PerreaultForever

idk what will happen but all I know is I am more optimistic today than I was yesterday. It's a start.

lol, I guess I should have read the headlines before replying to notifications. Let's see who they hire instead though. I am now cautiously optimistic.

True. I wasn't trying to list everything so I guess I would say Benson was the brightest spot and UPL playing like he did was another bright spot. Peterka coming into his own was also a bright spot but I expected and predicted that one. I had hopes for UPL when he was drafted but was surprised this year with the sudden changes and Benson totally surprised me. The guy has a manner that differs him from most of what we've been getting and his build is different too. He has everything right and could easily become my favourite Sabre. It's been a long time since we've had a kid like this and I did not realize he'd be this. After watching him I'm kind of dumbfounded as to why he dropped to us.

I absolutely think that this is what will happen. Absolutely. I will be totally shocked if they make big moves or hire a real NHL coach. Happy, but shocked.

If they do pick 11th they should get Perreault to announce it. Just because.

Of course it's better, but my point is that is meaningless. Yes, Boston has a better development program through the AHL team imo but the main point is that it doesn't matter how many prospects you have, it matters how you fill the holes/needs on your roster and thus what you ice for an NHL game. Sabres have had a top prospect pool many times. Remember when we were supposedly in possession of a "full cupboard" and then all those guys like Bailey amounted to nothing and suddenly we had to fill the cupboard again? Not that long ago. Boston has the excuse of trading away prospects for cup runs. Sabres? They've just failed to ice a playoff team for 13 years.

How about that Comrie, what a great signing. Now they have to re-sign him for sure. Typical Sabres. Late season finish and it'll give some people here just enough for them to preach everything's fine, stick with the plan, we are so close, etc. The reality is they are basically the same as last year and out of the playoffs. They made no progress at all. Bright spot of the season was Benson. I'd be fine to trade everybody else and build a new team around him. Only guy on the team that plays the right way every single night. Biggest disappointments were Cozens and I'd say Levi after the hype. I wasn't shocked by it, and he has much future possibility but a lot of people had anointed him as this year's savior so you have to say it's a disappointment. Everything and everybody else was about as expected. So I saw every game this year. I think that's more a sickness than an accomplishment. Now for real hockey.

For which team?

Good news for the Sabres is they can head straight to the beach or golf course as soon as it's over. Pegula probably requested this scheduling.

From what I've seen of Byram so far is he's weak. He can't move people out of the way, he struggles in tight. He's not a good defenceman in terms of defense first. Power is weak too but he might still grow into his frame. So far I really would say Byram is an inferior version of Montour. The D men you list above, you have to consider the other 3 of the entire 6 and how they complimented them. Also, some of the ones you list are big bodies and good at D. If you want to compare this roster to a cup winning roster look at all the elements on that roster that we are missing. Tampa for example added big bodies and defenders to take them over the top. Guys like Maroon and McDonagh. The Gourdes and Goodrows and others like that were really important to that team winning. This is a whole different discussion, but the bottom line is we do not have a balanced roster and we do not defend well. The D as a whole is soft and if Dahlin is your most physical D man you're in trouble.

The mistake is in separating the prospect pool from the roster. The only thing that matters is what you put on the ice in the NHL.

Wrong type of defenceman don't you see that? I just want to make clear, I liked part of the plan in theory, but I think the plan as a whole is flawed - unless change to complete it is on the horizon.

and as they put it on Shorsey, "they don't hate to lose".

I would argue that New Jersey is an example of what I mean by building the team backwards and the wrong way. They got the talent but didn't build the culture first and so it was fragile and fell apart as fast as it came together. I don't want that for Buffalo. They are trying to retool it now but it'll take them time and so they took a huge step backwards.

Well you're sort of right but only partly. No, I don't like the plan. But, while I do believe you build a winning team primarily via the draft, I think you have to build the culture FIRST. That's the part I disagree with. His idea that they grow into that culture collectively is, imo, inherently flawed. I also do not believe that just throwing players into the NHL and having them learn that way is the best way either. Most teams use the AHL to teach and players only make the big club when they are ready. Most teams aren't willing to sacrifice entire seasons for "development". I think a roster needs to be balanced between rookies, young players and veterans, pros. Young guys developing in the minors and working hard and pressing veterans for opportunities and jobs. It's the cycle of hockey life. When a pile of kids knows they have the jobs and they get pampered and given free reign to "grow" they don't learn that work ethic. They can instead get spoiled and lazy. The competitive pressure just isn't there. In any event I do not think throwing players into the NHL accelerates their development. They need to learn good habits early and they need the proper development paths. Look at Mitts and Thompson. They only started to come into their own AFTER being sent down and humbled. As for the trades and signings, they are minimal. I do not see Byrum for Mitts filling a need. Perhaps you could explain that? I see it as creating a hole at center. We already have enough puck moving offensive D men. What we need is Samuelsson back and adding another defensive D man, not a Dahlin-lite. All he did was toss Montour away and now replaced him. Holes created and filled like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. I was for the Clifton signing and I think it was fine. He's overpaid, but that's how we got him. That's how you get free agents. Greenway trade was fine, even if his inconsistency annoys me but it's fine. I can't count Tuch and Krebs as great acquisitions because we tossed Eichel away. So far we have less than we had. Maybe Adams had no choice, but it's not a great accomplishment in terms of a plan. There's more tear down than build up there (so far). Adams hasn't filled the holes we have and we are a team that imo underachieves due to the poor coaching and the lack of leadership and key veterans on the roster. There are simply far too many errors in the Pegula era and so far, we just swap parts and spin our wheels.

Star players who are leaders are rare (eg. Crosby). Usually they only evolve into true leaders if they have years of mentorship under other leaders. We haven't had that. Kyle Okposo may have been a nice guy, but he wasn't a mentor for these stars. Almost everyone on this roster has not been on an NHL winner. Only Tuch, Clifton, and Byram really qualify and Clifton was a fringe player in Boston. Byram hasn't been here long enough and so that leaves Tuch but even he was shipped out before Vegas won it all. I look at Boston and they went Chara to Bergeron to Marchand and next will be McAvoy even though Pasternak is their best player. That's a solid passing of the baton. It could have been ROR, but they blew that moment. Now they are blowing it again by not bringing in leaders. The lack of emotion and inconsistency is something I've been talking about for years (as have others) but it never seems to change. I just don't know what they are going to do.

I actually agree with this. My fear is that next year's C's will be Thompson, Cozens, Savoie/Krebs, Krebs/Girgs. So they will re-sign Girgs and move him to the wing as usual if Savoie is 3C which I think they will try hard to make happen. Jost is the fill in. Basically no change. Adams desperately wants Krebs to succeed to help validate the Eichel trade he made. I also think he's going to try hard to trade Samuelsson. He might not and he might not be able to, but the 7 D will be the same as we ended the season with Johnson probably added in. Levi and UPL in goal. Comrie re-signed to play in Rochester. Kulich/Rosen given a shot to replace Olofsson who will be gone. and that'll be it.

So what you're saying is there's basically an inverse correlation between how good your prospect pool is and how well you do in the NHL, that correct? Really, Boston is always ranked last and yet they have 3 new roster players that came from their pool (Beecher, Lauko and Brazzeau), a promising kid who looked NHL ready at 19 until he got injured (Poitras) and a top D prospect i(Lohrei) who can't quite crack the roster, and they top the division again but ya, they have the worst prospect pool. If you don't count players who played in the NHL last year, Sabres had 1 prospect make the roster in Benson. Three if you want to count Rousek and Johnson. Four if you don't count Levi's games last year and add him in and we didn't make the playoffs. So even if we do have a great prospect pool, until they make the NHL it means NOTHING. I wonder if you took all the teams and their rankings in terms of prospect pools and correlated it with their position in the standings I'd bet it's pretty much the same inverse correlation. Also, if our prospect pool is so fantastic, Rochester should win the AHL championship right? Right? They're the dominant AHL team aren't they? Aren't they? Hmmm.

I want to respond to the last sentence. Giving Adams a "chance to finish what he started" is okay if and only if there is a plan to finish things and the plan isn't simply to carry on until you get enough of your own draft picks to have a winning roster. I look at a trade like the Mitts Byram trade and I don't really see it filling a hole or making us better. I just see it as Adams avoiding a potential problem in signing Mitts and getting the best player that was available to get rid of Mitts and that problem. Byram is a highly skilled player, but he's not really the type of player we needed. We already have highly skilled D men with offensive skills. We need defenders. It's not like we have a diverse pipeline either. It's highly slanted towards fast, often small or smallish, skilled offensive forwards. To me it's like Adams plan is keep drafting the same guy and maybe if we do that odds are one or more of them will hit and be a star. It's time now to fill the needs of this roster so it's time to make some deals and/or sign some free agents. So if he does that, if things shift in that direction, maybe then I will join you in "letting him finish" but I do need to get a sense that there actually is a finishing plan. It's time. Lastly, the coach has to change. Granato may have been a decent development guy but he's not a good game management coach and he's not the coach we need to get to the level we want to be. Change there might also signal a finishing part of the plan.

The optimist side of me (hanging on to life by a thread) wants to believe that Adams is following the Carolina model and we will get similar results. We see the connections, we've had the Brind'Amour conversation on the site, we look for the similarities. It's possible. This team just doesn't remind me of that team though. If we played more like them. If we had a current identity of a lesser version of them I might buy in to the idea but I'm skeptical.

I still hold to the idea that they have done it backwards. To do it right you need to build the culture FIRST and then you bring the young future stars into the existing culture and they develop and later thrive. This matches Trotts comments in Nashville and to some extent Torts in Philly. I assume Yzerman signed all those vets for similar reasons. Adams on the other hand wants them to grow as a group and somehow coalesce into a winning culture and I don't think that works but maybe there's a way for that to eventually happen. Maybe. Maybe not. This off season tells the tale imo. If they stay the course, well, then forget it. We will be the same and we will head to an eventual further tear down and new guy and do it all over again and get nowhere cycle. If they do add missing pieces and make key moves and turn the roster into a solid balanced NHL roster with a good coach, then maybe we have a true beginning. Cynically, numb from 13 years of failure, I have few actual hopes for that to happen.

Proof that good coaching and a solid defensive system can take you far. It's never just about talent. Are you paying attention Terry?

I said when he was hired and I first heard him speak I believed his timeline was much longer than ours and with the tear down his plan was playoffs in 5 years and then presumably perpetual playoffs like the Bruins and Leafs etc. now. I was hoping that was wrong, but it appears that the 5 years from when he was hired idea is more correct and IF they do make moves and add this off season it will look to be true. It's either that or they are just BS artists and totally incompetent which is also quite possible.

So let's address this point by point. 1) negativity to players comes from poor efforts and losing. They win and they get much love. They work hard and they get even more love. Nobody drives anybody out of town (we do not have that power). I've seen every Sabres game this year and every Bruins game. Bruins were booed by their own fans 3 times if I remember correctly. Once quite loudly. Nobody complained or left town. They worked harder. Sabres were booed a few more times, but not really much louder or much more often. Certainly not sustained. 2)"elsewhere" players are treated better? You must be f'n kidding me. The bar is so incredibly low here. You want to see scorn for your own team and players go look in on a Flyers site sometime. Bruins fans are far more critical. The standard on other teams is much higher. At least most teams. Sabres media is incredibly soft as well. Softer than the team, and that's really soft. 3)Detroit wrong? Detroit was 11 points behind us last year and they are still alive down to the wire (but will probably just miss). They passed us and they have not had the #1 overall draft pick once, not to mention twice. Best they've had is 4th overall. They are better than us. Not a lot better, but better. 4)Young as an excuse? They CHOSE to be young. It was a management decision and thus they can be held accountable for it and they do not get to use a self fulfilling prophecy as an excuse. The reality is the team is poorly coached, the team is pampered and spoiled and not held accountable (the bar is too low), they keep hiring inexperienced management that learns on the job and makes mistakes. They keep changing plans and deconstructing and then reconstructing in a perpetual cycle. They play soft and have inconsistent efforts. They are simply a badly run organization and a bad hockey team and without changes, they will be the exact same thing again next year.

Well at least Kyle looked pretty bad. I'm not running Cozens out of town, but he did giveaway the puck in OT and that was the mistake that cost the game.