etiennep99

The Oilers had: 1. A bunch of immensely talented players 2. Speed and agility 3. Green-light to go on the offensive 4. Fantastic East-West game. 5. Good to great shooters (Kurri, Gretzky) 6. Played almost as units ala the Russians or Red Wings 5 man Russian unit from days of yore. Today, all we hear about is playing a safe North-South game. Boring. I know that players, goalies, defense are all much bigger and better. Still, I think that if the Oilers were around today they would still be great.

The point was that in the tank years, they were the entertainment. The Sabres suck on the ice, AND off the ice, entertainment wise. (RJ is still great. I actually like Dan Dunlevey. He's no RJ, but who is? That Philly game that was (cough) moved (not) to 1520, I had to listen to the Flyers broadcast; their play-by-play guy was annoying.) Also, for psychological reasons too complex to detail, I believe that personality is an excellent reflection of intelligence. Sure, Rainmen exist. Maybe GMJB is one. Who hired Nolan and GMTM, Pat LaLaLaLaFontaine. Pat was smart. He was a super-star. He is doing well in NYC working for the NHL. Pat had personality. His emotion and drive were key elements to his ALL STAR success. JB the player never lived up to expectations. His claim to fame was working as an NHL assistant negotiator and for helping the Penguins some. The Amerks are better this year. Kriscuolo was a good find. But many of his imports are 25ish or older; they are not real prospects anymore. My biggest problems with GMTM were his drafting. He was supposed to be a draft guru. I coughed when he drafted Reinhart over Draisaitl. I choked when he drafted Nylander.... I was never a HUGE ROR fan. I didn't understand all of the praise and worship. I can still hear in my head the one WGR broadcast where Shoop and Bulldog are raving about ROR just before the trade. No doubt, he's very good all around player. But he's not Anze Kopitar carry the team to success good. GMTM won that trade, no doubt....I didn't care for the Kane trade. I had visions of Myers, Risto, and Zadorov towering over everyone in the league. That seemed to be Darcy's plan. Tim blew it up. OK. tl;dr...yada yada yada.

During the tank years, having Ted Nolan and GMTM was FUN. They were the only life in the party. Botterill is so bland. GMJB has NO personality. GMDR had more personality than GMJB. Gerry Meehan was a freakin' lawyer, but he helped Mogilny defect and got us Hasek. But that seems to be the pattern: big highs and huge lows. Imlach - crazy outspoken a WINNER Anderson - Who? Bowman - tough and benighted, got us some good talent, but it never worked out Meehan - a lawyer, yuck..but did kinda OK Muckler - Experienced, insightful, way over-reliant on washed out players (Grant Fuhr for Andreychuck, Puppa, AND a #1 pick. WTF?) Regier - bland, timid, but somehow got things down until the end Murray - crazy, shoots from the hip. Hey, even Doug Whaley wanted to have a beer with the dude. Botterill - ugh. Back to boring, boring, boring. Mechanical, monotone, formulaic. His formula for success had better work!

What we have learnt is that Tanking was a solution in a bygone era. Today, there's no guarantee of 1st (or even 2nd) overall. Reinhart has been surpassed by a dozen players drafted after him. We just saw Ehlers last night. Eichel is good ($10M/year good??), but we missed out on McDavid. McDavid is great, but where is Edmonton? No ONE player can save a team....And while I'm here, Matt Barzal, Brock Boeser, and Zach Warenski all are great players drafted well after Eichel. [i will openly admit it. I fell for the tanking is good jingle too.] No, it takes a whole team to win. You don't need just one or two star players, you need a bunch. Guy Lafleur had a boatload of talent around him. Mike Bossy had Trottier and Potvin. Gretzky had Kurri, Messier, Anderson, & some lame skating guy named Coffey. Pittsburgh the last 2 years: Crosby, Malkin, Letang, and oh, their leading scorer this year Kessel. It takes good drafting (and some key trades). With GMTM, we were sold a bill of goods. GMTM was supposed to be some genius at evaluating talent. Where are Fasching and Deslauriers? [OK. Deslauriers has sorta broken out this year.] But only his 1st rounders have made it so far. Nylander was the _wrong_ pick in 2016 and is a bust as far as I can tell. Trade him before everyone else figures out the same. They are saying that 2018 might be the deepest draft since 2003. Unless we get the chance to draft Dahlin, we should find a way to trade down for a ton more picks and pray to God that GMJB knows how to evaluate talent. Or....Eichel seems to be unhappy a lot. And $10M/year is TON of money. Why not trade him for a boatload of talent? Boston has a lot in the pipeline and seem to know how to draft (McAvoy anyone?? Drafted well after Nylander.) Just sayin' that it's an option. I know that this post will read by only 1/4 of the board as the rest seem to hate me or have set me to ignore...oh well.

Who goes without being replaced? 45 contracts TODAY. But, I was talking about going forward. Axioms: -Standard ELC are for 3 years. -Most decent RFAs get at least 1 renewal -Most decent Jr/College players get an initial contract So, Let's do a little contract review: Upcoming UFAs: Kane(LW), Pouliot(LW), Josefson(C/LW), Georges(D), Falk(D) Redmond(D), Nolan(F), Johnson(G) We all can agree that Georges can walk. Until the last few games, I would've been thrilled to part with Pouliot. But we do need LWs and depth D. Redmond strikes me as a good depth player. All of these (save) Georges would need to be replaced next year. We do need LWs. Who's going to replace Nolan? We still need 2 goalies. Upcoming RFAs: C.J. Smith(LW) looking good in Roch. Malone © not enough info to judge RFAs we most likely will want to renew: Fasching(RW), Baptiste(RW), Bailey(RW/LW) So, I can only say for sure that 1 UFA/RFA (Georges) won't be back. That leaves us with 44 contracts. Players to sign: Mittelstadt, Asplund, Borgen, Fitzgerald, Hagel, Budik, Glotov, Bryson(?) Weissbach (he was an over-ager but showing promise), Brown(?), Olofsson(?), Willman (?) I hope that we sign at least 8 of these guys *next* year. Davidsson & Kuukonen will sign in 2019. We still have next year's very likely HIGH 1st round draft pick. That's 11 players in the next year or two. Then we have Murray(nah), Nyberg(maybe) at college still. Laaksonen is a real wild card/project. Yes, we have a lot of contracts. We will need to make room for these players.

We have too many contracts (with players yet to sign such as Mittlestadt) and WAY too many RWs right now. Okposo, Pominville, Reinhart(can play C?), Bailey (can play LW), Nylander(can play LW), Baptiste, Fasching, Cornel(meh), Karabacek(meh) We could use more future looking draft picks. Just my 2 cents.

Harvard: Sean Malone, Kyle Criscuolo (one bright spot in Rochester this year), & Jimmy Vesey (that one got away & it was a really stupid trade in the first place because he had insisted that he was going to free agency regardless.) Boston Univ.: Jack Eichel & Evan Rodriguez Edmonton is dying for lack of scoring. Why not tempt them with Nick Baptiste? He played on Connor McDavid's line for part of a season in Erie(OHL). Then they can move Draisaitl back to 2C. Daisaitl was my preference in 2014 over the 2 Sams, FWIW.

More examples of players drafted from same team. Ullmark, Possler, & Olofsson: MODO , Bryson & Florentino play(ed) at Providence. Casey Fitzgerald & Chris Brown (Boston College), but they were probably also watching Ryan Fitzgeraldm Colin White (ouch!), and Alex Tuch. Cliff Pu is a similar case as above, EVERYONE has had eyes on London (OHL). Christian Dvorak, Mitch Marner, Matt Tkachuk, Max Jones, Olli Juolevi, & Victor Mete all played in London in 2015-2016. So, finding Cliff Pu wasn't exactly turning over every rock. There are probably other examples.

Kyle Turris didn't exactly light up the world for several years, and has had some down years. I'm not ready to call Rheinhart a bust quite yet. But, looking at 2007 draft, I see once again Buffalo's problems. In 2007. 1st: traded away. 2nd: TJ Brennen. But they could have had PK Subban ! Not only did Subban have more points, but he rocked the playoffs in the OHL his draft year. I think that we should have realized LONG ago that the Q doesn't provide as many quality players as the OHL and the WHL. ... 6th: Paul Byron: traded away after just 8 games in Buffalo. Observations: 1. They picked the wrong players, duh! 2. They have rarely struck riches in the later rounds. LAK got _both_ Alec Martinez and Dwight King in the 4th round, not to mention Wayne Simmonds in the 2nd. 3. They draft too many players from the same frickin' team. It's as if their scouts have never seen a plane, train, or automobile. Ex 2007: Jean-Simon Allard & TJ. Brennan from St. John's (Q). 2008: Luke Adam from St. John's (Q). Guhle from Prince Albert (W) Vojtech Budik from Prince Albert (W). Nothing against Budik, but we know that that in 2007 and 2008 better players were still available. (Derek Stepan, Hamonic, Scandella, Jimmy Hayes all drafted in the 2nd round after Luke Adam...not to mention the rest of the draft!)

​ ​I think that Andreychuk, Mogilny, and Vanek stand the test of time. Martin, Gare, Perreault, they all played during the 70's and 80's when goalies were pipsqueaks of 5'8" tall and skinny. Those goalies played a stand-up style that made along the ice goals really easy to score. Today, you gotta lift the puck most of the time. Gare and Martin, from highlights, scored a lot of goals from the boards with big slapshots. That just doesn't happen like it used to.....And where would Perreault, Martin, Robert, Gare (Gretzky) rate in today's game? Perreault seemd to float a lot (and was a smoker). Gretzky is one player who thrived on small, stand-up goalies who played long enough to see larger (but not HUGE) butterfly goalies arrive. Would be interesting to analyze his goals over time. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Who will be the next coaches? They often come out of the AHL. Back in the day, we developed great coaches/hockey minds in Rochester. Guys like Don Cherry, Lindy Ruff, Van Boxmeer, Mike Keenan, John Tortorella, Rick Dudley, etc. Where are they now? Who have we had coaching Rochester? (From Wikipedia:) Ron Rolston (2011–13) Chadd Cassidy (2013–2015) Randy Cunneyworth (2015–2016) Dan Lambert (2016– ) Do you think that Mike Peca, Jay McKee, or Andrew Peters (not!) are going to save the day? It doesn't look like we're going to find a new coach in-house....maybe Phil Housley can be brought home. There are a lot of great hockey minds among former Sabres. But they haven't done a lot for the parent club recently. And say what you will about Scotty Bowman's lack of success here, he did draft some key players to help keep the team *viable*: Andreychuk, Housley, Mike Ramsey, and Barrasso are four important players. He blew up the team and rebuilt it on the fly with winning teams until the '86-'87 season with Craig Ramsay as coach. For the forgetful, Scotty's record: '79-'80: .688 winning percentage '80-'81: .614 '81-'82: .556 '83-'84: .644 '84-'85: .563 '85-'86: .500 '86-'87: .400 (which allowed Sabres to draft Pierre Turgeon) Clearly, Perreault was the key cog for the Sabres. When he was gone, the Sabres were toast. Compare to the Ken Holland's RedWings after Datsyuk retired. So, again, where are the next great Sabres Hockey Minds? Is GMTM too timid to have them around him?

Cale Makar: I quote from TheHockeyWriters.com: Standing 5 foot 10 inches and weighing in at 180 pounds, Makar’s best individual qualities as a defender are his skating abilities and his skill set with the puck. A fleet-footed skater who can traverse the ice with ease, Makar combines his strong first step and explosive acceleration with sharp edges and ample agility. Once at full speed, Makar has no issue stopping and starting or darting in and out of traffic in order to generate offensive opportunities. From McKeen's: Brooks Bandits' defenceman Cale Makar not only made his debut in the top 30 rankings, he rocketed up the charts to crack McKeen's top 20 and be rated as the top Canadian defenceman in the draft. Looking at video, he looks like he compares to Torey Krug, Phil Housley, & Tyler Ennis. We need scoring from D. Let Risto play more 5:5. Cale Makar is a RHD, but he plays LD in the videos. As we know from Phil Housley, smaller d-men can struggle on the boards and in front of the net. But Housley is Hall of Fame material. And Torey Krug is getting it done at only 5'9". Cale Makar is young enough to think that he could grow more and add more weight. What do y'all think?

Thank you. I was going to paste the same. Chicago's "tank year" of 2007-2008 already had on the team: Patrick Kane Patrick Sharp Jonathan Toews Duncan Keith Brent Seabrook Cam Barker Andrew Ladd Dustin Byfuglien Corey Crawford They already had their core. And guess what? They still were bad that year. Notice also that they had good D-Men already. That's Buffalo's huge hole right now. Keith+Seabrook > Risto + McCabe. For the record, I was in favor of finding a way to draft guys like Chychrun and Carlo, both able to step right into the NHL. Granted, Carlo was gone by the time that we drafted Guhle, who is promising. But imagine if instead of wasting a 1st on Lehner, perhaps we could have dropped down and gotten guys like Carlo and Aho AND Guhle? And last year we took Nylander one slot ahead of Sergachev, Montreal's "untouchable" prospect. As I see it: 1. Tim Murray is loathe to trade down 2. Tim seems fixated on forwards instead of defense. If Chicago proves anything, it is that rebuilding takes time. And since it takes time to develop defensemen versus forwards, it also makes sense to start a rebuild on defense. Chicago had Keith and Seabrook before they got Toews and Kane.

I'm partly joking. Obviously, Claude Julien would be the guy to get right now. As for Nolan, you know the saying, "a stopped clock is right 2x a day, whereas a slow clock is never right." The players "self-adjusted". Just stop abusing Risto. A guy can only take so much ice-time. Injuries happen when you're overworked. He's likely getting injured now, but he's too young to notice it since young kids heal faster.

Randall Flag seems to be right about Bylsma not being able to adjust. And, that is why Ted Nolan was a better coach. What's worse, a system that never adjusts, or a team without a system that allows the players to self-adjust? I'd go with the latter. Nolan was a better coach. And much better to root for and to listen to. Bring back Nolan. That would teach the players a lesson or two.

Please don't do this. I grew up when the Sabres had Hall of Famers and were fun to watch. Today, I cannot afford cable TV, money nor timewise. Until NHL allows *local* games on internet, the Sabres will remain the internet stream that helps bore me to sleep at nights. Injecting politics will only make me ill. The world has gone insane; people cannot discuss things logically anymore. When I look at the Sabres and I look at the nation, I see a world like D-FENS saw in "Falling Down". When I watch Matt Cooke, Marchand, Gudas, etc. get away with their evil while Kaleta was run out of the game, when I see "No Goal" time and again in Dallas games, when I see people sweeping Kane's off-ice evils under the carpet, I get ill. I just don't want to watch anymore. Where is the grace and artistry that Perreault and Gretzky embodied? When Gretzky scored 77 goals and broke Esposito's record, he interviewed after the game with Esposito himself. He didn't brag. He said he was lucky to arrive in an era of free-wheeling, open hockey. It was a jovial interview; they respected each other. People today are not respecting each other, nor this nation. And the Sabres are little relief from that.

Yeah. And was Perreault getting into trouble and waving around wads of cash on TV? Buying billboards to win back his girlfriend (who might be assumed to have gotten out before it was too late). The reports were that he tried to drag a woman out of a bar and tried to strangle another one! This isn't a drunk driving his truck into Tim Horton's. It isn't Tim Horton speeding on speed (and/or alcohol) late at night in his Porsche. This is an in-your-face millionaire son of a pro boxer reportedly trying to choke a woman. It's the old frog in the pot who can't sense the temperature change until it's too late. If you all condone the type of behaviour attributed to Kane, then you'll all like that frog. I'm old enough to remember a halfway decent society that punished criminals instead of giving them fat contracts. I've said enough for now.

I haven't posted in a long time....but I have strong opinions on this. Move the freakin' idiot jerk already! It's LONG overdue. I'm sick of uber-rich millionaire sports figures who are total jerks. I can't afford cable TV. I can't afford to go to games. The only way that I can be a Sabres fan still is to listen to WGR on the Internet and to read websites like this one. I work my butt off and get paid peanuts. I will never spend one penny to support these kind of scum who stay out all night at bars and have a reputation for being unkind to women. Did we hear this stuff about Perreault, Andreychuk, Lafountaine? No. I don't care what it takes, but get rid of this troublemaker Kane. Now! One was Abel, The other was Cain...enough said.

Why buy out Hodgson so that we can then draft Meier?? We still have Reinhart and Grigorenko (maybe). No more slow skaters!

I took some time to watch video of Hanifin, Roy, Kylington, and Brandon Carlo. I really like Carlo. The Sabres don't really need another right handed d-man,. But, Carlo is a really tall, he skates well, has tremendous reach for poke checks, works guys over in front of the net, and has good positioning. He seems like a safe bet to me. Roy and Kylingon are more risky, especially with their size. Hanifin seems a bit like Pysyk with more offensive upside; he just makes the right play all of the time. Just my two cents, but if we can't have Hanifin, Carlo seems like a good pick at 18-21.

The word is that Sam Bennett couldn't even do one pull-up at the combine. That's downright pathetic. I'm an old geezer, desk-jockey, recovering from a car accident, and I can still do a few. I said it before, the Sabres must not draft this kid. Ekblad or Reinhart are the best options. 2 years ago at the draft there were rumors that Grigo was lazy and didn't compete hard. We should have listened then. If Tim Murray repeats that kind of mistake, then it's deja vu all over again and the Sabres ain't going nowhere. Just saying.

I have a hard time believing in the Sabres great prospect system when they finish dead last and their AHL team sqeaks into the play-offs and loses in the 1st round yet again. If we get a championship team, it will have to be thanks to the 2013, 2014, & 2015 drafts working out for us. Right now all we have are some decent 2nd tier players like Girgensons, Pysyk, Myers, Hodgson, Foligno, & Ennis. And maybe some 3rd/4th tier players like Larsson, Compher, and maybe Deslauriers. Ristolainen, Zadorov, & McCabe with Myers and Pysyk should be a good defensive core, but their forwards are still really weak. Tim Murray is going to need to hit home-runs in the next two drafts.

So why didn't the Sabres claim Cracknell when he went on waivers? That would've helped the Amerks win. Didn't Tim Murray say that they wanted the Amerks to win? Hindsight is 20/20. Oh. That's right. The Sabres are at the 50 contract limit. That's what happens when your team doesn't have a real GM for half of a season. That's why I don't think that they should offer NHL contracts to guys like Locke, Nelson, and Austin. The Sabres will have some higher priorities in the 2013 draft class to sign, especially if some of their college prospects turn pro really early (Compher, Fasching).

Kessel carried the USA Olympics squad. Kessel carried the Leafs. Their late season collapse is sympomatic of a team that over-relies on a few players. Backstrom has to try to make up for the player that is Ovechkin and a horrible lack of depth. touche'.

2006 NHL draft, per Hockeydb, the top 5 point producers were: Rank, Draft Position Name 1 4 Nicklas Backstrom 2 5 Phil Kessel 3 3 Jonathan Toews 4 22 Claude Giroux 5 2 Jordan Staal The Flyers did well in getting Giroux at 22. There were other lower draft picks that did well such as Lucic at 50 who is #6. Lucic is a great player, but is he a game changer? Backstrom, Kessel, or Toews are players who can carry a team.