Thorny

Why is their 7th D to start the season someone they are afraid of playing

If they miss this year? Ya maybe a coaching change on the docket I was older than every member of the Blue Jays this year, too. Even Brandon Belt. I had a look at John Schneider’s age and even there I was like…tick tock haha

Pretty big tangent here, but a massive (and unexpected, because you don’t really think about stuff like this in advance) part of being a sports fan as you get older, that I am honestly just starting to truly reckon with over the last few years, is transitioning, as a fan, from looking up to the players as adults, then peers in an age sense, until finally..starting to see them as kids. It’s wild. I can only imagine it’s enhanced by following such a particularly young team. Candidly, I’d even say it’s something I struggle with. Sometimes to me, and it makes me feel so old, they just come across as children to me. The crafted social media skits and videos enhance this. The dominant voices of twitter (found on this content) enhance this to me (meme twitter? “Stan” twitter?. I don’t know). Not saying that stuff bothers me at all, it just highlights my perception of an age difference not just with the team, but the online fanbase. Thankfully this place is bursting at the seams with old farts. I can be Gandalf to the Treebeards. But rounding this post back on track (sorry I’m just spitballing randomly as I go along here I didn’t plan this out), I think my disconnect with the players themselves might be something that feeds into your point: they *do* seem like a team of kids sometimes, in instances such as the one you highlight, the guys being seemingly playing worried and scared at home. With such inexperience, it’s not hard to understand why. Of course, it’s a young league for everyone, but is it wild to suggest we are just..particularly young? The numbers back it up. I’m not a fan of being too much of an outlier, like on any end. we talk a lot about how good of a coach Granato is for young players, the other side of the coin is that slightly older players are often good for a coach

It’s just not something we see very much if at all in..any recent decade haha I respect the commitment to the nitty gritty though that’s so me

That’s the biggest issue imo and what I mean by “uncomfortable” timeline. That scenario basically gives Adams a mulligan after 5 years of missing the playoffs (lol), another go of it with a new coach.

Honestly if we have to use the greatest team of all time as the example the argument is a pyrrhic victory it’s not worth striving to emulate

Sometimes seems like the entire tenure needs to be relitigated after every loss and win. The best cliche in sports, because it’s true, is “you are what your record says”. It is quite literally the best explanation of what we actually are and have actually achieved the Sabres this season are 5-6. (75 point pace) during the 3 years of Adams “plan” the Sabres are 79-78-18 (82 points per season average) during the 4 years of Adams tenure overall the Sabres are 94-112-25 (76 point pace per season average) that’s what the Sabres are, you can focus on any one of those you want depending on your leanings

Ya I mean I don’t have a problem with it at all, and it obviously has nothing to do with the actual results of the team. I just imagine it must be a very nervy existence

I just can’t see it given the lengths and timing of all these contracts. I can’t imagine even Terry is dunce enough to allow his management and coaching team to map out and pre-pay that sort of deposit without an unnaturally long runway. Others have opined that the amount of rope these guys have would make a lot of people uncomfortable and I’m starting to think it’s true. While shocking: the dark side of a rebuild that straps itself to the timeline of a singular 21 year old Star Wars fan is a pathway to many time frames some would consider to be…unnatural

Honestly, I was, against my better judgment, more less buying into the feasibility of a run-it-back plan this offseason (aside from in Goal, obviously) until being rudely slapped awake by the Quinn injury. I can buy internal improvement as focus, but when you do literally nothing to replace a key component of where that improvement is supposed to come from..that was rather eye-opening and had me considering “snake oil” for the first time. You have to freaking try. If they did and the solution was..nothing..then it’s just disappointing on two fronts.

Early signs are we may have needed them just to make it

This is what will happen and exactly what happens when we generally lose and win, that’s why it gets so extreme. The anger after the losses is off the wall and the celebration after a win is equally so. At least it seems that way reading

We will win this game. The ups and downs have been the story so far

Twitter alternates between “burn it all” and “we are so back” on a literal game by game basis. Schedule today is for the “We Back” memes to be flowing. I wonder if people ever get tired of the yo-yo-ing

Absolutely. Becoming a bit of a theme, isn’t it, the ‘hindsight need not apply’ aspect: Mentioned this all summer when someone would say the forwards were “set”. My bolded there is pretty much exactly what happened with the lineup yesterday, names included ^

This has the ring of truth. It almost feels as if KA drank his own kool-aid a tad and retreated too heavily into his “improvement through only internal development” m.o. Why we’d, by design, be the “youngest team in hockey” in his FOURTH year, the one we are supposedly supposed to have playoffs hard line expectations, is beyond me. It’s imo just more attempt at building a Cup team in the vague, unknowable future than focus on building a playoff team, RIGHT NOW, which is the path where my bias lies and where I’d have led if given the choice

UPL deserves another shot before I say it’s the old him again.

No. People want to shave his full first year off and I get that. But cutting down his second to a .5 (and thus functionally eliminating that year, in your mind (be honest)), is a bridge too far. He went into that season *executing his plan*. It’s wasn’t on hold until Eichel was physically gone, the process of moving Jack which was implicit in the plan was already well underway. He wasn’t around the team. KA’s plan was underway and he managed that team through the offseason before and into it putting the wheels of exactly what he wanted to do in motion. I count this as his 4th year (reasoning: It is), but it’s assuredly at least his 3rd, no matter what hemisphere you live in The McDavid thing is just a straw man, you know that

See what @Weave said. Assumption need not apply

Nah, this isn’t a good argument. This is the same thing as “oh, you think Olofsson sucks? I’d like to see YOU do better.” It’s weak sauce. You don’t need to be an nhl player to judge Olofsson *relative to his peers*. Same with KA. It doesn’t matter one iota if Johnny Internet can tell him how to Generally Manage better than he did. Why the heck would that matter? It’s a prestigious job! He gets measured relative to his peers. If you want to measure that, check out the standings Much more salient than me

That’s insane, on Boston’s part

That we allowed it to get to the point where we probably had to deal him is what bites, and as of this moment, continually seems to bite more painfully. It’s systematic, until proven otherwise. Eichel is a paradox because he’s at once incredibly significant, and also incredibly irrelevant. Eichel was always a guy who was going to develop into the type of player capable of being the best player in the Stanley cup playoffs, en route to a Cup. He just proved that. But unlocking that functionality was always a pipe dream, in hindsight, because of the issue that led to the trade in the first place: we couldn’t harness his talent by building a team capable of winning in the now. That story is written. No point dwelling on that aspect of it imo. Sunk cost. I just hope that the systematic issues that led to the deal being necessary are structurally improved. We learn that by seeing how the team performs. onward

totally forgot about that fight until now

The funny thing is, that 5 year leash would hypothetically be over in 17 months It’s big uncle Rico energy I agree. Not punch just the idea of it

Awful game. Team wide. Oh well. 5-6. Look, we’re on to Toronto