Pimlach

Vanek. I met the French Connection several times when I was in my school days. I’ve been retired for 4 years. 😆

Can you imagine if they signed Marchand? That would surprise me, it will not happen, Marchand would know he would have no top cover in Buffalo. So he wouldn’t be able to be the Marchand that you want

Kane going off again. Marchand checking his chicklets.

Marchand again.

Jon Acosta has a set of pipes. Whoa.

Reinhart is an 11 year vet. Where did the hockey time go?

His Dad is Kjell, came up briefly with the Rangers but is known as a Flyer and a Penguin. https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=4744

Miller is a 3rd line d-man on a good team. A one to one swap for Muel, and maybe we toss in a grade B prospect or 3rd round pick. No way you trade Power or Byram for him and then think he is going cover those minutes. He is not good enough and the Rangers know that. Sabres always working on the fringe - fooling with the 3rd pair defense and 4th line is not going to move the needle. Improve the top 4 defense and the top 6 forwards and then move some current roster players down. The only 4th line player they need is one that will be an enforcer. Sorry Kevyn, but Malenstyn/Lafferty are not that guy.

The young man is worthy of helping and my phone is open. The point I’m making is Adams was in a similar position to this young man just 4 and 5 years ago. Qualified or not at the time he took the GM position, he was being asked to do perform a very difficult job with little experience to draw from and only a few others to help. Climbing fast can be painful.

I do not recall this from Adams but I have seen this recently in real life and it is not good for anyone. An inexperienced and unqualified person is running a $375M project that a company I consult for has a contract with. In meetings he asks us to repeat things over and over again, he constantly stops the meeting and paraphrase's what was just said, then he writes it all down so he can repeat it up his leadership chain. He is not well versed in any part of this business so he does this for survival and we comply as he is the customer and a pretty good guy and well intended person too. I do worry about his ability to correctly answer follow up questions. One morning he called me for help, even though I contract through his supplier. He wanted me to call him back later to explain something in more detail for him. When I did call him back he was working from home, and there were two babies crying loudly. He was taking take of them while asking me to help him figure out some pretty basic things. His stress was going through the roof. Sometimes in business we identify smart people, or people we "like", and we move them along too fast and we hurt them in the long run. Adams has been a GM for 5 years and he was most likely fed with a gigantic firehose. Adams is like this young manager that I know. He was never a scout, only an assistant coach for 1 year, never worked player personnel, never worked in the AHL, never an AGM, never even held a hockey operations job at all, and his first job as GM was to conduct a large layoff of his staff and slowly (over several years) rebuild it. So we can place a lot of the blame on Adams for the teams recent performance, and he appears to be stubborn on doing it his way, but the root cause of the problem is the guy above Adams. The hiring of Staal and Jarmo seem to be steps to get him some help him. With one year on his contract the stakes should be high for him and his staff. But this is the Sabres under Pegula, so maybe they are not.

"Adams overvalues his players" came about by Adams himself when he bragged about his prospect pool and said many GMs are dying to steal his prospects. Adams decided to keep his picks and prospects and not trade them for players that would block them. He said that. He wanted to build sustained winning but he can figure out you have to win first to sustain winning. This came from the league and media because it was true, not because fans made it up. Do you think hockey people in St Louis, Carolina, Los Angeles, or anywhere else listen to Sabres fans? But go ahead and blame the fans. The team has been bad for 14 years because of the fans, and it has nothing to do with how Terry and Kim ran things. You love to remind us that Terry wins with the Bills and the Bandits - so it must be the fans. Coaches and players don't want to come here because of the fans and the city right? Not because they have been inept for 14+ years and counting. Edit - @PromoTheRobot upon further review, I do not think you mean “blame the fans”, you imply that the media can use the fanbase to manipulate trades.

There is no market to move. This is a saying that really does not apply. You don't increase the value of a player by announcing you want to trade him, many times that lowers his value. IF the Sabres actually do anything, they will likely be trading current players, prospects and picks in combination.

Except Murray did not do the exact same thing. He traded NHL players with the goal to lose on purpose. Then he acquired the wrong players and coaches.

Three full off seasons later .... let trade some prospects for players! OK. Looking forward to seeing results.

yup, and a team that wants to win right now will make a move to get him.

Thanks @Archie Lee, upon further review Adams does indeed indicate that Lindy wanted to "get to know" the staff and he could have made changes. Given that no changes have been made so far we can assume Lindy is on board with this group. I should have taken your advice and not re-watched the rest of it.

Would love to hire DeBoer but they won't for many reasons and money is just one. DeBoer would want to run things his way, he will not like the roster as constructed, he would not like the layers you describe (Jarmo/Lindy/Kevyn/Terry) to have to navigate through just to make roster moves.

Good intel Taro! No doubt that Zito has been very good. There was probably more going on with C-Bus and you can also assume that Zito learned some things from Jarmo too.

I would not say he checked out, he is still very involved and he cares. Covid was a catalyst that led him to scale back the PSE empire. He unloaded their bars/restaurants and some other businesses, on the sports side the Sabres took the brunt of the cost cuts leading to Boterill's exit and a massive layoff in Sabreland. The Bills are successful and thankfully he supports them full throttle. We should all thank McDermott and Beane for knowing how to run a football team. Adams has since re-built the Sabres FO and he carefully built it back with people that cannot (or will not) challenge him. In the past he eschewed the need for senior advisors and more experienced people in the FO ranks. That changed two seasons ago when he said he would look for an "NHL veteran coach that will hold the players accountable". That coach search was nothing more than Terry reuniting with Lindy, a guy he knows and likes (so they say). Two more significant items regarding Adams: 1. Adams has said Terry is not preventing him to spend to the cap, so he is taking the heat on that. (Although according to Fairburn every roster move gets run by Terry, even the Jokiharju trade for a 4th rounder). 2. Adams has now taken on an assistant (Staal) and also brought in a Sr Advisor to report to him (Jarmo). Adams has prior relationships with both of these men. Both hires would get little attention on a normal team, but in Buffalo they are significant moves. Adams has 1 year left on his contract, a successful year could lead to a move up to a "President of something" position, hopefully out of Hockey Operations but more likely a POHO buffer between Terry and the rest of the FO. In Jarmo they have a good hockey guy that may be getting a tryout as the next GM. It's easy to blame it all on Terry since he is the one truly accountable, but I think we are seeing that Adams inexperience as a GM, highlighted by bad moves and non-moves, has been just as big a factor in the problems surrounding the team. The later comes as no surprise. Adams past reluctance to get help in the form of FO senior execs a (common practice in the NHL) could have been initially due to budget constraints, but maybe not entirely. So is Terry out of touch? To a degree yes, it is well documented that he over-estimates his hockey knowledge, and it is exacerbated by his selection of a GM that was on no teams radar as an up and coming NHL Executive. He and Adams set the strategy that is failing, and its a strategy that no other team use. The hope is that Lindy can still coach, and that Jarmo can help them sort out which players/prospects to keep and what roster moves to make.

The Rat does it again.

Maurice said the F word many times in that rant.

Oh my, Reinhart with a clean breakaway and no score. Then Kane gets one - but no shot.

DeBoer should come to Buffalo. He can get to Dunnville in about an hour.