Kruppstahl

The comp you are looking for is Max Afinogenov. He reminds me in most ways of Tage, including the recent spinorama move in front of the net. Max had one of those moves of his own, only he scored on his. Both guys are very similar; way above average stick and puck skills; zero hockey IQ; terrible players.

It's not. UB is a stepping stone program and until they graduate to playing in deeper waters, they are always going to have a coaching retention problem. Oats will make a lot more money, have access to a much higher caliber of athlete in recruiting, and it's just a solid career move from his perspective all the way around. Nothing "dick" about it.

Of course he is! He's Rasputin! You can't keep that guy down for long. It's absolutely incredible.

Readers here will note I have stressed every point made by Harrington, except one: Byslma is a terrible coach, that was a terrible hire, and he was a part of the problem too. Otherwise, it's all spot-on. On a positive note, Dahlin claims Olaffson has the best shot he has ever seen! Super quick release and heavy. I'm looking forward to seeing Olaf on the big line and hopefully some #1 PP unit time too. I would like to see his shot. Tons of guys these days (and with these sticks) have wicked shots; it's common now. I wish they would all shoot the puck like crazy.

Also not to be overlooked is a complete absence of tough, physical play and fighting from Sabres hockey and the league in general. Rick's most impassioned calls over the years, and when he really gets revved up, were when the fireworks went off. On his DVD highlight thing they released several years ago, he straight up mentions on camera that he was told by past commissioners to tone it down when it came to his enthusiasm for the fights. He was like "I'm just going with the flow...the crowd seems to love it" or something like that. Even now, when a "fight" looks it might break out, listen to his tone and volume; he shifts into high gear!

It's more than obvious to a slightly informed viewer that Housley is not the right man for the job and he needs to be replaced. The sooner he goes, the sooner we have a chance to improve. Note that the improvement is certainly not automatic and Phil can easily be replaced with someone equally inept, or even worse. There are a few problems however. First, Terry Pegula has no clue what he's watching and is probably most heavily influenced right now by "Botts". Botts is biased and wants to keep his job. He's not a good source of objective information, but Pegula doesn't seem to realize that. Second, if Pegula doesn't have the toolset to independently evaluate Botterill's performance, how in the world is he evaluating his performance? Does he go by what seems about right? Instinct? If there was ever an owner who needed a czar or director of hockey operations in place, it's Pegula, but he told us yesterday he's not interested in acquiring one. I don't think a lot of fans realize that our problems for quite a few years now with the Sabres have started with Pegula himself. It remains to be seen how this situation is going to correct itself.

The toughness won't come from anywhere if Botterill is still the guy building the team. That situation may change shortly. Stay tuned.

Unfortunately, when it comes to all things Sabres...

Relegation! That's brilliant! That is exactly what this team needs. I bet we'd look fantastic against American league competition. With regard to Botterill: he has already amply demonstrated he is an inept tool for anyone who has bothered paying attention. He has fielded two horrible squads, orchestrated one of the worst trades in franchise history, may well fail to retain Skinner on favorable terms, and very few of his boys look like they are going to be worth a damned in this league. IMO he does not deserve another shot. He should be gone along with Housley. Having said that, I fully expect Pegula to be oblivious to this, and that he will retain Botterill. Which simply means the misery will continue, the rebuild will take even longer, and another year of Eichel's career will be flushed down the toilet.

I appreciate his candor in seemingly honestly addressing the question about maybe adding another managing layer on the hockey side, which is something I've been lobbying for for a while now. He's not into that idea. His comments about Phil and "Botts" are very discouraging, if he actually means anything close to what he said. I won't read too much into that right now. He said great things about Darcy around the time of his last K extension too, only to can his ass shortly thereafter.

I've said it a thousand times in the context of both the Bills and Sabres, but Terry Pegula is the lowest information sports fan you will ever come across. His level of insight and perception is horrifically basic. That is a massive problem if you are a fan of either team and would like to see them be anything other than mediocre. Overcoming bad ownership is almost impossible.

Oh FFS. No he didn't. He just said that publicly hoping to get thrown off the sinking USS Sabre. And thanks to that genius Botterill, it worked!

Losing 4-0 to this Ottawa team in this year in this manner is a bottoming out event IMO. This is the sort of ***** that gets a GM and/or HC fired. Or at least it should be. It's impossible to overstate how hosed this organization is.

Good scrap, thanks for posting.

Currently -42 and counting! Good God ‼️

Damn! Just tried to ignore you but the system won't let me do it! Will have to try to avoid your posts some other way.

Just when we were done with this team for a while, they give us another game tonight! And here's the weird part: I'll be watching!

Replace the 10 game win streak with a normal amount of points earned over 10 games, so as to adjust for the anomaly of the streak. Then adjust for this year's team having Dahlin and Skinner with his high goal scoring year. You are left with a team that is probably right around as wretchedly bad as last year's. But progress! Because of the win streak we are not going to end up with a horrible point total at the end of year, in the 60s, reminiscent of the tank years. But your post shows just how f-ing bad this team is.

I've been wondering about that myself, but if it was a concern, I think he would have hung it up by now. I love RJ, but he is a man of pride and ego, and I think he genuinely loves to death what he has done for a living. I suspect it's very hard for him to walk away. If it was easier, he would have surely done it by now. We have just ended the 8th year of easily, by far, the worst stretch of Sabres hockey in their existence.

I've mentioned this before, but one of my cherished Sabres memories from the old days and the Aud is being up in the oranges, pre-game, and looking out to that hanging gondola press box contraption and seeing RJ there, talking to someone, while smoking a butt and drinking a large glass of beer from a see-through plastic cup. That was probably some time in the late '70s or very early '80s. No doubt all part of his pre-game ritual to help get revved up for the game. I remember the Sabres announcing a detailed "wind down" plan for RJ several years ago, around the time Dunleavy joined the program. The plan was for RJ to continue in reduced fashion for like 3-5 more years or something, and Dunleavy said, at the time, basically something like if the Sabres ever become worth a damned while RJ is still kicking, he can come out of retirement or do whatever he wants to take over the broadcast booth and Dunleavy will get out of the way. Perhaps that original plan has now been re-worked several times; I don't know. I do know the team is very relaxed about letting RJ work a reduced schedule of his choosing and he avoids long road trips out west and all that stuff so as to prolong his career.

It's the same in many sports. Think about it. These guys (pro athletes) have no formal education in their sport. All they have is their personal experience in the game. So to a large extent, they only know what they have been taught or the way they did it during those 9 years in City X, etc. In that regard, they only know how to do it 1 way--their way. It is therefore only the brightest minds that truly understand the sport that can take any collection of talent, and push it in any one of 6 different directions to maximize what they have on the team. Most coaches are simply not operating on that level. They know how to do it their way, and tailor everything around that one way of doing things. I also think, as a general rule, the best players make bad coaches b/c too much came too easily to them their whole lives, and so they never had a need to learn the right way to do things, etc. They also tend to get frustrated easily (my theory; who knows if that's true) b/c things came easily for them and they quickly grasped complex ideas, so why can't this player of theirs do the same thing? The problem is there really are no institutions where one can get a proper education in something like "playing hockey" and so you are left with ex-jocks trying to make the most of it, based on nothing but their own random set of personal experiences. It's a miracle anyone is any good at it. Though now that I think about, very few are any good at it! Look at the turnover in the NHL.

This is the move we've been waiting for. Big turnaround inbound. [That's a joke]

You know what's funny? Or maybe it's sad. We beat St. Louis in a shootout on March 17th, and we beat Pittsburgh in OT on March 1st. If that pair of games goes the other way around and we lose, we would have now lost our 14th game in a row. Eliminate our win over Washington on February 23rd and the losing streak would be 19 games. 7 games left; I would genuinely love to see us lose them all.

Bold prediction! I hope you are right! I can make a case for you being right. I can also make a case for Housley starting next year as HC! I think my latest gut feeling tells me he will be fired.

The Canadian market (who may not necessarily be Sabres fans in the first place) makes Buffalo kind of suck proof in terms of ticket sales. I think they'll remain strong. Regarding point B: The people will come back when we start winning on a consistent basis again, and probably not much before that.