triumph_communes

They've been in the gutter. Sorry for being optimistic about the future now that we at least have half of a prospect system and two superstars in place... Buffalo hasn't had a superstar since LaFontaine. Every other good player since then has been some over-hyped blue-collar player, undersized, or a goalie. It doesn't take much effort to blame the current leader for a problem. Finding the source of the woes is the hard part. If you want to blame drafting and point to the guy who has only been here 3 years, you're misplacing the blame. Murray had nothing to start with, but at least had a ton of picks to make his own. He then spent them like a crackwhore and failed on everything except a 7th rounder I bet he never even saw play... His double 2nds trade targets and 1sts amounted to tabloid articles and prospects hardly anyone remembers, but not play on the ice. But he's gone and its over.

We don't need a center 3 years from now. Eichel-Trade pickup/Cozens-Mittelstadt/Kahun-Larry or Girgs/Asplund/Pekar Draft BPA

Dahlin is a teenager. We didn't pick 1OA 6 times like Edmonton.. And luckily, we got rid of the GM who kept picking forwards instead of building from defenseman out-- especially when we're going to lose another defenseman in the upcoming expansion draft people keep overlooking.

Think back to all the quotes the players had about Housley and Bylsma. They would go into extreme details about minute little aspects of the games-- and it either went way over the player's heads, or it screwed with their thought processes so much that they became paralyzed over-thinking instead of just playing hockey. It's probably not the details being wrong getting the players down. It's the combined message that's too hard to understand. And a good head coach knows how to filter the analytics guys, etc. etc. into a message the players can actually comprehend while exerting themselves to their full physical extent to exhaustion for each 45 second stint they're on the ice. This is why I've liked Krueger-- he knows simplifying the message and controlling the story is what's most important at the end of the day. I don't trust his X and O guys (whoever is running the PP and hasn't changed it, the team is still allergic to the front of the net while cycling low, which lets opposing defenders have too-easy of a job later), but at least the team is playing with an identity for once and losses come down to small instances of mistakes-- not total failures as they did seasons prior. And at some point it really just is the players. We had a lot of stupid players (Bogosian being the worst of them all). The types of players Botterill has added lately seem to have improved the team's relative hockey IQ little by little.

Are ya'll too young to remember our heroic battles for 9th place year after year after year, until we finally got lucky acquiring talent from some shrewd trades, just to lose the co-captains to shrewd ownership? Now we have an all-star center and defenseman and prospects in the system. That makes me happy.

Back-up goalie situation is largely dependent upon whether Botterill is comfortable putting Hutton and his salary in the minors. He's done this with multiple other players before though. Plenty of good-enough quality back-ups available in the market I think. If overpaying Granlund in FA isn't your idea of a 'good 2c', then the only option is via trades. Trading Ristolainen for a 2c is likely Botterill's biggest goal, but hockey trades can be hard. At least Risto's value has gone up dramatically with his improved play this season. Physical defensive defenseman? We have Borgen in the system, does he fit? We have Samuellsson in the system, does he fit? I don't see us acquiring anyone else.

Statisticians showed a long-time back strong correlations that players who are a few months from whatever the age-cutoff is for a sports league/school system (Jan 1 or mid-summer) perform better overall than players slightly younger. It was always thought due to their slight advantage of physical maturity led to them getting more coach attention than the others. It's not surprising to think that 0.6 years of age can make a difference. That leads one to consider: does the NHL, OHL, NCAA, and the kids local youth organization use the same cut-off dates or not? If the coaching attention difference is the root-cause, then varying start-dates will add noise to the metric. I have a hard time believing the OHL is 'harder' than the NCAA. Kids in the OHL are sheltered from men.

cause the entire country is old

The trades you mentioned, plus Montour, are all the trades Botterill has done to improve the team. The other trades for cap dumps is what he did just to fill the void in the roster with marginal NHL players as opposed to non-NHL players that were available via FA. There simply weren't any players in FA over the last few seasons that didn't take hometown discounts or didn't sign absurd contracts that would have us in a bad cap situation starting next season. Find me replacement UFA players who signed elsewhere over the last three seasons and construct me a better roster than we had. All of his 'bad cap' moves end this season. Blame Murray for emptying the cupboards, not Botterill for not working voodoo magic via trades. I get it, ya'll hate the ROR trade, but the rest of Botterill's work is a smart, long-term plan I think ya'll just don't have the patience for. Building from the back-end out and filling up the prospect pools first. Oh, and we have our firsts for every year going forward.

Botterill fleeced the Penguins on this one. Kid has the motor that too many of the players on our team lacks, and has the hockey IQ too many of our players also lack. Reminds me of Briere. I'm with the above poster-- only reason I see this trade happening is because of the money owed or some sort of contract demands we haven't heard about yet. Might as well be, nobody is going to re-sign him at is QO rate of over 2 million per annum

Kahun is such a stellar player. Unreal what we gave up for him. I know the season is in a bad place but that deal is going to be great for next year.

Ditching Larry and Girgensons is worth nothing less than a first. Last thing the team needs is to give either player a taste of another organization. May be able to trick them to stay

Fair assessment, agrees with eye tests too

Yes, it’s a better team with awful special teams. Something an assistant coach change could fix. Hard to do that mid season though.

Good on him. Y’all are rabid

Swap Kahun and Reinhart

Hahaha Risto

Team is scared of the front of the net.

Whole team won’t finish glorious chances tonight

Burn bad statisticians burn. Botterill light that fire. xG is not predictive of anything.

Montour is not good on his off side

Yes

That’s what I believe. But I also think Chad has sources and he tweeted on the subject.

If they fire him I just hope it’s earlier not later. Botterill has no chance to do anything before his first draft.

Well Chads got connections. Whoever steps in will have a much better situation than Botterill did when he started. Team is only a couple players, assistant coaches, and a healthy season away