Kruppstahl

I think the shadow problem relates to the fact that baseball is not played in January. Sun is really low in sky relative to summer and its crating tons of shadow problems. It's going to get worse until the the whole rink is in shade, which might take a while. Not sure this was well thought out when they chose a venue. The architecture of the top of that stadium is making a lot of complex shadows.

If you think this is bad, wait for the playoffs, when things quickly deteriorate into trench warfare with huge bodies banging on the wall for puck possession....we'd lose 6-0 4 game straight against a dozen playoff teams in this league. We need some re-working; the guy who needs to go first is Reinhart; his game just doesn't translate to any type of playoff success at all.

Now you can lay into Lehner! LOL. Dude thought he had the post; had no idea where he was; left nice fat gap between skate and post....goal. He's not middling, he's terrible.

Ever watch him play?

What a hockey player though! Not the most eloquent speaker, but I love the guy.

Well he's kind of a middling goaltender who will be gone after this year. Just ride with it!

Our defensive coverage which left a shooter wide open in the slot 8 feet in front of the net was worse. Ice is in great shape b/c it is so f-ing cold out there.

:lol:

These outdoor games, in general, are not good viewing experiences. The concept is cool philosophically, but it doesn't really translate to real execution very well. The geometry of a ball park doesn't work with the geometry of an ice rink, for beginners. And there's a goal....hey, why not leave Carey wide open in the slot!?

Thought Lehner was fantastic on the tying goal to send it to OT; can't believe he got the puck in his glove. Kane had the most lovely opportunity to win it in OT just before we lost in OT...dude has trouble finding the net. The new year can't get here soon enough. I think we might start to see some trades in January leading into the trade deadline. I'm pretty sure Housley is going nowhere this entire season. I think he will be the HC when next season starts. But it is also pretty obvious he is not the right guy for this job. I think we would have benefitted from a HC with much more experience and same for the GM. These guys are learning on the job which just adds time to an already time consuming process and demands patience from a fan base that has run dry. I think Botterill's happy with playoffs in 3 years.

That is an argument from a bygone era that is totally irrelevant to anything the Sabres have done recently. This current team will be liquidated for picks, insofar as it can be! What are you going to get for Reinhart these days? The rebuild has to start over almost from scratch. I mean we suffered through one of the worst if not the worst single Sabres season in their history...really depressing, boring hockey, trying to lose....for a massive reward at the end of it. That reward turned out to be Sam Reinhart, who played so poorly last night, he was benched, and that was after starting on the 4th line, b/c his play has been so bad he has demoted himself to that level. You would like to think you can replace a NO. 2 overall with something of comparable value. Forget that... We are now in the "Holiday no trade zone" or whatever they call it; come January, we might start to see some moves and then we will be a big time seller at the trade deadline. And it will begin. Again.

Case in point: Have a look at the trash GMTM selected in the 2014 draft, when we picked #2 overall and then had THREE (3) 2nd round draft picks. Those 4 players could have set us up for a long time if we got a little lucky and they all turned out to be really good players. As it turns out, those 4 picks turned into: 1) Reinhart (I'm declaring him a bust at the NHL level; with hindsight, admittedly, that pick should have been Draisaitl, Dal Colle, Nylander, or Fabbri, to name a few other 2nd rounders available that year; admittedly Reinhart/Bennett were the consensus #2 picks after Ekblad; not winning the lottery that year really hurt, as it did the following year when we got Eichel and not McDavid) 2) Brendan Lemieux (lousy pick; no longer on team) 3) Eric Cornel (WTF!?!?) 4) Karabacek (WTF!) Wonder why we suck? The massive pile of currency Darcy left for GMTM to spend on talent was blown in the strip club on booze and women before GMTM ever made it to the draft auditorium. You actually can't overstate how badly GMTM screwed this whole thing up; giving a first for f-ing LEHNER!? GMTM screwed it up so badly, we will need to start over, almost from the beginning plus Eichel. And don't get carried away thinking Eichel is the generational talent he was touted as being; he is not; his ceiling is "very good player" which is fine, but we are going to need that much more around him if we are going to routinely challenge for Cups. BTW: If you really want to feel bad, have a look at Las Vegas. That lowly pathetic expansion club. They now have twice as many points as the Sabres and sit in 2nd place overall.. Puts how bad our rebuild is going into perspective rather nicely. Thanks Tim Murray! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out! And I have to admit, I was a supporter of his and surprised he was fired when he was. Shame on me!

Yes, he got benched. He was a no-show prior to that on the 4th line. He's not only working his way off the team, he's working his way out of the league.

You may want re-evaluate how much talent is on this team. There's not nearly as much to work with as there was supposed to be. The more this plays out, and admittedly with the benefit of hindsight, I realize just how badly GMTM screwed the pooch. He had the GM position at one of the most critical times in franchise history, and he dropped the ball. We are seeing the results now. This team needs to be replaced with a new one; by the time we are good again, it will be mostly a new team.

Lots to like tonight; as strong a game Eichel has played since last year. The team looks different since the lineup changes and Moulson hitting the road. Tons of work remains. Watch for the trade window to start to open in January. Can't wait to see what Botts does first. This team is going to look a lot different as time rolls forward. At least that is my hope.

Just re-wound the DVR (LOL; no winding going on but what the hell) to see what you were referencing. Wow; he looked like a combination of nauseas, hungover, demoralized, and dejected. Bylsma was F-ing horrible and a terrible hire. I do not think Housley is working out either and this group definitely needs a more veteran HC. But this team is broken and it all has to fall on the players right now. They just aren't interested in playing hockey. Thank you, CBA, and the advent of guaranteed contracts in hockey! A lot of these guys should simply be released from the team right now; in turn, the fear of that should make a lot of them actually care about playing hockey. As it is, we get this . It's frustrating right now b/c it feels like nothing is being done on an organizational level...but this is not the right time to shake things up. The day of reckoning is coming. I'm thinking some time in January and certainly moreso at the trade deadline in February...bodies are going to be shipped out of here, and I don't just mean Kane.

Great thread topic! I just finished watching the game on DVR, and came to this forum wanting to express my view that I think we have hit rock bottom....and then I found this thread. I do think this is rock bottom. This is much worse than the worst tanking team, b/c we aren't trying to lose, our franchise saving superstar, Jack Eichel, is healthy and playing, and we are supposed to be fairly good at this point, or lat least earning, or progressing. I dislike Eichel more and more every day, not that all the blame falls to him of course...but seriously, the guy is tainted in my opinion. He has the talent to do something about this, at least when he is on the ice, and yet he is apparently quite happy to suck ass. In his first few seasons, Zemgus showed ten times more heart, motivation, and leadership than Eichel has shown to date. If Botterill wants to get drunk and do some wheeling and dealing GMTM style, put together a blockbuster and ship Eichel's ass out of here. I won't miss him, nor are we guaranteed any sort of success with him. This team is BROKEN. It has no soul! I don't know what it is or where it comes from or why, but it's BROKEN.

Tank and hope we finally get lucky with the lottery. Getting Rasmus Dahlin as a long term 29 minute a night stud on the Blue line is by FAR the best thing that could come from this horrific season.

36 posts responding to the OP's post, and none of it is really focusing on what the OP was trying to get at. So PA Sabre fan, why don't you tell us the juicy part you were saving for later? Cut to the chase! This team has quit; it does not compete; it is broken. That goes beyond the traditional sorts of arguments raised in this thread like poor scouting/drafting. Our problem is bigger than that.

Because he is f-ing god awful. I think about that as I watch these games all the time. I can't imagine driving down there on a cold winter night to see this product; it's not entertaining. Man, I was going to to respond harshly to this post until I got to the punchline. Eichel is a huge concern for me; I think about trading him almost daily now. It would have to be with a team prepared to give you a boatload of currency...but if you were ever going to do it, the time would be soon before the rest of the league catches up and realizes he's just not what was promised. His ceiling is going to be a lot lower than we all thought. I'm thinking of Craig Button saying Eichel would have been the #1 draft prospect in every single draft since Crosby, other than the one he actually went in with McDavid. That is quite a statement, and it shows how highly Eichel was scouted. He's nothing like that kind of a player. Judging from the number of empty blue seats on my TV screen tonight, the answer is "nothing." That building gets more and more empty for these games all the time; I keep reading that the secondary market for ticket sales has crashed. The word is season ticket holders can't give them away. I'm sure some here could chime in on that one. I've been asking myself this question for several years now. The game of hockey has really changed since when I got hooked on it in the late '70s and early '80s. I find it really boring most of the time now. I don't just mean the lack of fighting/hitting...the '80s were freaking fantastic if you like end to end rushes, wild offensive hockey, and little concern for D, particularly among the Smythe division teams back then. Hockey used to be really exciting, that's why I learned to watch it and play it. Now? It's freaking boring. :worthy: This made me laugh out loud! I have been homing in on this thing for quite some time now. He does it all the time and it is the mark of a pouting loser. I swear to God, I do not like what I see in Eichel almost all the time now. His intangible grades are D- or F. Great post. I have seen enough to boldly declare that the idea of Eichel ever becoming a Jonathan Toews is patently offensive, and comedic. He's just nowhere near that caliber of player. Don't take my word for it, watch him play. He turns it on when he feels like it, which isn't too often. This is not a "lack of talent" thing. He has plenty of that. It's everything else that makes a player. Without question this entire experiment needs to start over. I have zero faith in Botterill but he is the guy running the show now. I honestly can't wait to see this team be dismantled, b/c I have a feeling that is coming and it is what is needed. I'm just wondering which blue chip cornerstones of the franchise will survive the bloodletting. Maybe Eichel and no one else. This also made me laugh out loud! When the hell was that pride period!? :lol: This team is lifeless, disinterested, lazy, and unskilled. Other than that, we have quite a foundation for that Cup run we've been hearing about! :lol:

Eichel's game is a mess right now; he seems lost. It's pretty clear Housley is not the right guy for this job and hiring a first time HC was a mistake. I put more blame on the players themselves than Housely, yet Housley should still be replaced. It's important to try and salvage as much of Eichel's early promise as we can before he starts developing really bad habits, some of which are starting to see consistently. It's a mess.

Great conversation going on right now with Schopp & Bulldog and Rob Ray on Gr-55. Talking about accountability in the locker room and the dynamics of how that should work and Jordan Nolan's comments. Listen for it when it is recorded at wgr550.com. It will probably be recorded under its own title of "rob ray joins schopp & bulldog" but it is taking place at @ 4:20pm in hour 2 of the show. Rayzor said countless players told him over the years "Thanks for the wakeup call last night I needed it" and that sort of thing...and that on a good team players should not mind being called out by a teammate in a constructive manner to get it in gear...no one doing that on this team currently. Rayzor said the team in Ottawa when he played there was the same; no one would criticize anyone else around them and team suffered as result.

It just hit me! We need to eliminate the white in the uniforms and replace with red completely. Only way to salvage a lousy color scheme. Retain only a tiny hint of white, like the piping around the neck line of the sweater.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I was a supporter of the tank, particularly in its second year when we got Eichel...it sounds like you were opposed to the idea from the beginning. However, I agree with your takes here. Eichel is going to be a notch down from "superstar" and Reinhart is a notch down from "really good player". He is honestly a borderline NHL talent right now, but he is young. He lacks a lot of really important things like drive, aggressiveness, playing with physicality, and most of all, speed. He is a slow, passive player, lacking the raw talent to get away with those traits, even if he is talented. Right now he is a borderline COHO type player in my mind; highly talented, achieved a lot of success at Junior level, very high expectations going into his NHL career...but ultimately a big disappointment. Our struggles are directly connected to the fact that what was supposed to be the 3 big difference makers on the roster (ROR, Eichel, Reinhart) are not difference makers at all.