Thorny

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

Was more referring to the fact we traded Eichel and Reinhart, two proven functional building blocks of championship teams but more less brain farted as you mentioned that already. although I do think the fact we converted eveything we had to assets one way or another and are left with none of those F save Quinn IS also an example of poor roster construction and just a poorly conceived plan in general. Through all the draft picks we’ve made and traded for and prospects we’ve acquired through the trading of the highly drafted forwards we did have over the course of 5 years to be so thin in that sense remains odd to me I do think the Cozens asset was severely mishandled

I think it’s mostly a factor of bad team building Have 3 times as many D man top 10 picks and D account for half the roster sports forwards do

And some will argue he “did the best he could given the circumstances”

lol

(No one is actually coming to offer Byram a massive offer sheet)

•Keep the open cap to “defend” against offer sheet •Intentionally ink Byram to bridge extension later in offseason than necessary after doing so •claim they didn’t have the functionality to operate during peak transaction periods and thus leave remaining cap unspent •try to win, now that we’ve prioritized spending less

To the last point, it’s rather (see: exceptionally) wild that after all this we have ONE top 10 pick forward on the roster. One. Quinn, that’s it.

If you mean in the twitter-sphere, yes I am aware of he who must not be named lol

KO didn’t fail. Using Hall as an excuse to never try to win in the now again (as they seem to have done) is absurd (people also imo sort of misremember the Hall era - he wasn’t horrible here, he only played 37 games it’s barely enough to judge much of anything, it was Jack getting hurt and all the Covid shenanigans that tore that season apart. Hall is essentially viewed as the face/mercenary of that disaster owing to the gaudy plus minus). Regardless - the post is talking about player adds in general not just FAs

What can you do? They’ve tried it all