Thorny

You bring attention to an ever important point, in honesty - the truth. And truth as ever is in the eye of the beholder. What I consider to be my aims in discussing the team, my feelings towards them, that I laid out - aren't relevant on this board if those aims are considered and believed to be something else, by those taking part in the discussions. There is definitely something to be said for consensus - in terms of the progression of conversation. I can cede to that and I can cede the playground. Well noted.

You aren't understanding. I used "victory" in jest, because you agreed with me that what I was worried about was indeed in the original tweet, that it was saying an announcement would be made. But you said I was looking to be proven right and that I created a self-fulfilling prophecy because I came up with a scenario where KA gets up "on a podium" and makes the announcement. I don't care how the announcement gets made, it's the fact it would be made, at all, that I'd take issue with. You are conflating melodrama, and sarcasm, me thinks.

Again, shortcuts were deemed to be necessary to beef up the roster after it had been utterly decimated in pursuit of a tank. The rebuild failed because the degree of difficulty was made to be so high, made such by the decision to undertake a scorched earth tank. Stripping the roster of nearly all talent, and expecting all those holes to be adequately filled, was asking for trouble - right from the beginning. Making hockey trades wasn't a bad idea, in theory - the execution of those trades was poor. It's going to be tough to get much better execution this time around when we are looking to fill a similar amount of holes. The roster is decimated. Less so by choice this time, but plenty still by choice, and the roster looks every bit as bad. I think KA should have done everything in his power to mold this into a winning team for this coming season, not undertake a "patient rebuild". This is my stance.

It's not a contradiction, he's merely illustrating that using an unknown to prop Adams up can be used to bring him down, in much the same way. Adams holding out on this isn't good, or bad, if we are only using the information strictly defined and nothing more. That'd @dudacek's point - that he is uncomfortable with the praise he's getting. He could be turning down awful offers, but he could also be turning down offers we'd all take.

So my use of the word "podium" is what you think I'll point to, in victory, should it come to pass? And if he announces it over a podcast I'll turn my collar up against the wind while muttering to myself, head down? You are mistaking the essence of where my mind is at with this situation - I'm not sure how else to make you believe me. - - - Look, we both want the team to be good, if you can believe that. Foundationally, I have come to believe that aiming for the Stanley Cup ( @PASabreFan) which is what I believe they are doing by undertaking these massive tear downs rebuilds, is folly - I think they should concentrate on just being a winning team and making the playoffs. I do believe that needing a Cup to make this all worthwhile is illogical, for reasons I have laid out. And I don't believe the team WILL win on the ice until they make winning THE priority. And it's not right now. Clearly my bias has been laid out in good faith - I want to watch playoff hockey again, and this is clearly at least in large part informing my stance on pretty much the majority of the things I discuss. I respect your right to your own personal viewpoint and, never having met you, I assume you to be a great person in real life - but we can go no further here in this particular discussion.

Ya - "no one will be wearing the C this year" would be reasonable. "Jack Eichel has been stripped of the captaincy" would be the farce I'm alluding to, which is what the OT seemed to imply. "Friedman expects Sabres to announce Eichel no longer captain"

Rossi....Lundell...etc I understand it appears to be loaded at C but all it takes is an similarly talented winger or D being in range and a strict adherence to "BPA" for it to become an issue

I'm not playing victim, the discourse around here has just taken a massive step down. The board itself is the victim. Conceived of what? That an announcement would be made? Isn't that *literally* what was in the original tweet that sparked the entire conversation?

So Buffalo wanted short term because they didn't want to commit for long? Or Buffalo wanted short term because DAHLIN didn't want to commit to term, aka, Buffalo didn't actually want short term?

The really quite extraordinarily long torso of Michael Phelps might be of interest to our goaltending dearth, AND the vacant captaincy

No, I'm not like the rest - you said I want to see KA embarrass the organization, remember? That's not what you want, right? I want failure, it's a Rorschach - you got me. Took me 20K posts but someone figured out the clues I left along the way that I'm a Troll. Well done. I'm off to pretending to be a Seattle fan, next. Should be able to get to 30K this time, their fans are noobs.

Pidgeon-holing themselves into needing to forgo BPA next year for position is something I find questionable, too - but no doubt they need to go that route at this point

Jives with the rumours that KA was shopping JE for a good long while, since coming aboard, in fact

Yep, you've got me dialed in, man. I hate the Sabres, I've hated them for 30 years. I resent them for giving me some of the best memories of my life watching playoff games with my Dad, because those moments just make the rest of my ***** life look bad in comparison. I hope they never get back to the playoffs so I can watch games in that way again. I want the team to be bad because I desperately need to be proven right on this, being right on like 95% of my other arguments on this website isn't enough to satisfy my appetite for world domination.

He's not captain anymore in essence, I'd say. I do think it's symbolic, yes. Like others have said, dudacek maybe, it shouldn't be done as any sort of "announcement". Maybe this has no meaning anymore because it's been said too many times, but if Kevyn Adams gets up there on a podium and announces the stripping, he's embarrassing this franchise on a grand scale.

Fair enough, thanks for your breakdown

Haha I chuckled. He's 21 now though

Exactly my point. The are a *myriad* of things. overpaying a player being one, that "just don't matter" BECAUSE of the strategy KA has conveniently picked out. In any regular situation an overpay isn't good....fielding a truly putrid roster isn't good....but SO MANY things that make up the usual barometer for a successful organization can be literally swept under the rug by fans/the team because "well, we aren't actually trying to compete" Said it countless times. Plenty KA is doing within the strategy makes sense, within the context of that strategy. My sticking point is that a strategy that doesn't call for winning as a priority is a bad strategy and, unfortunately, my argument is being proven in real time - do you think things like overpays, bad records, poor looking rosters, friction with franchise players, are symptoms of a good plan? What we are seeing is the smoke that comes along with a poorly chosen pathway.

You aren't - I enjoy the process of dialing in on what you've established as your niche - it's the "you can't prove a negative" high ground. Ie - you'll pick a rock up off the ground and say, since there are no tigers around, that the rock repels tigers. Adams can't be judged on anything, he has literally zero expectation, not even results - if there is a single variable we are unaware of, like you just pointed out, that variable "could" be something that prevented KA from making the deal Maybe KA was being held at gunpoint by Ralph last year - I can't PROVE that's not the case, right? Is there a certain amount of years you'd expect a GM to build a winning team, just for reference? IE - that it would be implausible to think, even with the variables considered, that, given a certain amount of time a GM wouldn't be able to swing change? If KA goes 3 years without building a winner, can he share blame? 5 years?

The didn't get that either, though. There is no "positive" in the deal really. We didn't get a deal for now, and we didn't get a potential deal for later. This is just another "well, he didn't completely screw us, so he's done well" thing, isn't it

No but like even things that aren't speculative, like team record, gets tossed aside as not being on the GM. We say he can't be judged until things play out, but when things play out, we are then told he can't be judged on that either. Basically, it's: "Without a confession, we've got nothing on this guy. All purely circumstantial". How many years does that go on for? I suppose I'm the one fighting a losing battle, here - people have been good in honestly saying he gets another few years here where winning doesn't matter. Year 4, check back?

Serious question - is there a single thing KA has done in his tenure that is fair game for criticism? I'm not sure if it's fair to classify the reaction as "spin" when people have been consistent in their stance of wanting a long term deal for Dahlin for months and months or even years.

The problem is, this isn't true

Just lump all the threads into one gigantic Terry Pegula thread, then, and be done with it Adams literally can do no wrong lol

Well that explain it nicely, then. I definitely do. Really, I shouldn't care - if Dahlin leaves in 3 years, undoubtedly we'd get a nice Embedded video featuring Dahlin speaking pleasantly to Kevyn Adams for a few minutes, and I'll be good to go for the next building year.