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TrueBlueGED

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Everything posted by TrueBlueGED

  1. Not out of the realm of possibility. All it would take really is for Ullmark to start playing like Hutton.
  2. I think it's entirely possible Botterill sold ownership on a slow build...and that sales job does zilch to insulate him from poor results. Darcy Regier sold them on suffering, and then got fired when there was, in fact, suffering. I don't think Botterill is toast, but I absolutely do not believe he's safe with another bad season.
  3. For sure. Good GMs can make bad trades and bad GMs can make good trades. But looking at the Sabres record under Botterill, I'm comfortable calling him a bad GM ?
  4. If there's one lesson NHL GMs should have learned from the Vegas expansion draft, it's that paying the expansion team not to take players isn't a good use of assets. And the last thing in the world the Sabres need is a draft pick in the late teens to 20s. At the rate things are going, Jack will have a broken back by the time that player even sniffs the NHL.
  5. Taylor Hall was had for Adam freaking Larsson. We got Skinner for a bag of pucks. St. Louis got O'Reilly for a bag of pucks. Brayden Schenn wasn't prohibitively expensive for St. Louis either. Good to great players get traded every season. Every season. Find the bad GMs and trade with them and/or pounce on buy low opportunities. I'm not asking for a McDavid trade here, and neither is anybody else. Trades for good players are not the white whale, they're common. Just have to have a good GM to get it done, which we probably don't have. I'd have traded the Mittelstadt pick, I'd have traded the Cozens pick, and I'll happily trade our 1st this June. Jack Eichel is a top-5 forward in the league and in his prime. Skinner is 27. Reinhart is a good player in his prime. Dahlin is cheap. If this isn't the time to pay for current wins instead of possible NHL players 4 years down the line, when is?
  6. I certainly don't expect anything significant. Not sure anyone does, really. But he's gotta find out a way to salvage the season or there will be (more) pitchforks and torches.
  7. The only person who thinks this qualifies as doing something is Darcy Regier.
  8. Jason Botterill does, in fact, still draw breath. That's all this series of moves means to me.
  9. What message? That complaining will get you sent to a better team?* Botterill would have to disconnect his cell service to avoid calls from the agents for every player on the team. *relative to the competition, of course. I'm not suggesting the Amerks could beat the Sabres.
  10. The problem isn't just that he failed to upgrade the forward group, it's that he probably legitimately believed that adding Johansson and Vesey did significantly upgrade it.
  11. Of course we didn't lose because of karma or the fight. If you think I believe that, then you're taking my post too literally. I'm just saying it'd be karmic justice if we lost because our inept do-nothing GM caused a loss by actually doing something (icing an AHL puncher to make someone like McCabe feel pressured to drop 'em). The notion just amused me, is all. Fair. Taylor Hall?
  12. I'm saying it'd be utterly hilarious if after all of the clamoring about needing more toughness to win, that a blatantly manufactured display of fake toughness gets celebrated...and ultimately leads to losing a game.
  13. It's meaningless. It's no more necessary or useful than Gaustad fighting Lucic weeks (months? I honestly don't remember the timeline) after the fact. It shows nothing, does nothing, proves nothing.
  14. The fight McCabe instigated in response to a clean hit? If that's not Karma, I don't know what is.
  15. McCabe for Zajac (50% retained)? McCabe+ for Palmieri?
  16. You know the Sabres are in a bad stretch when the signing of a 27 year old AHL fighter with 0 NHL games played generates 5 pages (and counting) of discussion.
  17. Rookie GM Brandon Beane seems to be doing okay working with Pegula. I understand everyone's desire to default to experience, but really, just get the right guy.
  18. And this is the crux of it. Pegula gave Botterill discretion, and Botterill came to the conclusion that O'Reilly should be traded. That's all Thorny and I have been saying...Pegula may have placed the handcuffs on, but the ultimate decision to make the move was Botterill's. Assuming this played out as you described, Botterill could simply have planned to keep O'Reilly.
  19. Did this happen in January? Because O'Reilly's name was out there as available in the lead-up to the trade deadline. And if it was the Tim Horton's incident that was the catalyst, it you're telling me Pegula was willing to pay the bonus the next year, but not the year after? The idea that Pegula came down to Botterill during the middle of the season and said "trade that guy before July 1" is pretty weak to me. Especially when you consider Botterill has turned over 80% of the forward roster and brought in a single good player, tied himself to Housley after year 1, and grossly overrated Mitts....I'm just not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that the O'Reilly fiasco is Pegula's brainchild.
  20. Or Botterill could have decided that trading a Selke-caliber center was a bad idea and not tried to move him in the first place.
  21. Well if you ask plenty of fans this team's biggest issue is lack of grit....
  22. I like Larsson too! My point isn't that every single move Botterill has made is wrong, just that he's very much responsible for our current cap situation. He got us here with this roster through his own choices, so the fact a trade is financially challenging to execute doesn't exactly excuse his performance. If the best my GM can do with $5M is Jimmy Vesey and Jake McCabe, I want a different GM.
  23. Vesey and McCabe are his contracts. He ate Hunwick's salary to get Sheary. Girgensons, Larsson, and Rodrigues are also his contracts. I supported some of those signings, but all that combines to over $11 million in cap space, so let's not pretend he doesn't have a hand in this. He's also been mildly saved by LTIR for Hunwick and Sobotka, because if they weren't there, that'd be another $5.5M on bad hockey players.
  24. The problem with giving him another offseason is that much of the cap issue is his own fault. If he has another offseason of poor decisions, he isn't only flushing another year down the drain, he's making it harder for his successor to course correct.
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