Georgia Blizzard
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Posts posted by Georgia Blizzard
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Good riddance to Eichel.
I'm glad it's finally over.
If I'm being honest, I do not wish him well, why would I ?
For me to feel good about this entire saga, I hope Eichel never becomes a superstar and HoFamer and I hope Krebs, Tuch and the 1st do. Why would I or anyone feel good if Eichel becomes an all time great wearing a different sweater ? I don't wish harm to him and I hope he recovers from his injury, but, I don't wish any success for him on the ice.
If that makes me an ass, I'm an ass.
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Let him sit and rot until we get a fair return.
At some point he should have the b***s to put his money where his mouth is and get the ADR procedure
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34 minutes ago, Trettioåtta said:
The league will also have a hand in this - they won't be happy if a player knowingly and deliberately breaks the CBA and there is no punishment. He could be suspended by the NHL for it.
If they let Jack have the surgery and it partially works, such that he can come back and play but not nearly to the same level, his value is tanked and we are saddled with $10 million cap dump. Not to mention his salary must be paid. Letting him get the surgery holds massive risk for the Sabres, and almost none of Jack, which is why it hasn't happened.
Jack is clearly hesitant about the surgery / the consequences of it (both legal and medical), otherwise he would have got it by now and done just what you said.
If the Sabres don't budge, Jack has three options - 1) Get the fusion. 2) Sit out the next five years of his prime, until he is 30 and potentially never play in the NHL again / not to the level he could have (and potentially get into legal dispute if he is refusing to fix the issue) 3) Get the ADR and risk the consequences, which could be substantial.
Right or wrong, the players negotiated away their medical autonomy for guaranteed contracts and that won't change.
My understanding is that the Sabres medical doctor is regarded as a world class specialist on neck issues - he thinks fusion is safer for Jack (not just for the Sabres). The independent NHLPA (who looks after Jack) specialist thinks he should get a fusion. The third party independent thinks he should get the fusion. The rest of the doctors he has canvassed have varying thoughts - but no clear consensus. The guy who would do the ADR surgery thinks Jack should get the ADR.
This is a massively complicated situation
Great thread and discussion.
Do you think Jack's agent is polling other GM's as to their willingness to allow Jack to have the ADR surgery ? If that number is large, wouldn't his agent be shouting it from the tree tops to paint the Sabres as out of sync with the rest of the league ?
I also agree with the previous post that the NFLPA would be doing the same, if they agreed with the ADR approach, they would be vocally advocating for it as well.
What this tells me is that Jack's doc is out of sync with the prevailing thinking.
I think the only way out for Eichel is to get the fusion surgery, recover and force a trade at that point.
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2 hours ago, COSabreFan said:
Jack would love for Sabres to void his contract, Sabres won’t do it getting nothing for him. In fact I think this is one way this ends, Jack just has his surgery anyway and dares Sabres to do something.
Sabres may have short term leverage, and have the NHL CBA on their side. Yet, it only gets worse for them in terms of trade return and lasting damage to team as a franchise long term.
If they had just let him have his surgery in April it would have either worked and he is back or traded. If it didn’t work he would just now be having the fusion surgery the Sabres wanted and on his way back and tradable. He is literally nothing to the Sabres now and for foreseeable future, that is horrible for the Sabres as a team now and in the future.
But yeah, at least he showed them right? Held the line! Classic case of wanting to be right, instead of getting it right.
Agree. If I were Eichel and I wanted to get leverage and I had the confidence he claims in this procedure, I would be running to have the surgery and putting the pressure back on the Sabres. There is NO WAY under that scenario that the Sabres void his contract. (Unless someone tells me if they void his contract he remains under Sabres control, anyone know this answer ?)
As for GMKA, those folks that are bitching about him not making a deal will be the first people to bitch about the deal he does make. The guy is in a no win situation. The one truth, over the short term it really doesn't matter to the Sabres if they make a deal, the bottom line, they are going to stink this year and Eichel's salary keeps them above the salary floor, so, what's the harm. To me, under this scenario, Eichel is more harmed by not being able to address his injury and play again, which reverts me back to my first point.
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Lame is an understatement !
Is Jan 6th some kind of joke ?
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"Another lost season, Sabres on the clock (again)"
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Tank level bad.
Unwatchable, which is why I cancelled Center Ice for the first time in a decade.
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Dumb and Dumber
or
SS Incompetent
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Great idea.
Great incentive for folks to get vaccinated.
They are still social distancing and wearing masks, right ?
Temp checks are next to worthless with so many folks not having that symptom, yet, still being infected.
They should actually go one step further and require all folks to be vaccinated in order to attend, but, I think that will wait until vaccines are widely available, probably in May
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I think the difference between a rebuild strategy and a tank strategy, is that, in the former, the organization (top to bottom) maintains a passion to win. In the tank strategy, losing became not only acceptable, but, encouraged by all except the coach and team. In full disclosure, I was 100% on board and the fan that cheered failure. That culture that we were all complicit in creating is destroying this franchise
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I think my epiphany regarding the tank was the harm it did to the culture.
I believe it created a losing mindset that we can't get rid of.
I agree 100% that the post-losing part of the tank has been bad; i.e. trades, draft picks etc.
But, watching what McDermott did with the Bills that first year has convinced me that you play EVERY game to WIN.
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54 minutes ago, Zamboni said:
The tank was a great idea. Executed poorly. There is a distinct and clear difference between the tank being good/bad to do. And the execution of the tank being good/bad. Some fans can’t seem to quite grasp and separate the two main stages of tanking.
"The Tank" was a strategy to WIN longer term, by, losing in the short term.
That strategy failed.
You are arguing the "WIN longer term" portion failed and the "losing in the short term" succeeded. We are saying the same thing.
The key difference, for me, NOW, is that by losing in short term, we inadvertently created a culture of losing that we can't eradicate ourselves from in order to win in the long term.
The Bills chose a different path and it worked.
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I haven't posted in a couple of years.
I haven't watched a full Sabres game in a couple of years, hell, I can't even find highlights that are worth watching.
I WAS WRONG !
The tank was a bad idea. I thought it was a great idea at the time. I was pissed when the Bills fought to make playoffs in McDermott's first year. I thought he should have tanked that year for higher draft picks. Again, I WAS WRONG!
The Bills built a winning culture by constantly trying to win. That's where the Sabres went wrong.
They learned how to lose, and don't give me that nonsense that no one is left from those teams, the infection is in the franchise and remains to this day.
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WTF ??????????????!!!!!!!!!!!
I guess inaction is better than action with this GM
Assuming he survives this off season, he needs Tage, Mitts and Cozens to be great, because his moves outside the draft have SUCKED
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JR
(John Robert Eichel)
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Hasek is best player to ever wear uniform.
Perreault is 2nd best, but, the most important and meant most to the franchise
I see the Bills the same way.
I think Bruce Smith was the best player to ever wear uniform.
Jim Kelly is 2nd, but, was the most important and meant the most to the franchise.
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My two cents.
New Bills stadium will be built in Orchard Park adjacent to the west of current New Era Field on ECC land. The economics do not support a downtown stadium and Pegula has spoken at length about the economics. In the end, "the fan" ultimately must pay for all infrastructure investments under the NFL business model. In Buffalo, there are not enough fans (or corporations) with enough money to build a $1B stadium. With infrastructure and land plus actual stadium, that's what a downtown Bills stadium will cost.
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1 hour ago, nfreeman said:
You're certainly right about KD's and Kawhi's teams not being crappy organizations. My point as to those 2 was more on the trade-off between the huge long-term contract $$ on the one hand and freedom/flexibility/leverage on the other that the players have to evaluate.
got it, agree on that point. NBA is clearly seeing a shift of power from owner/gm to player. NHLer's have always lagged the other leagues on that dimension
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50 minutes ago, nfreeman said:
McD finds himself in exactly the type of situation -- being married to a crappy organization with zero prospects of winning anytime soon -- that has driven LeBron, Durant, Kawhi and many other NBA stars to sign a series of short-term contracts instead of long-term deals. This gives the player the ability to walk away if the team doesn't hold up its end. OTOH, the price the player pays for this freedom and flexibility is the risk of foregoing the huge guaranteed $$ that is available in a long-term deal.
It isn't exactly apples to apples, as NBA contracts are shorter anyway, and NBA teams have a shorter period in which they can hold onto their young players, but I think the core concepts are still applicable. McD could've signed a deal that took him to UFA and no further. If he had done so, he would've held the Oilers' feet to the fire to build a good organization around him. He took the money instead (which is what I would've advised him to do) -- but that security comes at a price.
Lebron - yes, he had to bail on Cleveland, but Kawhi and Durant ?? --- they both left solid teams, hell, at one point Durant was playing side by side with 2 other MVP's and Kawhi left one of the best run organizations in team sports
As for McD, he is stuck, but, he chose to be stuck by signing for 8 years --
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25 minutes ago, Let's Go B-Lo said:
You can teach yourself to do whatever you want, hence switch hitters in baseball or guys that throw with their right hand but hit left handed, etc. It's my understanding that where you learn to play dictates a lot of how you learn to hold the stick. US tends to have the dominant hand on the bottom of the stick which makes a right handed player a right handed shot while Canada has the dominant hand on the top of the stick which would make a right handed player a left handed shot. I'm a right handed person who shoots lefty. My son is a right handed person who shoots righty. We both golf, throw, and hit baseballs righty. I might be totally wrong about that but I remember hearing it somewhere. It makes sense to me anyway because it explains the relative shortage of RH defensemen in the game compared to LH. Given that left handed people make up about 10% of the population if they were putting their dominant hand on the bottom they'd be left hand shots while all the right handed people would be right hand shots but it doesn't seem to be that way. Assuming that Canada still provides the majority of players in upper hockey leagues it would make sense to me that this would get flipped around if they were teaching kids to hold the stick the other way and create a situation where RH players were the minority. If they weren't and the US and Canada were doing it the same way I'd expect there to be a tremendous shortage of North American left handed shots and there isn't. Only 10% of the the total players in NA would be expected to be left hand shots if this were true and I don't think it is.
But then I try to buy gear and the LH sticks are always the ones on clearance which means they sell fewer of them, of course I'm also shopping in the US which if I'm correct generally teaches righties to be righties and lefties to be lefties. My sons teams also seem to be excessively right handed which also leads me to believe the righties as righties thing is real.
In short, I don't know. ?
Interesting. I do everything right handed except hockey. I started playing and naturally shot lefty from the moment I hit the ice. Never gave it any thought and the coach never asked which arm we threw with or batted with, go figure.
Edit: I do slide on my left side in baseball.
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To St Louis fans everywhere, YOU'RE WELCOME.
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Too many variables at this point to know whether it makes sense, but:
If Mittelstadt doesn't show marked improvement and you don't trade for a 2C, you might not have an option.
In addition, Skinner resigns, Tage, Nylander and Olofsson are ready, you have an abundance of wingers
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4 minutes ago, pi2000 said:
The Sabres focusing on analytics is like racing the Indy 500 in a 95 honda civic and being concerned about how to shave milliseconds off pit stops.
Bottom line, you can do these things in parallel.
I agree analytics are not the biggest area of need and not the first thing to correct, but, you MUST invest in the capability and you MUST be prepared to use it after you solve some of the more pressing needs. And, in today's NHL, you can't win without it.
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9 minutes ago, pi2000 said:
Disagree... but... whatever.
IMO what makes a good coach great is his ability to get a group of young spoiled millionaires to set aside their differences and all start pulling in the same direction.
Great coaches can do both, get players to focus on common goal AND use analytics to help them get there. The two are not mutually exclusive. I think that's the point most of us are making.
It's like a race car driver having a faster car than his competitors. The faster car doesn't make a bad racer a good racer and doesn't win the race on it's own, but, it gives the driver of that car an edge or a leg up on his competition.
What we’ve learned from the Jack Eichel conclusion
in The Aud Club
Posted
Reading through the posts, my conclusions:
1- Eichel is a very good player (maybe he'll be great someday), but NOT a leader and shouldn't have been captain. He might thrive in a non-primary leadership role.
2- If Eichel wanted to be a Sabre, he'd be a Sabre. He drove the process from the beginning and the Sabres tried to dissuade him to no avail. The surgery discussion was simply a sideshow to the main event. He wanted out.
3- While GMTM was dreadful as GM and cast a dismal future for the franchise, Eichel bears significant responsibility for the lack of on-ice success for this team, yet, acts like he is purely a victim.
4- The Pegulas are BAD owners, and, frankly not very bright people, fans deserve better. The evidence is over whelming with the Bills and Sabres. We can take the Bills discussion to TBD, but, they basically got lucky with McD and BB, let's hope they got lucky with GMKA and HCDG.