PerreaultForever

and yet, Philly shut him down totally tonight and shook him up a little as well. Very good player, yes. Superstar? Hmmm, not so sure. but, but....Torts is a dinosaur out of step with modern hockey so that can't be possible can it?

I didn't think it was his "fault" at all. The forward (I forget which line was on at the time) should have been covering Hagel. Hagel wasn't Clifton's responsibility in that situation. The low shot total is partly because Tampa was shooting all over the place and missing the net a lot. Maybe they were trying for corners thinking Levi is small but they were missing the net and so the "shots" weren't counting. As for 8th best, that was LAST year. That is not them this year. The D did however, struggle in the one on one battles but so did the forwards. Tampa was winning the puck in the board battles all night long and since it was kind of a dump and chase affair from them it gave them an edge in our end on numerous occasions. Fortunately, Levi was controlling his rebounds, and their finishing touch was absent.

So one tonight. A play where he had his man boxed out at the side of the crease but the forward didn't pick up his man in front. Sure, all Clifton's fault.

Well that's true, but we do have several winning eras. We've been good in the playoffs and been to the cup final. We were a pretty good franchise before the last 12 years. I just think it might be useful if the history was more front and center and the kids could say "I want us to be more like those guys". Tuch probably appreciates that, but since we don't have many veterans on the team having alumni come in and talk about what it takes to be a winner would help this team. I think it would anyway.

So will it be Comrie or UPL next game? I assume they won't go Levi 4 straight.

I actually think they didn't play much better/different than in the first 2 games it was just that Tampa is struggling offensively right now and really misses Stamkos. They are not the team they were and very definitely could be the one that drops out of the playoffs this year. We are trying to be a little more physical but we still lost most of the board battles and they got their cheap point because we failed physically around the net as we usually do. Giving the teams we might be fighting with for the playoffs loser points could kill us end of the season. Levi was good in the third. Good rebound control which was important as Tampa was trying for the garbage goals all night. We dominated the 3 on 3 as I expect we will often as we do have talent and they like open ice. Hopefully the OT goal gets Cozens out of his funk. 1-2 is better than 0-3 but we will have to be better than this.

It's not about old school vs. new school. It's not about yelling vs. calm dialogue. These are strawman arguments and maybe even zombie lies. It's about winning and losing and losing, especially at home, should be considered as unacceptable. New era, old era, it's sports, and that is the bottom line. If you accept or excuse losing it becomes a way of life.

He's fine. He's been doing that for years in Boston he can do it here too. The problem is expecting TOO MUCH from him. He's not a top pairing guy and he does have the tendency to roam a little too much. On Boston he got away with it. Not sure he can here.

Well that's fair, so maybe it's a question of speed and degree like most things here and I know what the young guys have said publicly but I'm not sure if they have the same feeling for what the logo means as you see on a team like the Bruins (there are other examples but I know them better). Honestly I'm not even sure IF the logo does mean anything. There's a bunch of guys who were Sabres on staff, but there's a decided absence of the biggest names in Sabres history and a presence of what it meant for real. When guys like Perreault and LaFontaine are alienated and absent there's a void. We don't have the Dudleys and Schoenfelds and others from glory years in the fold like the Bruins do. We aren't an original 6, that's true, but we do have a rich history in the distant past and I don't see enough of that coming forward to the current generation. I suppose my view is ultimately triggered by my annoyance that we let Peca go instead of making him an assistant behind the bench (his skill set and knowledge and ethic is exactly what this team needs) and our approach that puts SO MANY kids in the line up unbalanced by a veteran presence. Yes we have Girgs and Okposo and added Johnson but it's just NOT ENOUGH. Most of all if today this team goes 0-3 and Rob Ray etc ( on the payroll) is talking about a "good effort" and "learning from this" etc you know there's something fundamentally wrong. 0 and 3 SHOULD be considered unacceptable.

Sabres go 0-3 imo they should ALL be put to doing wind sprints.

I watched them play Ottawa and their offense is struggling more compared to previous years. This is a perfect moment to beat them but the danger is they are playing a harder shut down game and they still have a number of guys who go right to the front and go for the dirty goals. If we let that happen, we will be in trouble. I disagree with the sentiment that 3 losses to start is okay. This game to me is pivotal.

It's not just about coaching though, it's about teaching these kids about what it takes. Work ethic and commitment and that sort of thing. Really? Is it a "different" game? The Bruins guys were all talking about pride wearing the jersey, dedication, hard work, giving your all every night. Didn't hear a single word that was "different" from what it takes today. idk, I get a sense this is what is missing and our culture here suffers and so the team keeps losing.

and clearly, the team doesn't DEMAND it.

I think it's safe to say that UPL has not shown a steady progression or development (even if slow) over his time here. Whether you put that on the goalie coach or just on him being incapable of learning/improving I guess is a point of contention. Levi simply should be paired with a veteran who can also take him under his wing and work with him much like Ullmark does with Swayman (thinking of Bob Essensa mentioned above by @Brawndo). At the moment I'm not impressed by ANY of our coaches and think we let the guy we really needed walk away in Mike Peca.

I was watching this thing that popped up on youtube about the Bruins training camp. They have all these alumni coming in and talking with the kids one on one, hanging around practice, giving advice, all kinds of mentoring type things. So I was wondering, since the Sabres don't do as good a job of marketing as the Bruins, do the Sabres do this too? Honest question. I really don't know. I'm thinking however, that with the massive amount of youth on this team we definitely need a lot of this sort of thing.

new owner is a "fan" and the Ottawa fanbase is definitely pumped up. Building seemed loud and energetic against Tampa.

This is a moment when you wish they had a couple gritty veterans to insert into the line up to shake things up but they don't have them so you go with rookies. I'd juggle both of the top two lines cause neither has been any good but Cozens line is terrible, agreed. This is also where the accountability issue comes in. We can and will bench VO I am sure but who else can we bench and how can we do it? We can't. We have nothing better to replace them.

Ottawa-Tampa today. Will be interesting to size up the competition.

Floyd Smith was highly underrated. Lindy had a learning curve here but became a great coach and still is a good one (maybe still great). Scotty and Roger were both legends and we won a lot of hockey games with them. Muckler was better than a lot of people give him credit for. Dudley, Sator and Schoenfeld were all decent coaches but in those days the bar was set much higher and the expectation was much higher. All those coaches had much better records than the current run. Even Ted Nolan was better. Probably, he was the right coach at the right time and we did him wrong. The youngsters on here should take a history lesson and compare the win percentages from the era we old guys grew up on (roughly '74-'84) and the era the kids today are growing up with ('13-'23). If they do that, maybe they will understand why we get so negative so fast. Coaches and their records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Buffalo_Sabres_head_coaches In the 70s or 80s Granato's record wouldn't have gotten him through a second season.

Chychrun with 2 goals for Ottawa today looked really good too. What was the rumor on our attempt, Adams had a first and second and they wanted two firsts or something similar? The difference basically being 1 draft pick. Adams blew it. I honestly think Adams got cocky after he fleeced Fletcher on the Risto deal and has tried to "win" every deal since. As I've said numerous times, when you get to a certain point you have to stop worrying about winning trades and just get the deals that make your team better done, even if you give away more potential value in the process. I'm looking at Boston this year and they've traded their prospects away for years and have the tiniest of prospect pools left. Probably worst in the league, and yet, with 2 centers gone they managed to find 2 young centers. They're not as good as they were, but maybe they're good enough. Point being some teams just find a way and for others (like Buffalo) it's always next year. Adams has had a really easy go of things imo. Most fanbases/franchises would not have forgiven a GM that let a future Vezina winning goalie slip away for nothing and have no plan B. and that is just mistake #1. but.....but......the Rangers play a 1-3-1 this year and are a cup contender.....................

Especially if you consider that Adams had quite the head start on things. Most long term rebuild GMs start with few prospects and a crap roster. Adams already had the so called young core (Thompson, Cozens, Dahlin, Mittlestadt, Samuelsson all JBot players) and he got to add a wealth of prospects/picks for the "stars" he unloaded. That's a heck of a jump start. The question really becomes how do you fail to assemble a playoff roster with that sort of start and shouldn't you be accountable for it?

and as a rebuttal to all the people who said "yes but the Rangers are a really good team this year (etc)" Rags lost to Columbus tonight.

It's a work ethic thing right? It comes back to that old buzz word that people will get all riled up over. Culture. I still believe the Sabres do the whole thing backwards and thus it fails continually.

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.

Typical Islander game. Super boring at times and we struggled to break through. I like the way Mitts is driving the 3rd line and Greenway might actually have something to offer. That line was the only bright spot. Top 6 are all playing like garbage. Giveaways, disjointed individual play, and they are all not what they need to be. We didn't give up as many scoring chances but it was the Islanders, and I do not think they create many scoring chances. We did lose most of the one on one battles though. Buffalo, the place where D men come to die (re. Clifton the latest of a long list) We are already 4 points out of the playoffs.