[GDT: Blue Jackets @ Sabres - Tue. 7 pm ET, Dec 19, 2023, MSG-B, BSOH 📺 WGR 📻]

Awkward bounce off the ref. Of course. 

[Buffalo Bills 2023 Thread]

The o my team with a winning record they’ve beaten is Denver. And that was before Denver figured it out this season. 

[Levi sent to Roch]

He always gets the dumbest bounce goals against. Deserved a shutout 

[What Happened to the Sabres' North/South Game]

They are apprehensive and get feasted on for it. Coaching is confusing players, exactly what they didn’t do last season. But now that defense needs to improve they don’t know how. 
 

plus all the assistant coaching is terrible and isn’t helping. 
 

run them all out 

[GDT Sabres @ Hurricanes Saturday Dec 2, 7pm MSG ESPN+]

St. Louis was last place changed HC from an assistant then won a cup

[Buffalo Bills 2023 Thread]

McD does a great job prepping the team but he can’t manage the second half of games. There isn’t a sub-HC role to defer that task to though. It’s his ceiling. 

[Eric Johnson- Advanced Stats Nightmare]

Cliffton is 200x worse 

[The 6K discussion thread: Can he lead us to the playoffs? Keeping the crease warm for Levi?]

Levi is fine. Relying on a goalie when the team has no defense is dumb. He makes the saves he needs to and makes plenty of big saves lesser goalies don’t. He gets tested more than goalies ever should and people forget that too easily 

[GDT - Sabres @ Capitals - 11/22/2023 @ 6PM CT / 7PM ET - MSGB/ESPN+]

Cozens blew that OT with dumb decisions I’m not sure why anyone is blaming Levi

[GDT: Wild @ Sabres - Nov 10, 2023 - 7:00pm, MSG-B/ESPN+📺WGR📻]

Levi won the game. He’s a good goalie. His bad game must’ve been an injury fluke

 

Cliffton is an absolute tire fire. He just eats up space and does nothing useful. Both goals were his man who drifted away from him and he was too dumb to move over. Don’t tell me he is playing position on the PK, each time they made no front presence, Cliffton should’ve cheated over. On the second goal he repeatedly looked and saw the guy but didn’t do anything to move over. This guy almost lost the game by himself out there. He’s not even serviceable as a 7D. If he didn’t hit people once in a while I’d say he’s worse than Bryson. 
 

Power and Joki are looking much better than start of season, to the teams benefit. 
 

Really wish Stillman was brought back up. While in Buffalo he never looked bad. 
 

Savoie invisible, I don’t think he has the talent to overcome not being strong enough yet, but he has a few more games of rope before judgements should be made. Really glad we have Bensen because he’s different. 
 

Mittelstadt is finally good. Thompson is carrying this team. Peterka deserves those first line minutes and dare I say a good compliment for Skinner (keep them together either with Thompson or Mittelstadt). Cozens is still lost, trending towards a Girgensons and not the Drury we know he can be, not sure what to do (probably mental).   

[Practice Lines 11-2-23]

35 minutes ago, K-9 said:

Feeling real sorry for Cozens.

He’s been playing bad

[Buffalo Bills 2023 Thread]

Wasn’t competing with all the injuries anyway. At least a better CB will make games more watchable. Defending 3rd and long is miserable on this team. 

[Connor Clifton gets a Two Game Suspension from DOPS]

Suspend him for the year. Save us from his awful play please. Bring back Stillman

[GDT: 🏒 Buffalo Sabres @ New Jersey Devils 27 October 2023 7:00 PM MSG]

Why is UPL playing 

[Buffalo Bills 2023 Thread]

Coaching is awful and is the most fixable. 
 

Offense has no weapons past Diggs and Kincaid. Bunch of overpaid drop artists. 
 

Defensive is too injured. No team can absorb the number of injuries they’ve sustained. 
 

Team has mental issues if they are always playing up or down to their competition. Didn’t have that last couple years, but now it’s ever present on both sides of the ball. 

[GDT: Flames @ Sabres, Oct. 19, 2023 - 7pm EDT, MSG 📺 WGR 📻]

39 minutes ago, K-9 said:

For what it’s worth, the Blues were something like 17-24 and in last place in the first week of January 2019 and they turned it around and went on to win the cup. Anything is possible I guess.

They canned their coach. We need to do the same 

[GDT: Flames @ Sabres, Oct. 19, 2023 - 7pm EDT, MSG 📺 WGR 📻]

Coaching keeps these kids unprepared 

[GDT: Flames @ Sabres, Oct. 19, 2023 - 7pm EDT, MSG 📺 WGR 📻]

Clifton is so ***** bad 

[GDT - Lightning @ Sabres - October 17, 2023 - 7:30 PM (EDT) - ESPN & WGR]

As much as I rail on the coach he made literally the exact line change I suggested last week. Now I might have to eat crow if it doesn’t look good. Why did you do this to me Granato?  See, I still can blame Granato no matter the outcome 

 

I used to bag on Krebs a lot but I think towards the end of last year it finally clicked for him. 

[Would you replace Olofsson with Savoie?]

Jost should be in the lineup and Krebs promoted to Oloffson’s spot

 

Whether rookies break in is a question of whether they are ready. And by ready I don’t mean Oloffson is gifted a spot because of familiarity. 

[GDT: Sabres @ Islanders - October 14, 2023 - 7:30PM, MSG-B/MSGSN/ESPN+📺WGR📻]

The breakdowns all happened with a singular person back there. Point fingers. Clifton is a bust

[Come on Granato!!]

Right. Since him we haven’t had one. Bunch of sweet talking rejects 

[Come on Granato!!]

6 hours ago, PerreaultForever said:

I do look at each team/year separate but then those teams look the same and so you also have to look at bigger picture things. I'm a retired engineer and I used to do a lot of analysis of trends over longer time periods and bigger picture stuff. It was my strength. My brain is sort of trained to look for similarities and commonalities as a way of understanding cause. 

At a certain point you have to dive deep on a failure like this and look for those commonalities/causes/etc. Having tried to do that, I cannot come up with anything aside from the aforementioned Pegula. 

It's still early, but if this rebuild fails like the last you can't simply do it all over again and expect anything different. Not unless the commonality changes. 

When have we had a good coach?

[GDT: Rangers @ Sabres - October 12, 2023 - 7:00PM, MSG-B📺WGR📻]

Granato is to blame if the team is unprepared. They have the talent. 

Granato made the right call on that offsides challenge. However his response of just being quiet and shutting up was telling of how he treats any adversity. Without a fight. It’s no surprise our team has no fight either. 
 

I miss Lindy

[GDT: Sabres @ Islanders - October 14, 2023 - 7:30PM, MSG-B/MSGSN/ESPN+📺WGR📻]

6 hours ago, Porous Five Hole said:

I didn’t think of it that way and you may be onto something. 

Mittelstadt was pegged to him at the start of last year and looked just as lost as Cozens does now. Once Mittelstadt broke free he surprised everyone.