Cascade Youth

It may be one of those trades where as soon as it's proposed, the other GM suspects something's up.

Sorry but you don’t pass on a potential franchise-altering star in order to hold onto D depth. That would be really shortsighted. Swing for the fences.

Promo is always ready to unfurl that banner in the offseason.

Lotta conspiracy nuts around here.

If this is going to come down to pull-ups, I’ve got problems.

I never said they don’t have expectations for themselves - I’m sure they want to win. I’m responding to the posters expressing frustration that they won’t just admit it’s “playoffs or bust” next season - the reason is that they haven’t been given that mandate by their bosses and so why would they publicly measure themselves?

Again, I get downvoted for saying this, but it’s clearly to me a symptom of absentee ownership. DG and KA do not appear to be operating under any kind of measurable accountability other than “don’t embarrass your bosses.” Why would they volunteer a metric for themselves when none exists internally? Telling the media it’s playoffs or bust and then missing the playoffs would count as embarrassing their bosses, who haven’t imposed such a standard in the first place. Look - I like this current roster, and I really like Donny and Kevyn personally - but they have maybe the easiest jobs in pro sports right now - zero expectations from within or without and zero pressure to do anything quickly. This is the longest “build” I’ve ever seen. Multiple franchises have peaked and crashed and rebuilt in the time it is taking the Sabres to get wherever it is they’re going. And many of the fans have somehow bought in - there are posters here who tell us with a straight face that it’s perfectly fine to install the defense maybe next year because offense is easier to learn. What planet are we on?

I don’t know about the agent thing but this team seems to have an awful hard time closing these things out and it’s a possible red flag.

Fair thee well?!?

I just called but couldn’t get through.

This is where I’m at. It’s ok to harbor <gulp> expectations - I’ll never understand why it’s so offensive to so many Buffalo fans to expect the team to be successful. Adams nickeled and dimed the consensus Vezina trophy winner and then spent two years chasing a competent netminder when Ullmark walked. I get it - Adams thought they had a deal - but it should never have come down to that and it resulted from an underestimation of Ullmark’s abilities and market. Adams had a ton of cap room this season that he failed to weaponize to improve the roster and the result was what we saw last night: a streaky offensive team with zero defensive structure and a huge dropoff after Dahlin and Power on the backend. Unacceptable. I’m sorry - it just is. Many posters see hope and that’s great, I do too, but let’s not kid ourselves - watching a kid fresh out of college have to stand on his head and endure a barrage of target practice in a must-win game was freakin’ sad.

The Sabres haven’t made the playoffs since Ruff left, and I suspect he’ll be motivated to keep it that way.

Yes. He went from trying to get by on natural talent (to the point where he maybe almost fell out of the league) to loving the grind. You see it in other aspects of life - maturity, a lightbulb turns on and someone realizes the amount of hard work it will take to achieve sustained success, and becomes willing to put in that work. You’ve got to love the grind to be great in most professions. Casey does and it shows, now.

He should slide in and out of the roster for the rest of the year. We certainly have enough holes.

You can’t tell me Dahlin isn’t one of the ten best players in the NHL.

You’d think they could find it within themselves to give a crap and play decent hockey in the kid’s second career start against the team that traded him. That said - this humid Florida ice always seems to get to them.

Levi sure is getting to know his new teammates.

Marty: “you never want to put the whores in front of the cart.” Legendary.

It is a symptom of ownership’s low/non-existent expectations.

I am fine going with the flow. It’s just unclear what direction it’s going and where the shore is. If it’s ok to talk about someone’s sexual orientation as a “lifestyle choice” like they’re deciding what kind of car to drive, to me that seems pretty darned “political.” But maybe the mods don’t see it that way? It’s rather confusing.

It is code. I mean, do folks know that until the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia in 1967, 16 states still made it illegal for (in essence) blacks and whites to marry each other? Under the standard being applied until that case, such laws were upheld because the states were deemed to have a “rational basis” to want to limit the mixing of races on religious grounds. Code words like “lifestyle” were used back then by proponents of anti-miscegenation laws. Is this post out of bounds? Again, it’s really not clear what is considered “political” here.

I have zero idea what is, and is not, fair game in this conversation. Concerned it depends on the viewpoint / popularity as a poster.

This entire organization has been flipping its fans the middle finger for over a decade.

My only goal at this point is for the team and its leadership to be held to actual, objective standards next year. Three years of measuring “development” and “feels” is beyond too long. Wins and losses should be the determining factor, Terry.

I tell you what, try reading this thread in reverse, it’s a trip.