TrueBlueGED

This is true. But in addition to Friedman, we had our own @tom webster tell us they knew they had to fix 2C and add another top-6 forward. I suspect they wanted to do more but just couldn't get it done. Why not? Could be any number of things, but I don't think Botterill deserves any benefit of the doubt.

Not only that, I'd like about 3 more of him.

Their GM did upgrade the defense. He brought in Muzzin and Barrie. Maybe would have been better off with Gardiner than Barrie, but still.

I have a radical 2-step process to improve the team: 1) Keep the good players, such as Reinhart. 2)Trade the bad players people think are good and trade the young players who are currently bad but have enough upside to return value in a trade.

At what point do the Pegulas stop being considered rookie owners? They own two professional franchises and have had the Sabres for almost a decade.

Burakovsky has 10. Plenty of forward talent out there on the cheap who could have helped, and Botterill gave us...Jimmy Vesey. 0 goals and 2 assists. It's not Jimmy's fault he's skating with Mittelstadt...but still.

Yup. Botterill dropped the ball. Again.

They've all learned they can't tell the truth publicly. Urgency isn't the problem, but what are they going to say? "These 7 teammates are trash and must be replaced?"

A better GM might have answers.

Right? Boudreau isn't young, but he's far from a coaching dinosaur.

Dahlin is on his ELC and makes less than Scandella, so not sure why he got roped into a money-driven comment. Anyway, no, it's not Eichel's responsibility to make bad players good from the bench. He's off the ice for 40 minutes per game, the other guys matter. He's leading the team in offense by a mile and on pace for 97 points. Vesey has 2 points and 0 goals. It's absolutely the fault of Vesey and the rest of the supporting cast who stink.

Yup. And fans are still going to contort themselves to find ways to blame him for not lifting the team up.

No, but they're not the disaster the Sabres have been, and they've been clearly better under the Pegulas than under Wilson his last 15 or so years.

Indeed. The Pegulas' ownership of the Sabres has clearly been a disaster on the ice. But if they were the problem, you'd think it would translate to their other pro sports franchise.

I disagree. Narrative can be a simple opinion, I suppose, but I don't think that's how it's used. When opinions are presented as fact, or when facts are twisted or manufactured to fit an opinion, that's when "narrative" gets used.

Well, I'm not sure we're the worst team in the league, but you can certainly argue we're currently playing the worst hockey.

Maybe it's because the roster your guy Botterill assembled is a roster without a winning combination? Krueger should absolutely change up the top two lines, but it really won't matter all that much. The team needs forward talent just as badly as it did before the season began.

I'm pretty sure the apocalypse will come before Krueger swaps Olofsson and Skinner.

Jim Mora playoffs gif

My guess is most NHL players think Gaudreau is hard to play against.

Correct. All of Botterill's trades post-ROR have been picks/prospects going out, not NHL talent. Doesn't mean Botterill is gunshy, but the trade dynamics aren't good comparisons. My suspicion for awhile has been Botterill learned the right lesson but is applying it to the wrong player(s). So I don't think he's afraid to get burned (though I can appear that way), I just think he's sticking to his guns on players who just aren't as valuable as he wants them to be.

Mittelstadt. Lots of folks around here also spent summer telling me McCabe is a legit top-4 defenseman on a good team. With his contract, if there are any GMs who share that assessment, then he'd have some value. Lastly, if Botterill goes all season (or until the deadline) again without a significant trade and we end up with another 78-ish point clunker, he should be fired.

Lamar is quite a bit more accurate than Vick and better at working the pocket, which is maybe what they're getting at.

This is the point. It's laughable to want to add Pominville to an NHL roster. That it's not laughable to discuss it in the context of the Sabres? Well, that really says it all. The same thing that happened to Tampa's poor start: a team's true quality may not be evident after a few games, but it will be over a longer stretch. Bad teams can play well and good teams can play poorly, but very rarely will they keep doing those things.