Randall Flagg

It's unbelievable how bad Taylor Hall is. What the hell is going on with that

I will say that when they did a Beyond the Blue and Gold about Dahlin and it showed Casey playing fortnite or whatever, I was impressed by Casey's posture

I live in perpetual fear of my back and shoulders getting screwed up. Was sedentary with bad posture for lots of years

What does it mean? Why can't Sam Reinhart and Taylor Hall create 3 on 2s and get shots on goal?

Can anyone remember the last time the Sabres turned a 3 on 2 into a non-embarrassing shot on goal, let alone a goal?

There have been suggestions of getting old players back in town to talk to the team, show them what it was like, show them buffalo's history, stemming from Hamilton's comments about players having "no respect" for the team's history. I don't think that addresses the big on-ice problems obviously, but I do like the idea of out-of-the box things like that which attempt to spark/foster something again, helping to patch the soul of the franchise back together a bit.

I'm not as down on Housley as I was towards the end of his tenure. I don't think he was a bad coach. Maybe not the right coach at the right time for that team, but I think it's more than that. I understand the reservation against trading these guys considering our recent history with trades like that. We need to see much better GMing for it to work. For some reason I think Kevyn can do it.

The number of "little things," from puck placement on passes, to which lanes to put sticks in, to anything remotely resembling cohesion, spacing on the rush etc. that has survived coaches that try to address them in practice is stupefying. And the claim cannot be made that our coaches have just not known HOW to do that, we don't know what they did to try and address it, we don't know what other coaches on good teams do. Rodrigues is hardly Crosby, and I remember making a dumb amount of posts pointing out his spatial awareness instincts and how rare it is for us, but the things that guy was doing (and failing to do) because of those instincts and the amount of space he and his teammates knew how to create and manipulate was crazy, and we could never create the same circumstances for him or anyone else. Nobody here can do it. The Sabres are always being squeezed out with no safe outlets. ALWAYS. It doesn't matter who. It doesn't matter where. They get squeezed out, cannot breathe for how tight their circumstances is, and then other teams have 2 options and 6 foot buffers of clean ice anytime they please. The degradation of hockey abilities that comes from playing on a team that has no experience with winning NHL hockey seems to be accelerating, and I don't think that keeping the nucleus of this team together gives us enough to work with, either asset wise or cap space wise, to address this by supplementing veteran leaders and teachers that are also good. There's something on the micro level that seems to be getting worse in all players that grace this team, no matter where they are coming from. I now believe that we cannot add a critical mass of "fix" to these issues without removing a substantial part of what is there to create assets. I don't think it's any one skater's fault, and I think we have quite a few guys that could be important pieces on contending teams. I think the path for US to get to that spot will be quicker and easier if we move on from the bulk of those that only know Buffalo hockey, and use what's left to create a new brand of Buffalo hockey. It's dangerous, but it's different in spirit from the tank. It requires heady scouting, you're not going to be plucking a team's Couturier all the time, but you might get their Laughton, and it might work out. And given what you're dealing, you WILL get talent. I would be sick imagining Jason Botterill attempting something like this. I think Kevyn already has it fleshed out in high detail.

We had 4 NHL RHD last year, and a dumb coach and a dumb GM. Aside from that, there is nothing alarming about Borgen's development path/curve, and these are absolutely insane stretches to make

I promise you I'm not deciding this because they've lost 15 straight instead of 5 straight, or something like that. There is nothing to gain continuing down this path

How come?

Woah. That is such a Miller goal lol

The Buffalo Sabres (not their fans) deserve this, honestly. You reap what you sow. We made a mockery of the game for two years, and weren't smart enough to figure out a way to right the ship afterwards. This is entirely because of decisions made in top positions within the organization, and the fallout will continue until something changes up there. I am ready to move on from Jack, from Sam, and from Dahlin. Not because everything is tainted and we need an exorcism, but the symbolism there is a compelling narrative to bring along with it. Put these guys on organizations that can show them the right way, and then let's build one ourselves right here. In doing so, the same mistakes as before cannot be made. There will be a lot of younger pieces coming back in these deals. Some of them, along with other assets and cap space, will need to be spent on identifying proper veteran players. Dylan Cozens has a lot of excellent instincts. He "plays the game the right way." We need vets who do the same thing, and have found success in this league doing so, that can show him how to use those instincts to win hockey games. We need to fight, scratch and claw to find the right players to do this. And we need the right coach to lead them out. If we go this path, given Gallant's story in Vegas, I wonder if he wouldn't be the perfect fit. I'm ready for it. We can't continue down the path we started in 2015, or 2018, or 2020. These players can't handle it anymore, and neither can the fans.

And yet there are still some really nifty things from all of them here and there I love how hard Cozens works to present himself open to teammates. This will be a big deal when we are fixing our transition and offensive plays and defensive outlets

Sad how rough cozens mitts and Bryson have looked lately

Reminds me of that bills play where brown probably could have taken a screen to the house, but he lost balance and slowed down when an OL tried to give him a boost

He's been a bad defender his whole career haha. He is terrible now. We can talk about this because it's very alarming

Twelfth time's the charm? What are the odds that we fix this kid ?

The kid is deteriorating by the day. What is the path out?

I think we are closer to this cliff than you're willing to admit.

I count 5 posts in this thread that are in full belief that this rumor states that 4 firsts means 4 picks in some future drafts' first rounds, because that is a reasonable interpretation from the garbage article's title. You aren't one of them, but that belief has crept into and even driven some of the 3 times this forum has talked about this rumor

A bit of a shame. He's not lighting it up or anything, but seems like he'd be a homegrown forward we'd enjoy watching

Jason just declined to sign him?

Hawks fans seem to be enjoying Brandon Hagel. Why is he no longer in our organization?

All reasonable. I don't think there is a completely rational argument to be made to expose either Joki or Risto over Borgen. I'm all instinct on this one. My instinct is that he'd be one that got away that we'd be absolutely kicking ourselves over.