PerreaultForever

uninspired effort against a very tired road team that was ripe for the picking. At least UPL looked like an actual goalie. that was something. Tage was pretty good. Rest was crap.

Surprisingly good. Thought it would just be a cash grab but it's pretty well written. When it started I thought he was in Alaska though. Now it turns out it's just winter in rural New York state? Near Buffalo then 🙂

2 of them were devastated by covid, Arizona is in a blatant tank and then there's the Montreal mess. Not that hard to be ahead of any of that. Ducks can not only beat us but can hurt us, if they want to. They had a tough one last night though so they might come in tired, flat, take us lightly, or all 3 so you never know. I'd guess we see the back up goalie too.

Oh I think it likely he will be 30-40 or even 50% better, assuming he likes it there and actually gives full effort every night, which I don't believe he actually did here. And that way, when this contract expires he can pull a Tavares and go to Boston tweeting his childhood Bruins PJ picture.

Not to mention Troy Terry tearing it up this year. Imagine if we'd drafted him instead of Devante Stephens (or Borgen and Guhle for that matter).

Red Sox.......but but.........they're from Boston.............. 🙂 Old rivalries were great but they ain't what they used to be. Too much player turnover, too many free agents. Few teams hate each other the way they used to. I was never a Bills fan, but I used to love watching the Bills Dolphins games back in the day. Regardless of each team's season those games were always good. Not any more though. I guess you hate the Patsies now, but so does everybody.

I agree there's not much he can do NOW, not without giving away assets no one wants to give away so that's that. Subban is the best you get. The time to make the moves was before the expansion draft, negotiating with the numerous teams that had to leave goalies exposed. Or sign a free agent back then. Heck even Martin Jones has played better than Dell. idk why people always talk about Gibson though. Why do they think he's even an option at any price? Anaheim's rebuild is soaring ahead and they're currently a playoff team. Helps when you have a goalie, good veteran leadership and of course DesLauriers 🙂

Bruins are my second team and I'm not afraid to admit it. (It's worth it just to irritate Zamboni, but that's not the reason). Bruins were my first team. Back in the 1970s nobody in my house watched hockey. As a little kid I discovered the game on my own and the very first game I ever saw was the Bruins winning the cup. The one with the iconic Bobby Orr flying in the air thing. As a little kid I thought cool team, don't want to be a Leafs fan like most of my friends, it just seemed like being a sheep and they sucked, so that was my team and as little kids do, Orr was my guy. Also, they wore black and gold just like my hometown Hamilton Tiger Cats so it was made to be. With televised games locally I discovered the Sabres and fell for that French Connection era team, beating Montreal and so on. Rick Dudley. All that flair and character and that was it, that was my main team and still is. Come playoff time though, lately, fall back to beantown and follow them off and on. Admire the culture and the team comradery. It's a model worth following imo. I'm also acquainted with Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys, so if I don't support the Bruins at least a little bit he'll razz me about the Sabres forever. Flyers suck 🙂

I didn't expect them to win either, but we've drifted off the point. I believe your contention was that the D would do better if we got early leads, was that it? If so, my counter point would be that we usually do start games pretty good, but the D crumbles if/when the other team turns it up and applies more pressure. I think in part sometimes teams do still take us lightly , at least at the start, and teams that like to play open and loose, we can handle those, but when they press and drive the net and really attack us (or play physical) Dahlin and most of the rest of them panic and make mistakes and players lose assignments in general. Granato is doing some decent things, but this team has not learned how to play good team defense and I really think they need another full time assistant coach working with the D and one on one with Dahlin in particular. Not sure at this point what Girardi's role is.

Expected ? Nothing much, but when you're gifted a 3 goal lead you should be able to put up a better fight and maybe even an upset if you get a little good goaltending. They aren't unbeatable, Seattle took them down just before that and Seattle isn't very good.

A lot of the Vancouver thing falls on Pettersson and some of the other "stars" underachieving this year. Pettersson signed the contract late and now only has 4 goals on the season. So the question is will Boudreau get him back on track or will they end up tearing down like we did? A number of people here wanted Boudreau, I guess we will find out if he might have been a good choice or not.

I'm with you on both parts of this. Personally, I know this will take several years and I'm okay with this year being the bottom, but I do want to see a forward progression sooner than later, and a decent goalie is needed for that, not just waiting on the kids. I personally believe you start with the goalie(s), you build the team culture and then you add the talent bit by bit into that existing culture. I see Seattle had that idea. I'm very curious to see which team rises faster and endures in the long run because it's 2 completely contrasting plans. On the border thing, idk what it's like now but I know I currently live only 5 minutes from the border and haven't crossed it in a couple years now. Used to go to Bellingham often and occasionally Seattle and even Portland just for the heck of it. Growing up in Hamilton Ontario we used to cross over to Buffalo all the time. I still remember how the Buffalo people bought us all drinks and treated us like celebrities when we had that hostage crisis thing and some got out with the Canadian embassy. Had nothing to do with me of course, but somehow ALL Canadians were royalty for a good 6 months or so. That was fun. The best time to smuggle duty free across the border was the evenings of Sabres games. Put a jersey on, know the score and they'd just wave you through with the line up, but that was a long long time ago.

So you, if it was you, would prefer to be unemployed rather than be paid 1, 2 maybe 3 million a year for a nice executive job with perks and an expense account? Really? You underestimate the egos on some of these guys. They all think they can be the guy to turn it around and then be named the greatest guy ever.

So like in the Florida game? 🙂

Every single one who is out of work. (multi) million dollar a year job, you kidding me? and it's not even a kiss of death as you see JBott landed another gig, so anybody can . Well maybe not Kreuger 🙂 You give a guy a multi year contract and he will come in and proclaim how he's going to fix the culture and restore pride just like all the rest ad infinitum.

So they didn't hire a new GM first so does that mean the owner chose Boudreau?

cute, but no. I guess I just want to feel some level of confidence that they have a decent plan. Something to grasp onto to make it worth hanging on.

How are we really in a better position? (I mean we might be, but until we see it, it's all just hope and prayer) Last time we were supposed to have had the better of Reinhart/Draisaitl, we had a "generational player" coming, we'd already gotten our 2 way second line center (ROR), we had a big physical D man and an elite power forward who had just been misunderstood in Winnipeg and we had a big young Swedish viking goalie who was going to be an allstar plus some other prospects. That was all supposed to make it happen. How is this one better than that? (again, it might be, but hindsight and all that)

I would be more on Adams side if he was more honest with the fanbase. Not TOTALLY honest, nobody expects that from any GM in any sport, but a little more. Just lay it out. Stop saying we have a plan and lay the plan out. Don't give us bull about the goaltending, admit it's a tank year (don't expect it to be called that, but use the right buzz words to dance around it so you can admit you never tried hard to get a goalie). Just lay out what the plan is and then we can decide if we want to go through that with them and also hold them accountable to that plan. Enough of the "we know things the fans don't" stuff. We deserve a little - a little - more after having put up with this crap for so long.

They haven't. Yet.

What does this mean?

Dahlin does need to be benched, BUT for who? Butcher? Problem is you're going to end up benching him for someone worse. Only other option is calling up Samuelsson but do we want to throw him to the wolves at this point or wait until next year? The interesting thing with these sort of discussions and others and the ones on Sabrespace is there are SO MANY things wrong with this team that in a way, all the dissenting opinions are partly right. When talking about goaltending they cut them some slack and they brought up Markstrom as a goalie just coming into his prime, but they don't mention that Markstrom is also now playing behind a team that plays good team defense. Sutter has a system of defensive responsibility that helps make goalies look better. So yes, he's playing well, but it's also the team in front of him. Point being we are not playing a system that has very good team D. We are attack oriented and now lose 7-4 instead of 2-1. Having said that, the goalies are bad and they are letting in easy goals at times. The defense is bad too no question. There is bad at all 3 levels of D, goalie, defensemen, and forwards playing D. There are so many things wrong with this team I could go on for pages and pages but what's the point? and for a tank year we are OCASSIONALLY entertaining and slightly better than expected so it might be a bad tank (picking 6, 7 or 8 ish not 1 or 2ish) and we can screw up the draft again, but we hired a bunch of draft people and maybe we get it right and we have prospects and picks and it SHOULD get better. once we get a goalie .

mercifully (I guess) I lost the feed for the 3rd period but I'm gathering it wasn't any more fun than the rest. This keeps up my other off season fear will come true, and this "tank" will just teach the next group to be okay with losing like we did the last group. When you tear down you need to instill a sense that something better will be built up and nights like this make that belief hard.

You can't use Vegas for any comparisons. They had a unique expansion draft where teams gave them way too many extras and picks and you know the story. Seattle didn't get that did they? You'd have a stronger argument imo if you wanted to use Detroit. Or Carolina for that matter. A few years back they looked about the same as us but we drafted poorly. We have a different GM and scouting departments now. No point in living in the past, you either follow through with the new GM or you give up and find another team. Personally, I was so close to out the door, but KA has initiated a plan that was what I would have done so I'm going to see how it plays out. If they ***** this one up too, probably the only thing that'd allow me to give them another shot AFTER this one would be an ownership change. Philly fans are starting to call for a rebuild I hear. You want some of them? Risto maybe? 🙂

I think the Canes are what Adams wants the Sabres to become and maybe we will become that but we ain't that yet. Far from it. I don't think this will be close. I only ever remember seeing a couple Subban games and he wasn't good in them but haven't seen him play in ages. Can't imagine he suddenly gives us any more than we already had in goal but who knows, goalies are weird. Maybe this'll be his rebirth/coming into his own.