Randall Flagg

Normally goalie situations are pretty rigid and so I understand that those problems can take a while to fix, but there are enough options in UFA that it's fair to place full expectations of completely fixed goaltending on Jason's shoulders for this offseason

I'm thinking take over the Pegulas as the eye in the sky, being the man the Gm reports to and keeping the organizational culture top notch

They are going to play Ullmark 55 games or more next year. Our outcomes next year will be equally as hindered by an offense that generates the fewest chances in the league (because you cannot assume scoring will greatly out produce this, it won't) as it will by the goalie getting the other 25 games

Whatever happens in the next year, hang onto this guy in some capacity

I'm not assuming it brings back trash. It's just not going to solve the team's problems unless it's a return that I'm not comfortable betting on getting. We have the fewest scoring chances in the nhl. Jack is like top 10 in scoring chance generation for all individual players, year in and year out. I don't need to elaborate further on that. Near peak Eichel isn't enough for what? Dragging a surrounding last place offensive roster to the playoffs? McDavid was the best skater in the league and couldn't do it with bad rosters either (in 16-17 they had a stable roster) until a teammate became MVP level. My entire point is that your "Jack isn't enough anyway" perspective hand waves everything actually important and relevant to winning hockey games. It's mediocre hockey analysis and mediocre contrarianism We are last place in generating scoring chances, this is as much of a priority as the guy who tends net for 30 games

Isn't that technically true in the regular playoffs? The teams will still likely wait

That trade defined the ensuing 3 - 5 seasons of the Sabres, in a negative way, and many of us saw that fact right away when the return scrolled across the screen, our caps-lock raging wasn't just uncalculated emotion. going for round two would be franchise suicide, unless you're getting the fairy tale return. I tip my cap to you if you trust Botterill or any Pegula selection with finding it

I'm not calling you an ROR trade defender, I'm saying that the logic you are employing is indistinguishable from what they were pushing. I'll go through it for you though, since you're asking, and viewing the chirp as fan-boying We had just finished dead last in the NHL. Lots of losing in the previous few years. No players on that team had had any success in Buffalo. Then, ROR's comments happened, and then the trade happened. The typical justification for people who were fine-to-happy with it was, "we didn't do any winning while he was here anyway, so what does it really matter?" I've put lots of work into articulating my problem with this, so I'll post an example, something I wrote about a year ago (from a 6,000+ word diatribe that remains unpublished, and whose cathartic nature allowed me to return to Sabrespace): "The first common argument to raise red flags sprang up as rumors of an O’Reilly trade began, whenever that was. “It’s not like we won anything with ROR here anyway.” This is a harmless thought from a fan, but if a GM were to possess it, it would be severely crippling to the team. It is well known that hockey is the ultimate team sport – you cannot pin your hopes on any one, or two, or even three players. To be successful, a team must be built with well-understood and aptly filled roles that work together to perform at a high level as a unit. When a team is bad, you cannot simply dismiss any single component as unnecessary because of team-level results. Squinting at a record, or even a string of bad seasons, from far away and hand-waving away losing a good player because of that is foolish. The Sabres were the worst team in the league in 2017-18 for a lot of reasons, understood and outlined by many smart people. No serious watching of the season would suggest that Ryan O’Reilly (or Jack Eichel, or Sam Reinhart, or in general any of the few good players we had) were a driving force for the bad record (which isn’t the same thing as saying that none of them disappointed in one way or another) – The Sabres’ depth scoring beyond their top six players was the worst in the league, because their depth forwards were simply dreadful. Their defense, especially when injuries hit, was pitiful. Their goaltending was awful by eye and even worse when you try to correct for shot quality – no surprise, as Robin Lehner was going through Hell. None of this should ever imply that things that weren’t bad can be tossed aside with no repercussions going forward, which is what “so what, we never did anything with him” implies. The team had one strength, and that was above-average top-6 centers. Jason spoke on numerous occasions, without being pressed, about how vital it was to have Jack and Ryan at the top of our center spine, and he was right. The reality of being fine with letting good pieces go because of team-level results is that for the fifth season after the tank ended, it is entirely possible that we have a grand total of two top-six NHL forwards in our entire organization." The beat hasn't gone on. Because indifference toward an asset tainted with losing created a hole that is present in our lineup today, two years later, that may well take years to fill. While some of those problems have slowly gotten fixed, the hole created by your logic applied elsewhere remains our biggest anchor today. When we made that mistake and followed that flawed logic-train the first time, we still had Eichel as a key piece to the most important group of players on any team, the centers. Meanwhile, the player went to a functional situation and literally immediately filled his trophy case with trophies this team has never seen. The exact same idea is being put forward by you - a glossing over the intricacies of our on-ice ineptitude that has plagued different areas of the team for years, asserting that the good parts don't seem to matter if we can't build around them right. Well, we've seen what happens when a loser, cancerous, maligned, never-won-anything asset that can play winds up in a competent organization - turns out, he can play, and win quickly. ROR taught us that we should probably fix the actual issues plaguing the team before making up buzzword ones. And Jack doesn't even have anywhere approaching the level of trashy rumor mongering about all that garbage that we had to endure with Ryan, suggesting that it'd be even less likely to work as a "fix" in "theory." It's not about old notions of a plan. It's acknowledging that years later we are dealing with a problem of our own creation, based on complete and meaningless fabrications of notions of a player's continual presence being some sort of degradation and underlying rot even if he's good, and we don't have a solution on the horizon. Why, then, does the idea that we should now do it again with an even better hockey player, with 0% of the rumors swirling around him as with Ryan, and leaving behind not an Eichel, but Cozens, Mitts, Lazar, and Asplund as the only centers in the organization remotely close to NHL duty, not deserve to be ground into the dust and spat on? Sure, if you can guarantee we get back a good return of NHL-proven players equal to or better than Eichel in total value, then go for it. But I said the same thing about ROR and we saw how that turned out, and how unlikely the "Forsberg return" will be. (Note - hindsight makes a lot of those trade proposals look awful, but at the time they were meant to symbolize packages of NHL impact players that will have equal or greater value to a team than a Selke caliber center). The reality is that if we are trading Eichel, we are probably getting a player a bit worse than Eichel, a player a lot worse than Eichel, and then a bevy of the prospects and picks we don't know how to develop and can't guarantee anything from, and will be forced to rely on them, further cementing the team's actual problem actually causing the actual losing. So the idea is stupid, and it's not as if we haven't thought through this enough to have anything more to offer than a reflexive "god no not my favowite pwayer!!" This conversation is two years old, and the response remains the same - the problems are easy to spot, meticulously documented and discussed, and most importantly, never improved upon during any of the offseasons Jack has been here, which has been noticed and precisely predicted by myself and many others every time the season starts, where we all get to watch the problems play out as expected. When you have a list of obvious problems, fix them, and don't shoot yourself in the foot giving yourself another spot to fill while assuming a cabal of UFA players and the five nickels you get back in the trade are enough to both cover it and then improve what the problems were. And if you do that, don't blame the guys who aren't the problem and talk yourself into thinking they don't really make a difference either because the team-level results aren't there, and they won't be. Or else round THREE of the cycle begins, while we are still healing the burns from the first go-around (I still feel the entirety of Buffalo blushing about its collective attitude and behavior about ROR and the trade in October-December 2018) The Sabres have no Eichel problem. They have a colossal management problem, a ***** awful roster because of it, and this may be the sign of an ownership problem.

People have seen Jack and Ryan hanging out together at various places over the last two years, including during all star weekend. They've always been buds

Not quite - a better qualifier would have been "An ROR trade lover's guide to applying ROR trade justification logic to other self-kneecapping possibilities, particularly those on a grander scale in more-dire surrounding roster circumstances, peer review pending: "

Yes, if only Jack's deficiencies weren't there, Murray and Jason's garbage teams would have won and they wouldn't have had to be ousted

This season, and therefore offseason, is not just about jason saving his job. We all have something big to lose here from how this reads to me

Risto with a direct response to Crusader the SS poster

I am more grateful for Jack and his on and off ice efforts and representation of the team and city with each passing day

Skinner's cap hit is gross but he's gonna score big goals for us throughout the duration of it, so I will just pretend we are paying 6.5 for Skinner and 2.5 for someone we bought out or something

Gonna take a break from busting Chad's balls because this is exactly what I tried and failed to look up yesterday. I didn't realize jason tried to claim the Oreilly move opened up cap for the skinner trade. His cap space claims are disengenuous . He either thinks we are dumb or doesn't care about us because he knows Terry and Kim are dumb

If I trade Sam, it's because I'm building a blockbuster. A lot more will leave with him Sam, 7 overall, Montour, and Mitts for Monahan and Gaudreau and Bennett or something

-> guys you already have -> Reinhart, Olofsson, Zemgus, Larsson Yeah, I'm comfortable blowing a bunch of it on guys we already have haha

That seems pretty typical compared to offseasons in which we were able to comfortably add players while signing Jack and Skinner to deals, and adding Skinner in the first place, no? It feels like this year is not unique for Jason in terms of cap space when you account for how few players are signed, and yet the phrasing of Wawrow's (curiously toned) questions, and in Jason's outlook, makes it seem like he wants to pass it off as part of the plan or something, like the pain of his tenure has been justified

If you plug in a realistic number for Samson and Olofsson and any other RFAs, and assume we keep Larsson/Zemgus or wind up with their equivalent in those spots, how much more cap space do we have this offseason than we did with similarly-full rosters each of the last three years?

True, except if That's what's so painful about the last two offseasons or so, Jason just has to make the move. Addto a deal until it's completed. Be smart. And stay away from the obvious players we see too many of in our middle and bottom six. Like, move a D, the first rounder, and Mitts, and whatever else it may take, to get Good 2C. Keep your fourth line intact, they have roots here and you have cap space and a real plan. find one more good but not great forward. Get a backup that you are comfortable giving 35 games. Several are available. Skinner - Jack - complimentary good but not great forward Olofsson - Good 2C - Reinhart Johansson - Kahun/Cozens - Kahun/Cozens/Tage Good 4th line D minus one RHD average goaltending. This team can start out hot and would inspire belief that they can finish 82 games with a good record, because this team simply CAN finish 82 games with a good record. It doesn't have to be about hopes and wishes and best case scenarios. Just have your first good offseason (it doesn't even have to be the best offseason in the league that year or anything! Just make it good rather than awful or mediocre!) and we can have a team that is finally good, without reservations, asterisks, qualifications. A good team. A team we don't have to hope about - it will simply be good at hockey. The problem is, I'm hearing "Tage, Mitts, and Cozens" waaaaaaaaaaay too much outta his mouth for this early in the offseason. I'm scared of Olofsson - Eichel - Reinhart Skinner - Mitts/Cozens - Tage/Vesey-esque addition Johansson - Mitts/Cozens - Kahun Simmonds - Asplund - Kyle Vesey/Lazar jam-packed D Hutton again This team is not good, and would rely on four different prayers to have a hope at being good. The difference is entirely in Botterill's choices, and he has made 6 choices lending to bad lineups for every choice he's made lending to good ones

Just panicked and checked Frolik's contract status Eh, GA had said he'll bail if we miss the playoffs. Itll just be triumphcommunes, not plural people ?

Yeah, rather than letting a player organically grow into a role and be good each step of the way, you place them artificially where it makes sense in your head, and react like a glacier to what you see Connor, Point, Cirelli, Johnson, Palat, Vanek, Roy, vs Grigs, Casey, Tage, I pray not Cozens

Without PEDs my guess is you can do a max of ~12 pounds of pure muscle with dedicated training geared not towards athletic performance but hypertrophy, along with rigorous diet enforcement Subtract 3-5 lbs each ensuing year And tage isn't bodybuilding and we are talking 3-4 months