Randall Flagg

I laid it on a little thick just because I know he blocked me a long time ago haha. Spicing things up for the reader

Being bottom 3 in the league in xGF per game might make some worry that maintaining that .500 pace with volatile young goalies will be difficult.

Their roster is consistently close to the cap and yet so bad behind the top two guys. Every year I look at them and say that is a bottom three team plus the world's best two players

You took that line right out of my mouth Swap Greenway for JJP when it's late and you are down a goal or two, swap Kane for anyone else on planet earth when it's late and you're up a goal or two, swiss-army-knife line

Yeah, the team is sorely missing one bona-fide top 4 D that would make everything work better, and has one-too-many of the guys we need to limit TOI for, but who are otherwise fine. Although IMPO we are about to trade for Hanifin so. (no inside info, just being optimistic today) And even then for depth purposes I'd be loathe to trade one of the guys we probably should, Clifton/EJ/Joki being first off the bench is elite depth

If I was GM, I don't know that today is the day I'd fire Don. The replacement I am looking for is almost certainly not available right now. As a fan I am slowly coming to the conclusion that we probably need to do it, that he's hit his ceiling with these guys. But "fire the coach" sounds really harsh for the way I feel about him. I do not discount the gargantuan effort it took to get this team and these individual players from the 18 game losing streak, and being completely lost in development, to where we are today both as a team and as individuals. That is a real skill, it is an extraordinary skill, and I would be the first guy on the phone with a team in a similar situation, like the Sharks, to tell them - if you want to rejoin the league, and don't hire Donny, I don't know what you're doing. He is the first coach to put this team on a real trajectory since Lindy. He poured a lot of hours into fixing this team and we have a Hart-caliber center, a reborn Rasmus & Casey, and many more players to watch because of it. The next step is of a completely different sort, and the things I see tell me he probably won't wind up being the right guy for that step, but that doesn't erase the things he was the right guy for. That being said, since GM-Flagg isn't firing him right now, I will hope the rest of the season proves those instincts wrong. They have plenty of runway to do it. I still think our assistant coaches are not up-to-par and held onto out of loyalty more than coaching ability And I have no ill-will towards fans who think they've reached this conclusion today and want it to happen today - contrary to what certain ice-cleaning machines would tell you, you are not a bad person for wanting your team to be as good as it possibly can be right away

Reasonable concerns. If I see this sign of life from Kevyn though, I'm not in a position to be super picky right now. A GM who cares about this season is a GM whose moves I can support.

JJP's ceiling is Kucherov Small chance he gets there but it's possible. He's good. FWIW I said the same thing about Olofsson lol

If kevyn pulled off Crouse cozens Kane I'd publicly renounce all doubt

No we don't, we have zero prospects who are ready to be top/middle six wingers on a playoff team this year or next. Tuch Skinner JJP, Quinn hopefully but this year might be a get right year with that injury, and then nothing. Nobody is ready to fill the next two spots. Greenway sure

Again, analytics are cool but they cannot catch individual decision-making. He is a tick slow and more than a handful of times per game it causes the Sabres to go from a structured breakout with firm possession, to a 50/50 battle that he rarely wins. I still think he's an NHLer. I think if he was getting 16 mins per night on pairing three he would be smoother, fresher, more willing to trust his instincts. Maybe that's about to happen

BTW don't worry this isn't mean, I'm pretty sure both of the posters mentioned have blocked me so they won't see it

I'm all in on Kane now actually. Just to get the PP right. If adams has something else ready to show Kane and the fans we are all-in, I will be the first to thank him and sing his praises for the moves. Looks like something I would offer for Hanifin or Lindholm (before getting hung up on?)

At the current rate this should be complete by 2025 then

I wish I had time/access to film. It's not always obvious in the flow of play, he doesn't make flagrant gaffs like Rasmus did. It's little things where you can say "well he was swallowed up by the forecheck and had no outlets," but he did. He didn't put the trigger. Like you say and like I said, it's all part of being a young defenseman, but it's hurting the team more than anyone will admit and more than the stats can track.

And my god, I hate garbage, perpetual, incessant tone policing from a guy who has no ***** clue how to analyze a hockey team and is constantly nagging at people who wind up objectively correct year after year. Seven years ago on this forum I was giving 75 point predictions for the season while people like you nagged me and complained how negative I was while predicting a playoff birth. You are always wrong. We are not the problem, we are right. Take my post and break it down and tell me what is wrong, because I promise I am 10x better than you at watching hockey. Can you create one post in your entire life that isn't whining about what fans post, poorly generalizing and completely missing their point, and cracking horrible jokes with stupid laugh emojis? Holy ***** I thought SDS was the worst poster here but congrats, it's you by a mile.

I don't care which metrics say what, either - Owen Power is completely overwhelmed with simple tasks. He is struggling badly with the speed of the game. This is not a sweeping condemnation - I would expect nothing less. Hedman looked worse at his age. I think he's going to have a very similar career to Victor. But right now I can't escape what I'm seeing - a player who has to think a split second too long so that the passing lane closes, the shooting lane closes, the forechecker can engage and turn possession into a 50-50 battle. This is happening 2/3rds of the times he touches the puck. It's a significant contributor to the fact that our transition offense has been bone-dry this year compared to last. My IRL friends that have picked up the Sabres in recent years text me every day telling me how we should try putting Savoie or Kulich in the lineup, giving more responsibility to Benson, stuff like that. Completely brainwashed - look at Casey and Tage (and Dahlin to an extent). We need a roster full of players who are as established as these two, and more. These two had to grind for half a decade to get to this point. The road ahead of Power, Benson, Savoie, Kulich, to get to this degree of usefulness (where they are no longer seeing things for the first time, have man-strength, and have a bank of experience they can refer to whenever anything comes up), is LONG. It may take 5+ years for all of them to be a genuine HELP to the Sabres in the way that this Sabres team needs - the way Tuch helps them, the way Drury or Numminen helped them years ago. And Quinn, JJP, Cozens aren't much further down the path. It's great to have an organization with good players at all ages/levels of development like this, but not when the roster is so unbalanced towards inexperience. If I hear the words "blocking a prospect" one more time I'm going to blow a gasket. Nobody is blocking these guys, and you could safely supplement this team with real help for entire contracts before these kids are 1.) capable of leaving the organization and 2.) capable of contributing to a playoff run in a meaningful way. If you wait for the young names to get to where Tage, Dahlin and Casey are right now, you aren't going anywhere ever, because they become the disgruntled Eichels/Reinharts long before the next version of Tage/Casey/Dahlin themselves are ready to be good. The cycle is literally identical and Kevyn needs to start prioritizing real balance yesterday. The team is walking on the edge of a cliff with this *****. You can't keep pretending to be a real team without causing damage that will escalate exponentially just like last time

I watched him every second of his shifts, since I was there. He cannot play NHL hockey and you can't spend any time pretending he can right now. He's gotta cook more. He gave away offensive zone possession three times in one shift with variations of blind passes - the game is just too fast for him right now Krebs and Okposo are a separate question, and I had answers to it back when there was time to solve roster problems. It's not my fault Kevyn went on vacation instead

Evaluating Granato's past 97 games is what brings me to agree with OP, not tonight's specifically Hockey coaches get fired, it's what they do. This guy doesn't have another level to hit with these players. They are no longer collectively dragging each other to career seasons, and all their warts are as bad as ever.

This is the best decision Adams has made since the Greenway trade. Don't waste time, it was obvious that he is not fully cooked yet

It really is cathartic to rip into these guys, I'm sorry to Zamboni and all other posters who don't like it. It has been too much for too long.

The thread coming to be is an important milestone, but the ones in the past have stayed up for a long time before the firing occurs in many instances This is a football phrase for a reason - one bad month can doom you to 5 months of hectic chasing that wears you out by spring. This is what happened last year. Everyone was hurt at the end because they had to play them 28 hard minutes to squeak points out against bad teams to not fall further below .500 months before. You need to be getting points at every stage of your season

Kyle and Zemgus were as big a whiff as any move/lack of move this summer too. They have fallen off a cliff. They get sent out there to play defense - and it sure is all they do! Putting them out after we score, or after the other team scores, simply guarantees that the momentum will go towards the other team, they will get a nice shift to practice their offensive zone play

Easy - they're worse at hockey by a fair amount. I did not see them come close even once, without exaggeration

I was at the game last night so I'll throw my summary for that one in here too - they played exactly the same. It was the worst looking team I had seen live since they bussed us up from St. Bonaventure to watch a tank team lose by 5 to Nashville. The worst game I'd ever seen a skater have in person to that point had been Michael Frolik - but Cozens took the mantle. Couldn't see a thing, couldn't do a thing, and away from the puck, spent more time struggling to stand up/falling down than actually trying to make a play. It was baffling. But they woke up enough for the third period and got enough bounces, and Levi stood on his head, so they escaped with 2 points. I was going to let the ugliness in their game slide because of that, but then they looked exactly the same today. Sabres fans have quite a knack for finding a franchise that makes "questionable moves" in the offseason, making fun of them for it, and then having to enjoy watching that team completely embarrass their team on the ice. This happens EVERY SINGLE YEAR. It is insane behavior. WE are the joke, folks. Our team, not theirs, not Boston, not whoever else we have mocked throughout the years. Their teams still make ours look like it doesn't belong in the same league. We've lost three in a row to this "over the hill" team that needs to get on with rebuilding already. And they put us to shame - they are faster than us, they play our game better than us, they grind us into dust. We cannot complete a pass and cannot stop them from looking like the Harlem Globetrotters. We have not made an opponent team look the way Pittsburgh made us look tonight, in living memory. We've had good, great games, even this year. But we have not made a team so incapable of completing passes. This is not a good hockey team. It's not close. I don't even know where to begin. It sounds harsh - it's not. The good things about last year are vanished. The only good thing about this year has started to get scored on. We are apparently all-in on Patrick Kane at every level of the organization, owner included. What are we even doing here. I am losing my mind.