Thorny

Calling Krueger a soccer coach was always silly. It’s more than enough to say he’s barely an NHL coach. Just so little actual NHL coaching on his resume.

You can’t refuse forever, but you have at least until the NMC kicks in. There’s no sense fast tracking it and giving up the chance to try Jack with a new coach or coach/GM duo next season (or a reconfigured front office with an added POHO or something). Why would we not hang onto this type of player as long as possible in case things finally kick into motion. We definitely need the coaching change anyways. I don’t have confidence in them to put together a winning team, no, but I’m less opposed to Adams at this juncture. I think a new coach coupled with a good offseason puts the likelihoo

The tides are in motion, there are people with influence willing it into existence. Might be all we get if we insist upon including Skinner like you mentioned

Friedman makes it seem like we are definitely moving him 100%

Also, Jack’s NMC kicks in not until July 2022. Is the return, under a depreciated Jack, so much better right now or this offseason than it’d be during the season next year, at next year’s deadline, or even the 2022 draft, so as to be worth willingly sacrificing the chance Jack completely gets back to normal, after this absurdly longest of long whopper of a 17 game stretch, next year under a competent coach? His value might even be higher next year if he lights it up and for some reason makes a formal request. No reason we should entertain an Eichel trade short of crazy offer any time thi

I’d definitely take my chances with the NMC (considering we can REFUSE TO TRADE HIM) and competent management on the lookout for a deal than with a depreciated Jack and THIS management which is just an extension of Pegula. This group will consummate a bad trade. An experienced group at least has a chance. To convince him, or fair better in a deal. I was speaking about the organization Curt

Apples to oranges, Beane and McD to Botterill, Murray, Adams, and Krueger. And a QB has a much higher individual impact on the game than a single F even the 1C. The bills are competently built, the Sabres are not. And JE when considering the entirety of his career thus far has statistically outperformed JA relative to their field.

Rid us of the Krueger poison first

It doesn’t matter if you buy it or not - Krueger’s system is low event, all the advanced metrics document it, and the downward production of everyone on the roster demonstrates it. With a straight face you’ll make the argument that Jack’s “sulking” is bringing down the team, yet even if you are correct that Krueger’s system works ok for Eichel, *clearly* it doesn’t work well offensively for most everyone else.... Krueger is blameless for *directly* affecting things negatively? I know you don’t think that, didn’t seem to in your excellent break down post. There’s no consistency. If

Give him a competent coach next season and make sure the real Jack is still there. And if he still isn’t playing well, deal him then. I don’t think the opportunity cost of declining to “get out in front” of a more limiting potential trade request is near worth sacrificing the opportunity cost of the very real possibility Jack looks like himself again under a guy who’s actually a hockey coach. We should be thinking about ways to prevent the trade request from happening rather than resigning ourselves to its inevitability and probably creating a self fulfilling prophecy in the proces

It would also be unthinkable to trade Jack this year, in a year the North division scores 10 goals a game inflating the stat curve, after Jack spends the year under, even if you don’t think bad, an offensively suffocating system, with the cherry on top being he may be hurt. Trading him during/after this year would be laughable. You could make the argument we’d be more limited in any potential Eichel deal by trading him now due to his current production and the surrounding optics then we would be by having to tip toe around his NMC

While the current management group is in place this shouldn’t even be a question, I would think. The hardest type of trade to pull off at the best of times, the organization that has depreciated nearly every asset and transaction it has touched for a decade is most assuredly going to downgrade Jack. This came up first when I typed in Eichel to google. Teams aren’t going to give us what we’d need anyways. We’ve hurt his value.

And we know coaching has a massive impact on that top 6. Look, of course the top 6 has been bad. And producing less relative to expectation (but also are getting the oddest results relative to expected, too, but we don’t even need to get into that). But this whole thing is like....ehhhh - Jack has been performing *above* expectation for years given the joke of a roster we’ve assembled around him - and everyone admits that - and it’s like... nineteen (19) games where he finally looks disinterested somewhat, where he *very well could be injured* and at the very least was out of shape

Bottom 6 is freaking terrible - - - We have a tendency to try and narrow it down to one issue, but the truth is there are a multitude across the board, and I maintain my view that when there are that many people to point to, it's indicative of the biggest problem being right at the very top.

I thought he was hurt? That was the stance before the board had given up. It's both. The bottom 6 is statistically terrible. "very clearly". Stop. The bottom 6 is bad, too, that's backed up by the stats. - - - Jack probably gets fed up so quickly because he sees them bring in a GM with NO HIRING PROCESS and is frustrated by a coach who isn't actually a coach. Again, unusual ineptitude.