavy line. But theres no way in hell do i want to go into next season with Mitts as our 2C. He's got talent no doubt, but he's a couple years away from the added muscle growth & strength he needs to play at this level. We definitely need to address that spot going into next season if we have any hopes of having 2 solid lines

There's a reason why my avatar is a photo of Rick Vaive. When I was a young kid I used to watch him get pummeled every single night, often having to get helped off the ice as the nerve pain in his neck would flare up after a crosscheck by the net. But he would always get back up again & go right back to the front of the neck. Watching him play back then was at least for me motivational & a trait I don't often see in todays game anymore. He had some good offensive skills but man was he tough too

Trading Risto as if he's causing more harm to the team than bringing positives to it is ridiculous imo. He's big, he's smart, he plays tons of minutes & the most important ones during games, & is a well rounded dman with good offensive skills. And when he goes into beast mode & starts throwing his body around, he looks like a tough player to play against. I've been waiting for him to take on a bigger leadership role on the ice & these past few weeks it appears like he's coming into his own in that regard, which is exciting. But I don't see what we gain from trading away Risto lol, i really don't. Scandella would make more sense or even McCabe or Pilut, even tho I'd rather keep Pilut around since i see a lot of potential in him as well. Beaulieu should be on this list b4 Risto. Pretty much anyone else since Risto is our best Dman right now, along with Bogo who has really impressed me this season. The turnaround Bogosian has had here has really been nice. I had all but written him off. Like others have said, it takes a long time for a dman to mature & come into his own. Especially a young kid coming over from Finland & having to adjust to so many new things. He's been asked to do way too much way too soon & now its appearing to pay dividends & people say trade him as if we're missing out on the playoffs because of him. We have 1 offensive line that can score so lets trade one of our top dmen. Brilliant idea! Luckily its not gonna happen.

I think while evaluating Eichel one needs to keep in mind he's only 22 years old & still coming into his own as a man & NHL player. I think if Eichel were playing on another team with a deeper talent pool he probably wouldnt have gotten the C. But since we're not one of those teams with a solid roster, he got the C for lack of having anyone else to give it to imo. Jack is the leader of this team & our offense revolves around him & his play making ability. I would like to see Jack shoot more personally, as he has a super quick release that is pretty darn accurate. I'm not a big fan of his one timers tho. But he's gotten better defensively since last year & as he gets older & gets more experience, I only expect that to improve & for him to turn into a great 2 way player. But I dont see any scenarios where we trade him. Maybe a few years down the road if anything, but by then I imagine our team will look a lot different than it does now & we'll be one of the better teams in the league. Hopefully making all the negative thoughts & posts we've endured these past few years a distant memory.

Just because one player leaves a team & has a solid season, it doesnt mean that the previous regime made a mistake in letting them go. Timing is everything sometimes. He was given multiple chances to succeed & failed, was given a big investment by our team to have him here & failed, only for the light to finally go on & play up towards his potential. Getting clean & staying clean from the pills & alcohol & whatever substance abuse issues he was dealing with before is a big part of it too. After all that then maybe you can get into scheme & whatnot. But I don't see how Lehner's career turn around has anything to do with our GM's ability or inability to evaluate him, thats just ridiculous. It sounds like he just turned his life around & focused more on hockey & tbh i'm happy for him. I just hope he gets pulled in the 1st period after letting in 5 goals as the Sabres storm towards a much needed victory