Thorny

Got me there lol

I have a craving for SPAM for some reason sorry, wrong thread. But in my defence I couldn’t find the SPAM thread

It’s a defence mechanism. Just like my venting

Correct? Or just HYSTERICAL?!!?!!!!?

I’ve been talking about needing more from him for a while now - it’s a continuing thread of thought. I have literally been his biggest backer around here, especially during the Krueger years - it’s not disingenuous 3 points is 27% of his total output. 6th also isn’t close to good enough. Dahlin’s production is a means to an end: the end being a good team. These games right now when we’ve needed him most, he hasn’t been up to snuff. These are points you don’t get back: my point is that his game needs to turn immediately if possible to stop that loss of points moving forward. These little things all matter if the margin for playoffs is thin and you truly hold the team to that standard, this season. And yes, if all you want to do is whine about posters reaching a breaking point after so long in the desert, you should log off rather than telling everyone how above it you are I couldn’t give 2 sh*ts if you think it’s overblown. It’s my prerogative. It’s how I ACTUALLY feel, it’s frustration - it’s not a narrative. All of my posts on the matter have been filled with actual data and actual explanations for what I think is wrong - it has not at all been mindless yelling and calling for people’s heads. If you noticed (and I know you didn’t, because we’ve frequently had this conversation before about how you don’t actually read the posts in full), I’m the guy saying I wouldn’t even fire KA if we miss the playoffs this season. 4 years missed and I wouldn’t fire him. I’m also the guy saying in multiple threads that it’s imminently salvageable, still, THIS season. But I’m hysterical. the meltdown is merely reflective of the franchise. I’ve been a reasoned poster here for 8 years. Am I prone to hysterics? Obviously not relative to you I am not, but relative to the board? I don’t think so. It’s my opinion. I’m choosing to explain how I feel and what I think this teams needs to change to figure it out. There’s no hindsight or Cherry picking - all of these contentions are things I’ve been talking about for YEARS. i am not answerable for the threads you feel are misplaced and hysterical. I didn’t call anyone a bootlicker. Just quote my posts specifically beyond the Dahlin one if you want to argue about it, I’ll be happy to, if it doesn’t force you to engage too much in “outrage culture” - - - tl;dr: you feel “seen” because I’m probably right

Almost assuredly. While I heavily stressed all offseason the importance of a solid 1B to give Levi a chance and provide some level of insurance, I just feel a little dumb for buying into the idea he could be a starter right out of the gate, bucking an incredibly significant statistical trend. But not nearly as dumb as Adams should feel about making that decision while being paid to do so

Especially given their stance on Jack’s, let’s be real unless that was just phoney baloney

I dunno why people want to divide the entire goalie pool into “Hasek, and others.” Ullmark put up way better numbers here than any of our current guys. Even in our systems or lack there of. Goalies are a spectrum. Goalies can provide positive output even if they aren’t the greatest ever. Goalies can improve your D and D can improve your goalies

19th in D scoring for Dahlin need waaaaaay more

That’s a nice comp

The youngest team in the league stuff is purely pr spin, nonsense Sabres average age is 25. Bruins average age is 27. How is it worth it lol

https://instagram.com/stories/jackeichel/3236710588465328494?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igshid=MWoyaG94NGxlejdiNw== Good friend

Just wanted to expand on this: Being a *good drafter* matters. Having the deepest *prospect pool* known to man matters little. the biggest elephant in the room people somehow don’t grasp is that…there’s a draft every single year lol. Like, every year, get this: the league just…gives out 7 free draft picks to every team! Like, just for free! when you are a team like the Buffalo Sabres, and you are constantly measuring your timeline to competitiveness in multiple years.. all the other teams, that need *so much less* from their prospect pools due to the strength of their actual roster, have *multiple years* to cobble together the replacement prospects they need, from the free draft picks dolled out, again, every single year. do you know how hard it is to make up ground just by endlessly fortifying your prospect pool, like we do? Other teams are making picks over that long time frame, too lol. And they require so much less from them. (Strengthen goalie by team D? How bout strengthen prospect pool by strong nhl roster. That’s the secret: needing less from your young kids. Easier for them to find success.) It is no good pooling a bunch of excess prospects, you don’t make up ground by the *few* that squeeze through the compression to get in to the league every year, there aren’t enough spots, your benefit is squandered willingly. The strength of a deep pool is in its use as *currency*. If you don’t use it for that, you aren’t going to make up ground. If you don’t want to GM, you won’t have a good team.

Pipeline strength counts for like.. 5% of the final exam score. That’s what we are seeing and should have known by now. For every 10 steps your pool is ahead of another teams, that’ll make up about 1 step of progress vs actual nhl roster comparison strong prospect pool, in a vacuum, is a weak correlation to nhl success. It doesn’t really matter if your GM doesn’t GM Sabres have had a top ranked pool *multiple* times over the decade. What does that tell you? It’s easy. It’s easy to be bad and draft high

If they are proactive

Yep. It’s salvageable if they want it to be

Agree. No reason this needs to be over bUT wHo eVeN wAs tHeRe?!

It’s almost assuredly on Adams. The only caveat being if he’s a glorified yes man to Terry Particularly because we literally structured the whole time line around the kid

I’m honestly getting to this point. It’s a very well established common denominator. We’ve been historically bad since he took over outside the first few months

Someone should have asked Donny why he had Tage penalty killing in a 4-0 game, before he got hurt doing such

You really gotta stop speaking in the 3rd person Kev

I think his strategy, and he believes it, is that making the playoffs would merely be a symptom of what they are TRYING to build, which is a Cup team. It’s a subtle distinction, but I have long been formulating a theory (I’ve been musing and posting about this here for about 2 years to see if anyone agreed - none yet have, understandably) that THIS franchise cannot achieve success in that way. We are somehow marred by the tank that failed and the poisonous mindset it instilled. That festers and lingers. I think they need to not focus on deals that help the long term, that also help now, and instead prioritize deals that help right now. I think we have to have some humility, some damn RESPECT for what it takes to win in the national league, and strap up our boots and go out there and make the moves necessary to make the playoffs, now: fight, scratch, and claw to just win. Tell ourselves that winning is enough. Being respectable is enough. enough of this “we aren’t going to win the cup this year anyways.” ENOUGH of that poison. Do not put that evil on me Ricky Bobby make the playoffs. Get our Soul back i think we’ll be surprised what kind of stepping stone that allows. A much more solid base than a prospect system. We haven’t made it in so long, there’s now a magic inherent in it. If you are looking for magic, @thewookie1, there’s your monkey paw

I’m yelling and venting and whining as much (see: more) than anyone today because it’s how I truly feel (I’m just going to outright refer to Kevyn as the phoney baloney GM. I’ve never been as off-put by a Sabres Character before), but, I’m sticking to Adams getting a further year after this one before canning. It’s important for him fail on his own plan so thoroughly, in such a blindingly obvious way so that 1) the fans can understand how indisputably necessary his firing was and have closure 2) maybe the team will learn something about what utter hubris gets you. Maybe they’ll learn the need to prioritize winning, which we still have not done 3) I could just be wrong, and we are a great team next year, and Adams is a good GM and he proves it by year 5 it’s a nice round number well enough. That honestly should be KAs problem not ours. That’s his outlook, isn’t it? He cashed in 3 years. If he put himself in a position where he had to go 1 for 1, that’s the situation he willfully set up. It doesn’t take 4 years to make the playoffs. He’s the one who cashed in all his runway on years with zero expectations. Time to pay the piper

This is the world I which I choose to imagine our dialogue taking place

And if we miss the playoffs next season, Adams is fired. Fair?