Thorny

Our strength was in futures and we cashed it out to near-non existent results and a below-average roster. What we are left with is like you say an average pipeline, with various strengths and weaknesses, with almost no confidence in their ability to turn that into much of anything this go around when it’s a worse overall organization starting point than last time. My solution? I’m converting the strength to where it should be: converting the below average roster and average pipeline into an average roster with a below average pipeline. 1) winning needs to be the focus, in the now (even just for the sake of salvaging the future!) 2) we will be wanting to work on rehabilitating our pipeline anyways so weakening it some before we do so isn’t the end of the world and if we are better in the now we’ll have the time to do so like I said, keeps coming back to one thing: this team is woefully short at LEAST one futures for current trade. Reconfigure. Bump the roster up to average. Be 16th/32: make the playoffs

It’s a pretty simple process: Adams need only scour the market, and if there’s a market for futures for forwards, keep Byram. If the futures for D market is stronger, and it’s going to be hard to find an available forward, deal Byram for the player and, do your D futures trade and it’s 2 transactions instead of one. It’s really a simple, two-pronged approach. Quite simple. So it will take a miracle, definitely

Also 2x the forwards play so 20-16 isn’t a good ratio anyways

I’d be good with this provided we then package futures for a d-man with the ability to play top 4 - even if it’s sans Byram upside. At least that way we are still seeing one outright upgrade on roster. (Peterka essentially swapped for Holloway, but Byram out the door and 2 new D-men brought in, Kesselring and the one we traded the futures for.) I say “good with it” but realistically was thinking we needed at least one unquestioned upgrade and both F and D. But, at least we’d have something. Imo the rub is that we need to make at least one futures trade: be it for the D man after trading Byram for Holloway in this scenario, or somehow for a F if we keep Byram. Benson - Kulich - Thompson Holloway - Norris - Tuch Zucker - McLeod - Quinn Greenway - Krebs - Doan ..is back to reasonable, provided Dahlin - Futures trade Power - Kesselring Samuelsson - Timmins Kesselring would be an outright upgrade on our second pair and I’d look at this roster and say it’s improved on paper from last year by a bit. Not close to enough, but not as flabbergasting

What could Chevy have even done? You know…aside from make the playoffs 8 times

It’s basically saying with the visual that the only striking/notable difference between the two players is a clear win in Byram’s favour. So dealing him say for Neighbours straight up would be kinda funny work

I should hope so.. if by “over time” you mean “later this season”. Danforth has 64 career nhl points and he’s 32 years old lol. Fledgling Benson (age 20) has 58 points, 6 behind Danforth’s career total. So, don’t don’t put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby

No I didn’t say I liked it more I said today’s is far more embarrassing cause it is

Well,

Thankfully for Adams what we say means sh*t all and all he has the automatic out, whether we like or not not, of being able to shove it in our faces by simply winning oh wait If adams and his defenders are sick of us running up the score, he can, ya know, stop it. but he didn’t. 5 years.

The “just trade futures” thing has been totally obvious for a while I completely agree. We just used our 1st round pick, of course, a draft selection. But that’s ok we still have next year’s*, and one the year after. Prospect pool is dumbfoundingly thin but not empty, especially at D, we need to rebuild it anyways so if we need to deal one of the few high-end prospects we do have to fortify the roster in the direction we should have been for a long time (with an eye towards winning now), it’ll only buy us time to rebuild it overall if we actually, for once, have some “current winning” breathing room and not every up and coming prospect is counted on to fill a key role. Draft picks, up to and including our best ones. Helenius. Östlund. And below them re:prospects. Sheesh, even Kulich if we got creative: we don’t HAVE to slot that sort of inexperience at 1C. He’s still essentially a prospect. Those are valued assets that can be used as the currency we need - we didn’t/haven’t upgraded yet this summer. And like @dudaceksays we almost never do or seemingly attempt to.

I’d put the McLeod deal in and take the Norris deal out

^ young fool. Only now, at the end, do you understand

Oh, I'm afraid Pegula’s deflector shield Kevyn Adams will be quite operational when your friends arrive.

I’m sure Adams will prove quite the recruiter

I also think about how the Sabres have focused on converting Östlund to a goal scorer lol Just signed a new deal in the khl

Almost exactly what I was getting at yesterday. And it’s not like the on roster forward ranks are overflowing with young F talent either, at least not if Quinn doesn’t severely get back on track. we really are buoyed there by the vets, Thompson and Tuch, and McLeod and even Zucker. there’s Benson and Quinn and Kulich for real upside potential, and lately it seems like it’s been narrowed down to merely Benson and Kulich. And that in with a weak F prospect pool and you can see it’s a systemic issue. Norris completely popping off would go a long way, of course, but it’s interesting how this sort of overall look of the F can coexist with the fact we did put the puck in the net a lot last year. Some of that is a year over year thing but a lot does just come down to how hood Tage and Tuch are. the sense of what we are waisting (along with the elephant in the room Dahlin) is palpable

Relative to the goal and how disappointing and unacceptable it is to fall short of it, our current group is worse It’s a more flabbergasting set of players

The funniest part of trying to being sarcastically hyperbolic about Adams and the sabres is that it doesn’t work because you just hit the nail on the head

Goaltending outlook…bad Defense…good overall: a punch line Can you *imagine* if we didn’t luck out with Tage becoming a 40 goal talent (Adams was initially exploring trading him haha)? We have absolutely nothing aside from him other than the two first overall talents on D we literally got FROM being terrible what a gong show lol

Not even really about F prospects just not at this particular shindig either https://www.eliteprospects.com/team/53/buffalo-sabres/in-the-system looking at this it’s basically… Helenius and Östlund. its weak - - - The totality of our future forward impact upside is essentially Benson Quinn Helenius and Östlund that’s really it my god

Yep, it’s only glaring given the roster

What a barren forward group, just noticed