PerreaultForever

Hopefully, but unproven at this point. Certainly cannot be considered "core" YET.

You're absolutely right, but there is still one more question. Is it a good young core? So far only Dahlin and Thompson fit that description. Maybe Samuelsson, see how it goes when he gets back. The rest, big question marks.

Well that'll be unlikely as Thompson signed long term but if we don't win next year I could see Dahlin playing extreme hardball in his negotiations. No reason for him to want to stay in Buffalo at that point.

dig another well. idk, the question of "afford" is a hard one to answer with a rich owner. He can afford to do anything. He might not want to.

I'm pretty confident in speculating that Ullmark played hardball with the Sabres and Adams felt he had made him the best offer he'd get so he'd take it. Bruins offer raised quite a few eyebrows at the time as an overpayment. Adams didn't want to be Skinner'd but as we've discussed, he didn't have a back up plan and should have. He really should have been going after 2 goalies all the time not just one. and, let me add this. I'm sure nobody here would have been excited if his signing this year was Martin Jones, but he was available, and Seattle either got really lucky or did their homework much better than Adams did.

The blame isn't for Ullmark leaving, it's for KA not having a plan B. When Ullmark didn't sign before the trade deadline he should have been dealt and we should have moved on to plan B then. Teams were willing to trade off goalies because of the expansion draft. If not that, plan C. But there was no real plan if Ullmark didn't sign. It was tank like. That's all on KA.

Sabres already hold the record (tied with Penguins) @ 18 games. If there's an NHL loser record for any category, we probably have it.

I'd go a different way. I'd offer to make Trotz the highest paid coach in the league, I'd offer him a long term deal 5 years or more and I'd agree to let him have a say in personnel. If he couldn't fix things, nobody can.

Well the good thing about Jost is he isn't another of those speedy 5'10" forwards. He's 5'11"

when do we play Chicago next? I watched our game and then watched the Bruins outshoot the hawks 49-18 on replay. Absolutely toyed with them all night. Chicago is actually worse than we are, but they do occasionally throw a body check.

idk where they got him from, but we could maybe use a coach like they have.

But there is also a line, and sometimes you can get pushed over it.

It isn't different. In fact, it may be worse.

Absolute rubbish. They are once again, painful to watch. I honestly don't know how much more of this I can take. Granato says your culture is defined by how you deal with adversity. I guess that's honest. Not what he meant maybe, but maybe the truth. Okposo "in no hurry" to negotiate an extension. LMFAO. The captain don't want to go down with the ship. We are so freakin' soft a suck like Matthews has the "courage" to take a run at us. I have no more words.

This guy is a classic draft disappointment under achiever who I'm not sure is any better than Caggiula was. I truly do not see what he adds.

This one will be either agony or ecstasy for me as I hate the leafs more than any other team and losing yet another game, and to them, will really suck. But, we beat them last year so why not end the losing streak right here at their expense. Their goaltending isn't great, they're almost as soft as we are, and when we play that offensive open speed game against them they easily get sucked in to playing along with us the same way so it comes down to power plays and who puts more of their shots in the net so most of the difference is on goaltending. Short way of putting that, this is the type of team we CAN beat. Might not, but we can.

Murray is an easy target. Attacking him is an easy way to make snide comments and pretend to look smart. What is much harder is to say what YOU (and I don't mean you personally, but rather whoever attacks Murray) would have done differently at the time (also not knowing you wouldn't win the lottery and so forth). You know, maybe Lehner wasn't worth a first, but would you NOT have traded for him? Would you have not snapped up the disgruntled Kane? Would you have NOT shipped out Stafford? Passed on ROR and saved that Tim Horton's from needing repairs? What was the better plan - again, NOT using hindsight which you didn't have at the time. I know I might have screwed it up too. I thought Eichel was going to be great and I thought Eichel-Kane had the potential to be a Hull and Oates level duo. I thought they overpaid for Lehner, but I thought he'd be okay too. I'm not sure I would have done any better really.

I agree, but that's also my reason for frustration. I think the KA plan is definitely build through the draft slowly and patiently. He believes in his analytics people and their recommendations and the focus is on drafting their own team. Whether they get those picks right or wrong remains to be seen. Yes, we have a great prospect pool (as we should with trading away top players for picks and finishing so poorly every year) but will they be great NHL players? No way to know for sure. In the meantime, he is fine to take pin steps forward and he's fine with steps back but we are not. At least I'm not. I'm tired of it. I want those trades. I want more balance on the roster. I want to win now. Don't trade them all away like Murray did, but a player here or there, a free agent that fits, strategic moves to fill holes and provide leadership. There simply is a middle ground for this "plan" which seems too extreme to me in it's long term focus. AND who knows if these analytics people even get it right? Right now, although I too would have drafted Power, Beniers is by far the more impactful player. He's electric and he has helped Seattle improve tremendously. Hard to compare a D man to a forward, I get that, and in a few years Power might still turn out to be the best pick but right now, if Beniers was a Sabre we'd have that 2C and he'd currently be the 3rd best player on our roster with only Thompson and Dahlin ahead of him. Building through the draft is always the right plan, but building JUST with the draft takes a really long time, and getting every draft right is even harder.

That's just the key thing though isn't it? Murray destroyed whatever culture this team had left, and we haven't been able to restore yet since. The tank left us with a complete void so he needed character guys to be leaders. He didn't assess the personalities of these additions properly and guys like Eichel learned from drunks and ego centric party animals. His only good role model was a guy we shipped off to some obscure place eventually because we didn't even want him near our prospects in the ahl. Hell of a hockey culture he created and it's still not fixed.

He definitely did. Big time. But you know, at the time, I remember most people thought his plan was good at first. ROR was supposed to be a game changing 2 way 2C with McDavid (or Eichel, they were both supposed to be "generational") as the scoring 1C. It was supposed to be a Gretzky-Messier equivalent and many thought it was. Kane was supposed to be happy to be out of Winnipeg and would blossom into the ultimate sniper power forward he was supposed to be potting multi goals off McDavid/Eichel's passes. Bogo was supposed to have added tough D and Lehner was going to be the future goalie (which he sort of became for a bit, we just didn't know he had so many "issues"). A lot of it made sense at the time and it's kind of amazing how spectacularly it all went wrong.

Buffalo always seems to get so much snow. "Lake effect" or whatever it is but I remember growing up in Hamilton, just a short drive away and we'd get like half a foot and you'd get 2-3 feet for the same storm. I was always amazed at how high the snow piles were in Buffalo when we visited. I vaguely remember a story from way back (not sure which year, mid 70s maybe?) where there was a Sabres game and one of the Sabres had so much snow at his front door he couldn't get out. I think it was Jocelyn Gouvrement and he was getting a ride to the rink for the game from (I think) Lee Fogolin (maybe I have that reversed it was long ago) but he had some sort of all terrain jeep or something and so he tosses some equipment out a second story window, gets out on the roof, slides down the snow bank and wades/digs his way to the curb and off they go and make the game last minute. I'm thinking today all the members of the current team would just call in sick and go back to bed. (and I know they'd cancel the game in today's world, but still.......)

I did no such thing. My words were: "So let's say we win the lottery and draft Bedard. I mean of course we would. Anything else would be stupid." So get yer head out of the snow, and pay attention.

idk if there is interest at this point from other teams or the timing is right. I agree with the idea from a Sabres perspective, but the only thing I see teams wanting right now is salary dumps so they have cap space at deadline time. Guys like Craig Smith in Boston will be available but guys like that aren't going to help. I'd trade a forward prospect for a defensive prospect though since we didn't draft any of the upper round ones. maybe somebody would be into that. idk which teams have too many D prospects though.

I think it's the wrong way to go as well but MAYBE this is just for a few games to give Samuelsson less minutes as he works his way back into game condition. The Dahlin/Samuelsson top pairing is the only one that makes sense. A stay at home guy who hits and blocks shots with a speedy offensively skilled guy. As it should be. That 4th line just looks - wrong. Kind of hope Granato is planning on limited ice time for that one.

What's your point though? What did I say that was incorrect? Try actually responding to something instead of just taking snipes for no reason. I don't believe ANYBODY here doesn't think Bedard is an exceptional talent and the lottery winner this year will be a very happy team. Nobody has said otherwise, yet you seem to feel a need to defend Bedard against...................what? It's ridiculous.