mjd1001

For the last year I have agreed with that 100%. First, it seems apparent that Adams is not a dictator, it appears he gathers his top advisors around when they make a decision and they all have input. So this roster is not just a result of Adams decision making, but those other guys have all had input into putting this roster together. Next, I want no one left around that can look at this roster and look at any player and think anything close to 'thats my guy'. I want whoever comes in to have no attachment to the current players. The funny thing is, many of us who never talked like this in the past are discussing "just how big will the purge of the front office be"? There's still a chance nothing will change.

Well, I'm not saying to give everyone away when I say 'up for auction'. Its more, whatever new 'front office' comes in, there is nothing off limits. Sure they may not want to trade Dahlin, but see what is out there. You can always say no. But guys like Tage and Tuch, they arne't getting better, you are at their statistical peak. IF a new front office comes in and realistically is making changes that mean the team is 2 years from competing...maybe you listen to offers for those guys if you can maximize their value now in relation to what they will be at the end of the 'plan'. So when I say entire roster up for auction, I mean that. See what is out there for EVERYONE...that does't mean you make all those moves. But you don't hang up the phone on anyone, and maybe you pick up the phone and put everyone out there just to see what they are worth.

If we can put aside the pursuit of the playoffs for a moment, I have said/argued in the past I can get some enjoyment out of watching a non-playoff team on a nightly basis and enjoying a win. If they don't make the playoffs, but they win a game and play well, its 2 hours of entertainment, right? Great, but they have now not had a single regulation win in 9 games. 8 of those are losses. How can you even be a fan of a team if you are WILLING to give up on the playoffs and just watch them looking for a 'feel good' win, when over the last few weeks you have gotten: Loss Loss Loss Shootout W (not even a 'game' win but awarded it based on a skills contest) Loss Loss Loss Loss Loss I am having a hard time watching this team at all. THIS is why they have to blow things up. Total, 100% new front office. Entire roster up for Auction. I'm ready for another multi-year teardown run by a new front office and rebuild because they may lose during it (not any different than what we have now) but at least I can push myself to have some 'hope'.

Outmanned. Anyone 30 years old or under should still be in their prime. That takes you back to the 2013 draft (13 drafts). From that draft on, that should be the prime of your roster to make sure you aren't 'outmanned'. Since then, the Sabres have had: -2 #1 overall picks. -4 total top #2 overall picks (including the 2 above) -11 top 10 overall picks -18 overall first round picks. On top of that, 18 additional 2nd round picks, many of them at the top of the round. How can you be outmanned against ANYONE with that opportunity, with that many 'kicks at the can'. How about the 13 years before that, when they made the playoffs often and that was with a team with unstable ownership that hardly ever spent any money? The 13 years before that when they were much, much more successful they had: -0 #1 overall picks. -0 total top #2 overall picks -1 top 10 overall picks (Vanek at #5) -15 overall first round picks (many of them in the bottom half of the first round) -Only 12 2nd round picks, very few at the top of the 2nd round.

I'm also a pretty big fan of Ruff but I think he messed with Tage too much. Called him out as a C last year, moved him to wing. This year mostly at wing, but then back to center. When the team started struggling to score goals you stuck him with 2 AHL guys who he never even practiced with. Hey, Tage isn't a perfect player but he's the best goal scorer this team has seen in a while...and on a team that has trouble scoring goals stop messing with him and his role on the team.

I have been very disappointed with McLeod this season. Over the offseason I was one of the posters banging the drum to get him signed medium-to-long term and loved his game last year. This year, not so good... With that said, he functions best with 3rd line even strength minutes/ice time (13-14 minutes even strength), and then being your #1 PK guy (another 2-3 minutes per game) so he totals about 15-17 minutes per game. He's getting about 18 minutes now. Not too much over what you want him to, but still over. The bigger issue though is what he is asked/expected to do in that time.

So far Timmins has played pretty well. Totally happy to have him get 3rd pair minutes, yet he looks like a guy who can move up to the 2nd pair/2nd pair minutes for a period of time and not hurt you too much. Also has the ability to fill in, in a pinch, if needed on the PP or PK. Happy with him so far. Coming from low expectations, but there are only 4-6 guys on this team I'm happy with so far.

Stepping up. Yeah, injuries hurt your team, but who is, and who is not, 'stepping up' in the face of them? On Defense, Timmins is playing decent, and Samuelsson is having his best year in a while. Everyone else? They have all played bad, I'd say worst than last year (Power, for all that he takes from the fans, he is the CLOSEST beyond Timmons and Samuelsson to playing well, but its still not good enough.) Bryam, Dahlin, Kesserling, all have played bad at times. Forwards: Doan, Benson, Kozak and Dunne look like the only guys out there who even care what they look like. EVERYONE else has been more disappointing instead of 'stepping up. So to me the guys who look like they care, the guys who are outperforming what you expect of them, are Timmins, Samuelsson, Doan, Benson, Kozak and Dunn. Thats it. You would think a handful of the other guys would show you something, noticable, some effort, some play beyond what they have shown in the past. But I haven't seen it. I really think Tage is one of the top goal scorers in the league and have defended him from criticism on this board many times, but he's not doing it this year. Tuch? I'm more on the trade him rather than sign him side of things now.

He was coming off of an injury, but he's played 7 games now. He needs to play better. -He has zero points. None. No goals, no assists. he's a -4 through just 7 games. -His corsi is 10 percentage points on the wrong side of even. Fenwick -6. Shots nearly -10. Actual goals for/allowed he's 20 percentage points below even. Hes negative in expected goals, negative in high danger chances, negative in pure scoring chances. -He hasn't been used on the PP. He's not even used all that much on the PK, so he's not giving you anything on special teams. -For me personally, take all of that away, and my 'eye test' doesn't see anything special. Its not based on his comment from last night, but in terms of his regular play he needs to step up. He's not playing like a top pair guy, he's not even playing like a 2nd pair guy.

Kia

Well that's the thing... There has been 14 plus years of no playoffs. That can turn a really good hockey market into a bad one. My assessment where I said pretty good... It's kind of the average of what it used to be, averaged out with what it is now. Here's why I think it's not that good anymore. When I was in high school, 80% of the guys in school knew about the sabres, talked about the sabres, followed the team. Now, I have a handful of nieces and nephews, some of them that used to... That don't even care anymore. They don't know anything about the team. There will always be hardcore hockey fans here, but the market has deteriorated.

Yeah, I agree... I was more thinking about the sentiment of it though. The speech afterward would just be the icing on top of the cake of making major changes. Yeah I get it. They have a lot of injuries but seriously if all those injured players came back... And who knows how long it'll be... With this team at full strength, are they contending for a cup? Anytime in the next couple of years? I don't think many people want to go through another rebuild. I don't think anyone wants to hear someone on this team saying we have to take a step back and we're going to build this and look to compete in 2 to 3 years from now. But honestly, I think that's needed. With the Right moves, you could go through a rebuild and still have this team be entertaining as it bottoms and turns back up.

Pegula is looking old and mentally/emotionally paralyzed with regard to the Sabres. Do something! And by something I mean a lot. Not one token move. Show you care. Walk up to a microphone and say something like.... "We've tried a lot of different things in the past and some of them haven't worked, but what we're doing now isn't working.... so we're going to keep on trying, Even if we make mistakes again. Doing nothing is not an option." He has single-handedly taken what was a respectable NHL franchise with a pretty good fan base... And turned it into a laughing stock. Turned it into a floundering organization, With a crumbling building, With a terrible on ice product. Neither the fans want to support, nor do players even want to consider coming here. That's some good and impressive work!

If they are going to make management changes, and I don't mean promoting from within... They have to make them now. Why? So whoever they bring in can go through the inevitable period of evaluating the organization and the roster, before they start making moves. If you wait till the off season, you won't have that full evaluation. Before next year. I want the evaluation of everything to start now. My fear is that even if pegula wants to make a change, he's going to try to hold out until the end of the year when some contracts are up rather than having to pay people again not to work.

What does it look like? At this point it looks like a relief for everyone involved... Him, and the fans.

Too much automation (or whatever you want to call it) in cars today. Between the 2 cars we have now.... -Automatic climate control that seems to want to turn itself on whenver it wants. I want to pick where the air is coming from, and the speed. Yet, either by a GENTLE brush of the automaic 'non-button' controls by accident when looking to adjust something else, or by some ghost in the car, occasionally the system goes to 'automatic' and it will change where the air is coming from, and change the blower speed. And trying to turn it off of auto? I shut the entire thing down and restart it. You press the auto button and it just cycles through different speeds/levels of auto. No idea how to turn it off. - The wipers. It was raining yesterday and I'm driving and then it slowed down raining and I wanted the wipers on an intermediate setting. Well the car has an auto setting, it has high, it has low, and then it has all the little intermediate notches you could choose from depending on how fast or how often you want the wipers to go on but guess what? The car takes control of that. Let's say I put on the second lowest intermediate setting so the wipers go over the windshield. Let's say once every 5 seconds... But if the car senses there is a little bit more water on the windshield it will override that and take over and make them go quicker. So even when you pick the setting you want, it won't stick there. The car will override your choice. -Keep your hands on the wheel warning? I sometimes hold the steering wheel at "10 and 2", sometimes closer to the bottom of the wheel. Sometimes one handed. But yet, every once in a while there will be a loud (somewhat startling) beep/chime telling me to keep my hands on the wheel. They are though? -I love this one, another loud chime and my dashboard shows me an icon of a coffee cup and tells me maybe its time for a break. Really? sometimes it will even do that after only driving for 30-40 minutes. Other times I drive for 3 hours without it. And it has nothing to do with it sensing I'm going out of my lane or anythign like that. The lane centering thing, where it takes control of the steering wheel (thats another story) takes care of that. -Drive modes. So my car has a 'sport' mode, an 'eco' mode, and a 'smart' mode. No normal mode. Well, the sport mode holds gears WAY too high for everday driving, I'll be going down a side street at 30 mph and its in 2nd gear makign a lot of noise at 3000 rpms. Eco mode, it seems to either lower the battery assist (I have a hybrid) or lower the turbo boost (the gas engine) but either way, it is almost non-responsive. So "smart" mode? Well, its not a combo of both. It 'automatically" switches back and forth between Eco and sport, based on how it thinks I want to drive. If I make a bunch of very aggressive lane changes and hit the gas hard, it goes into sport mode (only for a few seconds though), but once that is over, back to "eco" mode. I have tried to manipulate it by my driving style, but nope, it does what it does. This email is getting so long, I won't even go into the quirks of the nav system after an update (it no longer allows you to choose the 'shortest' route in terms of time vs the 'shortest' one in distance. It chooses the route for you, and often changes it mid-route to roads in no way I want to take" I'm really, REALLY close to my next car being one of those small, simple, econo-boxes that are under $30,000 that don't have most of this stuff (or at least less of it)

Its not just the lack of production, it is their overall play. McLeod, Thompson, and Tuch......it seemed to me they were clearly outplayed by Doan, Kozak and whoever else was with them (Greeway for part or the time before Ruff starting shuffling lines) And I don't mean "hey, those 'lesser-talented' young guys looked to be playing with more energy" I mean literally outplayed. Outpossessed, out thought (hockey IQ way) and dominated the ice more than your top line.

Do you mean continue as he always has been in previous years? Or continue to be what he was early this year. Because early this year, he wasn't 'fine', he was pretty bad at times: -This year one goal in 14 games, where he usually scores a goal at a rate of one every 4-5 games - a -11 through 14 games ( a 'pace' of about -60) The last 3 years, he was a +20 combined over 3 seasons. -5.43 giveaways per 60, when he normally averages about 2 giveaways per 60. -about 30% less takeaways per 60 than his average over the last 3 seasons -My 2 favorite analytics are expected goals for vs against, and actual goals for vs against. His xgf%is down 3 points. His actual goals is down almost 15% -And as many have pointed out on this forum, he is making several bad plays, noticable via the 'eye test' every game. You want him to be who he is, and he is more talented than anyone else on defense on this team, but his overall play/production, so far this year, actually has been pretty bad.

They miss Dahlin because of how good he is, but they aren't 'missing' how he has played this year. To be honest, his talent was not overcoming his bad plays and mistakes this year. The problem is no-one can step up into his role/ice time. Every time they give Byrum more minutes, it doesn't work. He has all the talent in the world, but the end result of him on the ice is an 'average-at-best' D-man, and when he gets more minutes without Dahliln, you are still getting nothing more than that 'average-at-best' overall game. Samuelsson is playing well his year, but his role and talent is limited. Power I think is playing a bit better than the consensus on this board, but that doesn't mean I think he is playing well enough to carry the team in any way, shape or form. Kesserling I need more time to watch, and he's getting back from the injury, but he hasn't blown me away with his game so far. Timmins is Timmins, he's a 3rd pair guy that is playing that role well (I think). This Defense group can actually be pretty good when Dahlin is being Dahlin. But he's not here now. And when he was this year, he wasn't himself.

With the exception of Doan and Kozak, most of the guys on those forward lines have under-performed so far this year. Its not that they are all BAD, its just you expect a bit more from all of them. Its pretty sad to me that among forwards, onl Doan, Kozak, and Dunne are playing better than what I expected. That isn't translating to many wins because the expectations of those 3 guys weren't that high to begin with. (its no secret that Thompson, McLeod, Quinn, and Tuch are supposed to be forwards leading this team/producing, and they are all disappointing so far) Krebs. Positionally I think he's been playing pretty well. I think he has continued his progress from last year (compared to 2 years ago) where he doens't look lazy. He's decent carrying/passing the puck. The only difference I see this year compared to last year (where I thought he played well) is the lack of product. He hasn't scored yet. Peyton Krebs with 2, maybe 3 goals this year looks a LOT better than him having 0 right now.

There is a sublte difference between an 'excuse' and a 'reason'. One should shy away from using them as an 'excuse', meaning to excuse their poor performance. However, in evaluating 'what went wrong', they can be brought up as a reason to not be discarded.

It might be tricky to make the money work, but with having McDavid likely for only 2.5 years left, being out of the playoffs right now, and coming off a 9-1 loss over the weekend, Edmonton may be desperate to make a move in the coming weeks. If anything, play Vancouver vs Edmonton (and anyone else for that matter) to drive up the price.

Lehner got a bad rep from Buffalo, but he played a LOT better here than people remember: -6 shutouts in 3 seasons -Save percentages of: .924, .920, .908, and GAAs of 2.47, 2.68, and 3.01 Even with his issues, I was sad to see him go, I thought, even in Buffalo, he was a really good goalie here.

Another interesting game, last night between the Leafs and Hurricanes. -Toronto is leading 4-2 half way through the game. -Going into the 3rd, they are up 4-3. -Carolina wins the game in regulation 5-4 -Toronto went into the 3rd leading, but gave up that lead by being outshot 22-2 in the 3rd. Carolina played the night before, traveling from Buffalo. That is a collapse protecting a lead on par with some of the worst the Sabres have done in the past.

The NY Rangers are having one of the most interesting years in terms of their home games: -Shutout by Pittsburgh 3-0 -Shutout by Washington 1-0 -Shutout by Edmonton 2-0 -Loss to Minnesota 3-1 -Loss to San Jose 6-5 -Shutout by Carolina 3-0 -Shutout by the Islanders 5-0 In their first 7 home games at MSG, they have been shut out 5 times, and lost all 7. Yet they are 7-1-1 on the road.