PerreaultForever

Well you're sort of right but only partly. No, I don't like the plan. But, while I do believe you build a winning team primarily via the draft, I think you have to build the culture FIRST. That's the part I disagree with. His idea that they grow into that culture collectively is, imo, inherently flawed. I also do not believe that just throwing players into the NHL and having them learn that way is the best way either. Most teams use the AHL to teach and players only make the big club when they are ready. Most teams aren't willing to sacrifice entire seasons for "development". I think a roster needs to be balanced between rookies, young players and veterans, pros. Young guys developing in the minors and working hard and pressing veterans for opportunities and jobs. It's the cycle of hockey life. When a pile of kids knows they have the jobs and they get pampered and given free reign to "grow" they don't learn that work ethic. They can instead get spoiled and lazy. The competitive pressure just isn't there. In any event I do not think throwing players into the NHL accelerates their development. They need to learn good habits early and they need the proper development paths. Look at Mitts and Thompson. They only started to come into their own AFTER being sent down and humbled. As for the trades and signings, they are minimal. I do not see Byrum for Mitts filling a need. Perhaps you could explain that? I see it as creating a hole at center. We already have enough puck moving offensive D men. What we need is Samuelsson back and adding another defensive D man, not a Dahlin-lite. All he did was toss Montour away and now replaced him. Holes created and filled like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. I was for the Clifton signing and I think it was fine. He's overpaid, but that's how we got him. That's how you get free agents. Greenway trade was fine, even if his inconsistency annoys me but it's fine. I can't count Tuch and Krebs as great acquisitions because we tossed Eichel away. So far we have less than we had. Maybe Adams had no choice, but it's not a great accomplishment in terms of a plan. There's more tear down than build up there (so far). Adams hasn't filled the holes we have and we are a team that imo underachieves due to the poor coaching and the lack of leadership and key veterans on the roster. There are simply far too many errors in the Pegula era and so far, we just swap parts and spin our wheels.

Star players who are leaders are rare (eg. Crosby). Usually they only evolve into true leaders if they have years of mentorship under other leaders. We haven't had that. Kyle Okposo may have been a nice guy, but he wasn't a mentor for these stars. Almost everyone on this roster has not been on an NHL winner. Only Tuch, Clifton, and Byram really qualify and Clifton was a fringe player in Boston. Byram hasn't been here long enough and so that leaves Tuch but even he was shipped out before Vegas won it all. I look at Boston and they went Chara to Bergeron to Marchand and next will be McAvoy even though Pasternak is their best player. That's a solid passing of the baton. It could have been ROR, but they blew that moment. Now they are blowing it again by not bringing in leaders. The lack of emotion and inconsistency is something I've been talking about for years (as have others) but it never seems to change. I just don't know what they are going to do.

I actually agree with this. My fear is that next year's C's will be Thompson, Cozens, Savoie/Krebs, Krebs/Girgs. So they will re-sign Girgs and move him to the wing as usual if Savoie is 3C which I think they will try hard to make happen. Jost is the fill in. Basically no change. Adams desperately wants Krebs to succeed to help validate the Eichel trade he made. I also think he's going to try hard to trade Samuelsson. He might not and he might not be able to, but the 7 D will be the same as we ended the season with Johnson probably added in. Levi and UPL in goal. Comrie re-signed to play in Rochester. Kulich/Rosen given a shot to replace Olofsson who will be gone. and that'll be it.

So what you're saying is there's basically an inverse correlation between how good your prospect pool is and how well you do in the NHL, that correct? Really, Boston is always ranked last and yet they have 3 new roster players that came from their pool (Beecher, Lauko and Brazzeau), a promising kid who looked NHL ready at 19 until he got injured (Poitras) and a top D prospect i(Lohrei) who can't quite crack the roster, and they top the division again but ya, they have the worst prospect pool. If you don't count players who played in the NHL last year, Sabres had 1 prospect make the roster in Benson. Three if you want to count Rousek and Johnson. Four if you don't count Levi's games last year and add him in and we didn't make the playoffs. So even if we do have a great prospect pool, until they make the NHL it means NOTHING. I wonder if you took all the teams and their rankings in terms of prospect pools and correlated it with their position in the standings I'd bet it's pretty much the same inverse correlation. Also, if our prospect pool is so fantastic, Rochester should win the AHL championship right? Right? They're the dominant AHL team aren't they? Aren't they? Hmmm.

I want to respond to the last sentence. Giving Adams a "chance to finish what he started" is okay if and only if there is a plan to finish things and the plan isn't simply to carry on until you get enough of your own draft picks to have a winning roster. I look at a trade like the Mitts Byram trade and I don't really see it filling a hole or making us better. I just see it as Adams avoiding a potential problem in signing Mitts and getting the best player that was available to get rid of Mitts and that problem. Byram is a highly skilled player, but he's not really the type of player we needed. We already have highly skilled D men with offensive skills. We need defenders. It's not like we have a diverse pipeline either. It's highly slanted towards fast, often small or smallish, skilled offensive forwards. To me it's like Adams plan is keep drafting the same guy and maybe if we do that odds are one or more of them will hit and be a star. It's time now to fill the needs of this roster so it's time to make some deals and/or sign some free agents. So if he does that, if things shift in that direction, maybe then I will join you in "letting him finish" but I do need to get a sense that there actually is a finishing plan. It's time. Lastly, the coach has to change. Granato may have been a decent development guy but he's not a good game management coach and he's not the coach we need to get to the level we want to be. Change there might also signal a finishing part of the plan.

The optimist side of me (hanging on to life by a thread) wants to believe that Adams is following the Carolina model and we will get similar results. We see the connections, we've had the Brind'Amour conversation on the site, we look for the similarities. It's possible. This team just doesn't remind me of that team though. If we played more like them. If we had a current identity of a lesser version of them I might buy in to the idea but I'm skeptical.

I still hold to the idea that they have done it backwards. To do it right you need to build the culture FIRST and then you bring the young future stars into the existing culture and they develop and later thrive. This matches Trotts comments in Nashville and to some extent Torts in Philly. I assume Yzerman signed all those vets for similar reasons. Adams on the other hand wants them to grow as a group and somehow coalesce into a winning culture and I don't think that works but maybe there's a way for that to eventually happen. Maybe. Maybe not. This off season tells the tale imo. If they stay the course, well, then forget it. We will be the same and we will head to an eventual further tear down and new guy and do it all over again and get nowhere cycle. If they do add missing pieces and make key moves and turn the roster into a solid balanced NHL roster with a good coach, then maybe we have a true beginning. Cynically, numb from 13 years of failure, I have few actual hopes for that to happen.

Proof that good coaching and a solid defensive system can take you far. It's never just about talent. Are you paying attention Terry?

I said when he was hired and I first heard him speak I believed his timeline was much longer than ours and with the tear down his plan was playoffs in 5 years and then presumably perpetual playoffs like the Bruins and Leafs etc. now. I was hoping that was wrong, but it appears that the 5 years from when he was hired idea is more correct and IF they do make moves and add this off season it will look to be true. It's either that or they are just BS artists and totally incompetent which is also quite possible.

So let's address this point by point. 1) negativity to players comes from poor efforts and losing. They win and they get much love. They work hard and they get even more love. Nobody drives anybody out of town (we do not have that power). I've seen every Sabres game this year and every Bruins game. Bruins were booed by their own fans 3 times if I remember correctly. Once quite loudly. Nobody complained or left town. They worked harder. Sabres were booed a few more times, but not really much louder or much more often. Certainly not sustained. 2)"elsewhere" players are treated better? You must be f'n kidding me. The bar is so incredibly low here. You want to see scorn for your own team and players go look in on a Flyers site sometime. Bruins fans are far more critical. The standard on other teams is much higher. At least most teams. Sabres media is incredibly soft as well. Softer than the team, and that's really soft. 3)Detroit wrong? Detroit was 11 points behind us last year and they are still alive down to the wire (but will probably just miss). They passed us and they have not had the #1 overall draft pick once, not to mention twice. Best they've had is 4th overall. They are better than us. Not a lot better, but better. 4)Young as an excuse? They CHOSE to be young. It was a management decision and thus they can be held accountable for it and they do not get to use a self fulfilling prophecy as an excuse. The reality is the team is poorly coached, the team is pampered and spoiled and not held accountable (the bar is too low), they keep hiring inexperienced management that learns on the job and makes mistakes. They keep changing plans and deconstructing and then reconstructing in a perpetual cycle. They play soft and have inconsistent efforts. They are simply a badly run organization and a bad hockey team and without changes, they will be the exact same thing again next year.

Well at least Kyle looked pretty bad. I'm not running Cozens out of town, but he did giveaway the puck in OT and that was the mistake that cost the game.

No, because he wasn't that good before it either. He hasn't been good all year. imo he does not see the entire ice surface well, he does not pass particularly well or at the right time, and most of all he is physically weak. You see Kulikov knock him off the puck tonight and onto his butt? He's weak. Many times he wants to play an in tight game, and he has the puck skills to do it, but he does not have the strength for it. I thought he'd grow more and have more muscle by now but he hasn't. He's lanky and it seems like that is how he will stay.

Well I believe what you said originally was stupid, but I saw no reason to insult you or say that. I guess we are different.

Scored one, cost us one. It's a wash. Same in a few of the other games since he's returned actually. He can score, and he might become really good in the bumper PP position but he has much to improve on still. Next year will tell the true tale (assuming he's healthy).

Thank you so much. I appreciate your kind words and well thought out reply. Good job.

Kind of fitting that Reinhart would score the winning goal at the end of this season (with a nice assist from Cozens I might add!) Only thing that would have been more fitting would be if he'd done it on Levi and it was the game that ended the playoff dream (?). Wasn't a terrible game though. They are playing better than they did earlier in the year, but that's the same as last year. Late season end of season all too late - again. Penalty on Cliffy was BS. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy in Cousins. Seen Tkachuk, Bennett, Lomberg (who didn't play today I think) and Cousins himself throw hits like that on multiple occasions this year and in last year's playoffs with no call at all but whatever. If it was a playoff game I'd actually be upset. One more to go and then we can go through the exit interviews.

I do believe that. I believe Adams believes that too. I believe Pegula believes that as well. I think they drink their own Kool-Aid and they all (many of the players as well including Dahlin) think that they are extremely talented and it's just that they are young and it's taking a little longer than they thought but they believe they are talented and on the right track and everything is fine. I do think they believe that, yes.

If Florida wants some tune up for the playoffs hockey this might be an interesting look into how close or how far the Sabres are from playoff ability but I suspect this will be a tame affair and Florida will float a little, especially if they get up early. I am interested to see if they let Kyle on the ice though. He hasn't played much for them yet. Maybe they want to rest a vet for the playoffs so they give him a look in this one. Would be kind of funny if he scored.

So Matt Moulson should have been captain because he invited Jack Eichel to live with him? All this proves is Dahlin bought a big house and has a lot of empty rooms.

Well you can do that obviously, but I don't think it's right. When we enter into the realm of "I think he misspoke" you're basically just making things into what you want them to be. Maybe he did misspeak, but maybe he didn't. Maybe he's completely arrogantly deluded? Maybe he's dumb. Maybe he's being sarcastic. Maybe he's lost in translation. Maybe.............. any number of things. I think we have to take them at exactly what they say and try to read anything they have said as objectively as possible. If any player truly misspeaks, he has plenty of opportunities in the press or on social media or other interviews to clarify and correct it. If he doesn't say something different somewhere I have to take what he said as what he meant and not read into it or interpret it for him. My personal view is that this franchise pampers these guys so much and strokes their egos so much they do in fact believe this stuff. They buy in to what the team is trying to sell us rather than a work ethic work harder we weren't good enough ethic.

and always travel in pairs I guess.

The name and logo stay with the old owner? Damn, I really thought the Utah 'yotes had a good ring to it. What are they going to call them then the Salt Lake Slickers? The colours could use a change though, that's for sure.

I still remember he took on Kevyn Miller who was a true heavyweight and held his own. His size and the size of his giant hands makes me not worry about him entering any fight. I just hope he develops the desire and compete that I envision and if he does he will dominate.

I can't speak for everyone but what you say isn't true for me. I base it on more than that. I watch how he's elevated his game at times (lead by example), I noticed how it was him with RJ not Dahlin (remember that?), the way he does his own version of the goalie hug. There's lots of little things that are on camera, in addition to his community connection and desire to be here. I don't see these things from Dahlin post game and I don't see him leading during the game either. He is a star player and he does compete, but I see nothing on camera that says leader. the locker room could of course be different. As I said, I expect it to be Dahlin but I think it should be Tuch. Maybe I am biased and haunted by the fact that I thought it should have been ROR and not Eichel and I was right and I'd hate to make the same mistake again.

Probably, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has a sophomore slump and an uneven development. I just hope we don't ruin him and he becomes like some of the other slackers. The guy is different and he stands out because of it relative to the others. He's been coached differently and his attitude is different. Kid is a hockey player and he brings it. He is without a doubt the best thing about this bad season.