PerreaultForever

A lot of Bruins fans think Jacobs is cheap 🙂

Yup, it's no rocket science and as @bunomatic said at the top a lot of us have talked about these very points for years. I've talked about the flawed development strategy multiple times at length, but we're just dumb old fans what do we know. THEY have said before they know better.

maybe, but that sort of balancing act is easy to put into words and really hard to do in practice. I mean even Tampa tossed Stamkos aside when the business model said his time was over. That was cold. Team seems fine. I would suggest that this is where veteran player leadership comes in. Players know it's a business and if they also know there's a high standard, they usually embrace it if they want to win. There can be a gulf between upper management and locker room.

I disagree. 30 games should be more than enough. Fact is they were doing it better 20 games ago and have regressed. I like Ruff, I think he knows what needs to be done, but it's clear the message isn't getting through (again) and he isn't getting the job done. Can anyone get the job done with this situation? Unlikely. Certainly not Appert, who would just be Granato V2.

I don't believe that's true. I think Pegula wants you to believe that's true, but I don't think it is.

idk if Drury's a bad GM or this is a second team where a goalie with an exorbitant contract demand hasn't damaged his own team (Boston being the other if it wasn't obvious). There's no question the GM there is removed from the team and doesn't care about how they "feel" about anything, they are just assets and commodities and Trouba was treated as one who wasn't delivering his value and as such was removed to put their cap back where they wanted it after the goalie signing. But is that bad? Kevyn Adams wants to be their friend and values them all and how's that working out? Management should not be worrying about players feelings imo. Coaches and team leaders can worry about that. management has to run things like a business with only one goal, winning, at any cost.

I wouldn't argue with any of that, it's not wrong, but there is another way of looking at this trade. Kakko got sent to the press box for his poor play. He publicly bitched about how he felt he wasn't the worst player and didn't like it. Boom, he's shipped out of town. That's zero tolerance and that's what you have to do if you want a winning team first culture. might not work, but it is saying there's a line not to be crossed and nobody is exempt.

I scrolled by some sort of event in January where management will take fan questions. I can't find it now though but is that a real thing? I think it was Jan 13 and they were selling tickets to it (?) If that's a real event all you local people have to go and picket outside if you don't want to pay to go in. Make a noise in their faces. maybe wear buffalo heads.

Definitely. They could have grabbed Wagner off waivers to temporarily fill the hole. Not that Wagner's great, he's a faded aging vet but he hits people, works hard and hates to lose. They don't ever look for immediate short term fixes though. Winning doesn't matter. Greenway must have back issues. Always getting hurt. This just makes him harder to deal at the deadline 🙂 Zucker did for a while but he's probably shifting towards staying healthy for the trade deadline now.

It will do nothing but I signed it and forwarded it etc. anyway. It won't hurt.

Cozens has decided it's time to curse to reporters, which is fine, but I think somebody needs to start publicly cursing the owner. He gets nothing but public niceties.

Ya, you have to break the cycle with something radical. We keep having this same plan and it cycles through every 5 years or so and the tainted ones are moved out but only the big pieces and then the patient rebuild means the next bunch gets tainted and so it goes. Losing becomes "normal" and acceptable and they all just put in their time until they are traded or become UFAs and leave. You think most of these guys aren't thinking about being somewhere else already? You know what's going to happen? Guys like Peterka and Byram and maybe even Quinn are going to make outrageous contract demands they haven't earned knowing full well the team will either grossly over pay them or they will get to go elsewhere. RFA bondage only lasts so long. There's no way it's sustainable or viable at this point in any way.

Ya, I wouldn't argue that, but Borgen's a bottom pairing D man not really any better than Gilbert. Maybe slightly, but not much. A 3rd is not much and a 6th is basically nothing. Seattle desperately lacks scoring and a middle six guy for that price is just fine for them.

I don't think Kakko would solve any of our problems but that's a pretty low price tag. Borgen's a pending UFA too.

I think the change would be immediate but if you have to clear out some lazy talent who just won't buy in you might have to be patient with it but it would change. No it wasn't.

Actually the better plan would be to trade every single player on the team away. Every single one of them. You can't retain anybody, even if they are okay or good. Like chemo, you have to kill it all. Anything and everything tainted by the culture of losing has to go. Whatever you get out of that is whatever you get, like an expansion team, and then you start the build and do it properly with a "just win" culture.

Of course, but as you said, they are not coming so that dream is just a dream and it will never happen. Drafting them will take forever. Changing the narrative is the only option as a new starting point. It might still take years after that change, but it could work in time.

Wrong Stanley Cup. We got burned. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/stanley-recall-1.7409564

No. See my post in the Nobody Has An Answer thread.

Okay I'm going to post what all the softies won't like and what a lot of people won't like I think and many will think I'm kidding, but this might just be my last serious post and I am dead serious. As named in the other thread it's toxic. Brutally toxic. They've quit (again). They are lost (again). They are leaderless (again). They've tuned the coach out (again). They have no idea what to do and I suspect many of them are just hoping they will get moved to another team to try to restart their NHL careers or play out their days for the older guys. Management has no fix, nobody wants to come here (why would they?), the franchise is broken and no coach can fix this on his own. It is so well and truly f'd that there is only one possible solution and (although they will never do it) it's full on Shorsey and I'm really not kidding. You need to find 3 or 4 veteran thugs who absolutely hate to lose, bring them in and make them the team leaders. That's your new "core". You build from that, not from the lazy talent. If you're lucky the guy has a little skill like a Marcus Foligno, but even if he doesn't you still bring him in. You slack in practice? Bam, your own guy runs you through the boards and yells at you "wake the f up". Zero tolerance for lack of effort and feel the wrath of slacking on every level. In that scenario coach can bag skate anybody who chooses to not buy in and compete at every moment. Forget the pretty and fancy it's time to restart in the trenches. It's time to go to war or this damn thing is over forever. They of course, will never even consider it. But no, I'm not kidding. It's the only way now.

So not even taking calls, that's beyond ridiculous. This perception isn't a new thing though. I've got friends in other fan bases and seen some other stuff over the years and no matter how bad things go for those teams (like Ottawa, Philly, Seattle etc.) there's always somebody who posts an "at least we're not Buffalo" type post at some point.

Probably, but you can't be sure of that. Rich guys often grow big egos and there is the possibility he would take the lack of effort after his speech personally.

Well the point is he likely said something like "I believe in you or I have faith in you guys" but if I'm a competitive guy (and I'm not sure the Sabres have any of them but for the sake of argument let's say there's some in the room) I can sit there and think to myself "faith in us? why? we suck. We need help at wing and on the blueline. There's no hope without it. Screw this."

Well we shall see. It's basically impossible to take this team seriously any more.

Bottom of the east is bad enough. A few weeks ago it was all about how close everything was and we were just a point or two behind Boston. Now we're 11 points behind them just like that.