TrueBlueGED

Yes. Dahlin is an immediate upgrade in the top-4, I don't think Reinhart plays the first 3 months like an AHLer, Sheary is a nice middle-six upgrade, I think Eichel keeps getting better, and I think Mittelstadt improves the team. I also think the goaltending gets better. I don't expect it to be great, but if it just goes to league average, that's 12 fewer even strength goals allowed, which is good for a few wins.

Your subsequent points are fair and well-taken, but this one really isn't. How ROR was relied upon is a coaching choice. It didn't have to be that way merely because he exists.

They're not just a collection of friends singing kumbaya in the locker room, either. Some of the best teams in history across all sports have had guys who didn't get along off the ice.

For sure. Edmonton used those picks to carry them to the promised land! Errrrrr, maybe not.

No, but I think that's how it starts. It's definitely ugly for awhile, but continued engagement, even if the engagement is high-strung, is a necessary first step to improving overall discourse. About the only ones I don't think should be given the time of day are the rabid conspiracy theorists of both extremes.

Sure, I am too. There's no reason not to give him every opportunity to succeed, and every reason to try to get him to at least be serviceable. But much like Moulson, I don't expect him to be able to take advantage of it. I don't think he's Moulson-level finished, but I think he's "I don't want him anywhere near my best players at even strength" finished.

I think this sums it up nicely. I don't like the overall direction he's going in, but I'm not going to fire him for it, either. I'll happily fire him for failing to execute it, of course. But we won't know that for another couple of seasons.

Risto in 2 years.

Yea, it sucks, but he's cheaper than our other bad contracts at least :)

I'll defend Botterill here. I may not love his timeline for rebuilding the team, but given what it is, it makes little sense to give up assets to move bad contracts that will naturally expire before we're ready to contend for much of anything.

Definitely didn't expect that. But finishing in last place doesn't in and of itself mean we should move one of the few good players we have for lesser pieces. Is this similar to the "300 hockey people" who would have made the Hall-Larsson trade? FWIW, reaction seems to be quite mixed if you wander outside of the old school hockey reporters. Of course, moving a player because "something had to be done" isn't the firmest of logic either. I've come to accept that Botterill felt he had to move O'Reilly for the sake of the room, but I don't think that means I should roll over and play dead and think it was the right move. A whole lot of GMs have made "culture change" trades that have failed spectacularly because all they did was lose talent.

Would you mind expanding upon this? I'm not sure what you're getting at with it, and don't want to type out a full response if it's not going to address what you're saying. The narrative around the Hall trade was full of leadership stuff, and Chiarelli was heavily reported to want to shake up the room and "hand the reigns" to McDavid. But I'm not sure if that's what you meant. 1) I may well underrate the on-ice value of off-ice chemistry (note: I absolutely value on-ice chemistry, I just don't think it comes from the locker room). But, it's equally plausible that others over-value the locker room when overall team talent is poor. If the Sabres had a playoff roster and still managed to finish dead last, I'd be much more amenable to the "there had to be a shakeup" line of reasoning. However, the roster stunk, and results were pretty commensurate with what should have been expected with sub-replacement level goaltending. 2) Yes. As I explained in #1, I think this team needs an influx of talent, not a shakeup. More generally, I'd rather not make any changes at all than make a bad change. Is this an argument for the trade? Because freeing up cap space to pay Lucic market value has been a pretty abject disaster for Edmonton.

Thing is, his decline in play pre-dated the injury. He's on a 3-year slide now.

Somewhere, GoDD just felt nether-region movement.

I think you're underestimating Rodrigues. I know raw point totals aren't everything, but he had 25 points in 48 games. Berglund had 26 in 57, and Sobotka had 31 in 81. Rodrigues also posted a relative CF% of 3.7. Berglund's was 1.3 and Sobotka's was -3. I know the Blues being a better team matters for those possession numbers, but I'd bet on Rodrigues having a better statistical season offensively than either of them. He's not an ECHL player.

Please don't construe my previous post as lack of sympathy. My dad suffers from IBS, and it sucks.

I've got nothing else.

I'll be completely honest: I mostly stopped paying attention after the part that demonstrated a lack of understanding for how the cap works. I probably shouldn't have, but I definitely did :lol:

I was simply saying you made a point based on a misunderstanding of the cap. Make the cash argument if you want, but if Pegula doesn't care, I certainly don't.

1) I do think he would have if he could have. That he couldn't is one of the prime reasons myself and others hate the deal. Unlike Kane, who was poised to walk as a UFA, we had no compelling reason to have to move O'Reilly for poor value just to get some value. 2) That's not how the cap works. We could have paid O'Reilly the bonus, then traded him, and had him on our cap for zero dollars. Edit: I'm going to keep going. 3) This notion that O'Reilly mailed it in is such complete nonsense. He had his best statistical season as a Sabre and second best ever. 4) You could use the "they finished in last place in spite of him" argument for literally the entire roster. It's so weak. By this reasoning we should move every single player because they were part of a last place team and couldn't lead us higher than that.

We know what it is: being played like Drew Doughty when he's really a 2nd pairing defenseman. This notion, however, leaves Paul Hamilton mystified, so he claims Risto to be uncoachable.

I agree, and nothing more than average goaltending accomplishes it. Sort of like how Price being healthy made the Canadians good again for a season...but the NHL punditocracy attributed it to jettisoning the "problematic" PK Subban for the leadership of Shea Weber. Then one more season passes, and they go in the toilet. I worry the same kind of evaluative mistake is happening here.

Well, that's way more than I expected from an in-jest comment (I hope you took it that way). Stick with it! Suffering forever makes the winning more satisfying when it comes.

I think our best bet is to have Berglund play ROR's minutes with a couple of our numerous throw-away wingers (and get crushed while doing so) and allow Mittelstadt and Eichel to get oodles of offensives usage. Girgensons-Berglund-Sobotka: Go and get creamed against the best in the world so our other players can put up fun offensive numbers. We'll be bad, but might be entertainingly bad.

Yet another blow to the "Stan Bowman knows what he's doing because Cups" line of thought.