PerreaultForever

Well here's something positive for the Sabres. After watching the Bruins today I'm pretty confident the Sabres won't finish last in the division.

If your fandom is affected by my comments (or the comments of anyone on the internet) then your fandom is very weak. You be you and wear your jersey or wave your flag or whatever you want to do and I will be me, a cynical old grouch who is sick of this franchise being a mickey mouse useless organization. I have in the past (more distant past then recent but still) had hope and optimism and thought this is the year and so forth, but they have squeezed that out of me. I won't get fooled again until I see something real. Well the team is the same over and over for years so.............................

March or April. Whenever it's official that they've missed the playoffs. Then we will be limbo with Kekalainen likely acting GM to the end of the year at which point Lindy will resign as coach and be named Senior Advisor and Jarmo will become GM. Terry Pegula will remain as director of hockey operations though so nothing will change and Seth Appert will even possibly be named head coach. Unless they suck even worse than expected and then Appert will be named head coach this season and firings will be sooner.

I'm responding to people who ask me questions. You don't have to read it.

First fight of the season too.

I'm not a betting man but I bet you half a dozen beers and a plate of wings they don't. Yup. It's called venting.

I plan to watch other teams more this year. I like hockey too much to cut the cord (which isn't really a cord since it's wi-fi and streaming :)) but until they show me something I do think this is the first year in quite a few where I will not watch every Sabres game and if the sucking continues that'll probably be few to no games by the end of the year. but it's not a strategy.

One can hope. There are a few guys who might emerge as the type of players they need but we don't really know yet. Veterans of that ilk added in the interim would have made me happier while we wait.

My response to you would be why aren't you complaining? You don't seriously believe or have hope do you? Why isn't everyone complaining after 14 years? You should be.

Adams has been saying the "harder to play against" mantra and Kesselring and Doan are harder to play against guys but overall the prospect cupboard is not hard to play against and the current team isn't either. It's easy to say but I doubt we see it any time soon.

Well sure you can say that and you're being overly specific. The basic combinations laid out are the same. Ruff played Norris with Thompson for what was it 2 games, 3? I forget. Whatever few seconds he was healthy or able to play on arrival. Benson is in Peterka's spot. It's all exactly the same.

Well I hope they are moving people around and actually have open minds. It would be nice if someone unexpected jumped up and made a decision or two difficult. I think the Norris Thompson pairing has always been their idea. It's what Ruff looked at for the brief moment Norris played. I don't want to hear anything about Quinn until Quinn shows something on the ice.

See my post above. What I want and what I see are two different things. The Bruins have already moved people around. Zacha has been at center and wing for example. The Bruins spent the entire second day doing one on one board battles to which Casey Mittelstadt said "I've never done those that much any camp. It was hard but I enjoyed it for the most part". I think the focus they have is completely different. Looks like they plan to grind and grind hard. Probably a decent plan as their scoring ability is suspect to say the least. Putting Zacha at center is a major surprise though. Most people figured Mitts would be there until Poitras was ready to move up. Now nobody knows where Mitts ends up as the third line looks like it's maybe Jeannot Kuraly and Eyessimont. Minten is also pressing for a center spot. Beecher (their Krebs last year) is going to have a hard time keeping his job. Ultimately my main point is you line up a roster the same as the year before and your results are likely to be the same too. Bad teams shouldn't be set in camp. Period. If they are, the organization has failed before it starts.

To the first, my comment to Lindy would be why was that not done last year when you first got here? Why don't most of these guys already know your defensive system? Or why was there no defensive system last year? To the second part, I'm saying this illustrates the flaw and the lies. They have said they want internal competition and they claim to have depth. And yet, the line up is basically set and like last year so where's the depth? Where's the competition? If you are making these claims shouldn't we be seeing something to that effect? So since we aren't, we can see that they are just lying. So I am not arguing against myself because although the situation I want is competition for jobs I fully know that doesn't exist. Doesn't mean I can't want it though or say that's how it should be.

I see nothing different. He was excited at the beginning of the last camp too.

If Kulich is your 2C you are asking too much too soon imo and you are asking Tuch to basically carry the line. Kulich as 2C is the Cozens mistake all over again. Not saying Kulich is the same as Cozens, it's just the same failed development model.

I don't want to talk much about Bruins because this is a Sabres site and people don't want that but since you asked the contrast is massive. Now, as I said, if your team is a top team and a cup contender your line up is pretty close to set. So when you look back on the Bergeron era top rated Bruins teams rookies were in camp but on the margins for sure. But the Sabres aren't a top team. You don't have a set line up (pretty much the same as the year before) when you sucked. So this year, Bruins now suck like the Sabres, camp is loaded with people fighting for jobs. It's near impossible to know who will play where outside of maybe Geekie Lindholm Pasta. They are moving people around all over. They really have too many bodies. Way too many. Will any young guys make it? No idea, but the idea that fans don't know the final lines and roster at all is the contrast. By all rights Bruins should suck and bottom feed for the next several years. If they finish this year ahead of the Sabres you as a Sabres fan might as well just give up watching hockey.

2 teams. mix of vets and younger players. Not the combo you stated for your humorous effect but you do mix in the top Rochester guys to see how they interact with vets and yes, you do juggle lines to look for unexpected chemistry. I'd be one of those coaches looking at pairs more than lines. I just don't think the team was good enough to go with the set line up. If your argument is that everyone else in camp is garbage not worth looking at, well then that's a huge failure on the GM and the organization as a whole. That may be reality, but it's not a good reality if that's the case.

There's nothing to be done, because his claim that we have depth now is false. There's virtually no internal competition at all. There's a couple guys who could swap spots in the bottom 6 and that's it. Everything is set before camp begins. Where's the competition for jobs?

No, he's supposed to have a truly competitive camp and mix things up to give the roster a chance to form itself. If you are a championship team sure, you might have a predetermined roster, but if you were a bag of crap you should be looking to do things differently. This lacks imagination to me and looks like a roster that will play basically the same way.

This looks incredibly predetermined. Doan bumps down to third for Tuch and Danforth bumps Geertsen out at that moment. A 20 year old on the top line feels wrong. Second line is weak unless Quinn somehow emerges as what Kevyn claims he is rather than what he was last year. Third line might be okay if Zucker is healthy and Doan is half decent. Bottom looks same as last year. Defense as expected. It's really basically the same as last year.

Toughness is part of the problem. He does not move bodies or box out well around the net. Yes, he's fairly passive on D, but if he was tougher he could get away with that.

Before or after Dahlin asks for a trade?

Maybe he did? Although it's correct he can't play until Dec. I really doubt he'd come to Buffalo. He has said he wants a fresh start and he wants a U.S. city but he'd take Edmonton over Buffalo and we already know Edmonton will take players with past issues.

Adams lives in a delusional bubble of his own creation. The correct sentence should be "we have some elite skill and talent on our D corp. If some of them can gel and learn to use that skill we should be alright"