JohnC

You don't have to be historically bad to keep your franchise stuck in hockey irrelevancy. Simply being mediocre at your job is sufficient enough to maintain a generation of non-playoff participants. The standard is so low that it is a testament to where this franchise stands in the hockey world. Simply pathetic!

Stop complaining. Haven't you won enough gambling games to absorb some small losses? That football parlay that you won last week should give you more than enough margin to keep your wallet bulging and you smiling. 😀

What you noted is probably a big factor. But however one looks at those early upgraded contracts, the return on value is not maximized because the young players don't have the benefit of playing with a better mix of more rugged and muscular players who complement the more skilled (finesse) younger players. After almost 5 years on the job, our GM hasn't figured out what the structural problem of the roster is when it is plain to most people. He's a checkers player playing a chess game. Futility laid on top of futility!

More big artificial boobs on that show. 😀 Planet idiot.

What planet are you residing on? If you aren't aware of what my position has been on this issue for a long time, then your ability to discern is minimal.

What has exhausted my patience with this franchise is not that this is a bottom feeding team as it is another season of lost opportunities due to the passivity of the front office. Even in this ignominious losing streak, and against many good teams, most of our losses are by one goal. The difference between success and failure is minimal. This staff simply didn't properly assess its own team and make the right adjustments to better balance out the roster. It's more of the "should have been" than that gets me agitated. Just a few more smart tweaks could have made a big difference. This team should have been on an up cycle while the some of the standard good teams are on the down cycle.

My worry is that some of the young talent get so frustrated with the extended struggles they are having and with the team that they end up requesting a change of scenery to be reinvigorated. I can see that happening with Cozens, Quinn, JJP and even Power. It certainly happened with Eichel, Reinhart and ROR. This organization needs to demonstrate more urgency to address issues rather than let them linger in the hope that it will work itself out. Losing is corrosive.

Terrific summarization of my evaluation of KA as a GM. A scout looks at a player/prospect as an individual. While the GM looks at a player with a wider lense, taking into consideration the prospect's role and how he fits within the roster. The problem that I have with KA is not that he isn't drafting well enough as he is not augmenting his picks with the right players through free agency and trades. Team building is more than stocking the team. He simply can't get the mix right, and he's had more than enough time catch up with his lapses.

Put Cozens on the wing where he belongs and get an authentic 2C for his line. We had Mitts and he was dealt. When you dig a hole you can't forget to go back and fill the hole. Bad judgments lead to bad consequences. The problem wasn't in dealing Mitts as it was in not having a reasonable backup play to fill the vacancy. We have one dimensional thinkers attempting to play a 3-dimensional game. Even Forest Gump knows that!

It would be great. You are sitting next to a fellow who isn't a chit chatter. Plenty of uninterrupted snooze time.

I doubt that he is. This is what happens when you construct a team not meant to play the way you want it to play. It's simply a poorly constructed roster asked to play a particular style of game that most of them are not suited for. It's like building a finesse roster in football and then force them to play a power running game. It's so stupid.

I'm not trying to be funny because it is sad to say. If you have seen any one of the games in this losing streak, you have seen them all. A consistency of distinctive ineptitude. There are short interludes of good play placed within longer interludes of inattentive play. When you have no conviction, you play without conviction. You don't have to be a hockey maven to see it.

What a ridiculous situation! A clueless owner who selects an ill-equipped person to be his GM to preside over his meandering franchise. What can go wrong? It's a clown show produced by the owner, himself.

Some GMs are better than others. There are mediocre GMs and top tier GMs. That's not the issue for the Sabres. The owner bestowed the critical GM position on someone who was manifestly unqualified to begin with. You look at the numerous transactions that the Caps GM has made. Many of them have worked and some have not. You have to have an ability to adjust to the ever-changing circumstances. Our novice GM simply doesn't have that essential ability to make those required adjustments. My problem with the owner isn't that he hired this novice when Botterill refused to fire the staff. If he would have hired him as a temporary GM (place holder), that would have been understandable. But he is going on five years in that critical position. That's an incomprehensible absurdity!

The shame of this losing interlude is that UPL's goaltending has been superb. It has been wasted.

It's the standard up and down hockey cycle of up that this decrepit organization can't be part of because of its own perpetual incompetency.

That inability to make the course adjustment is because he didn't have the wherewithal to do the job to begin with. Every GM who takes over a franchise in any pro sport has a plan to move forward. But that doesn't mean you have to be stuck to your preconceived notions when the terrain inevitably changes. Dealing with constant change is part of job. This GM was in over his head when he took the job and has been in over his head while he has had the job. Terry doesn't talk. He says nothing.

I brought this up before so I apologize for the repetition. Over the last couple to few years, Washington has reshaped its roster to the point where they are a now a serious team again. None of the players added such as Strome, Eller, Luc Dubois, Mangiopane, Logan Thomas etc. were considered top tier players. Dubois and to a lesser extent Strome were considered underachievers. Chyyrun was somewhat of a risk acquisition because he was entering his free agent year. My point is that the roster has steadily been reshaped to the point where they are now highly competitive. My big fear is that the contamination of constant losing will infect young players such as Quinn, JJP, Cozens, Power and even Benson where a change of scenery will be needed for them to revive their game. It's a corrosive environment for young players. What happens when Byram gets tired of this losing atmosphere and elects to become a UFA in order to get out of this stifling place he currently plays at? What will we then have to show for the Mitts trade if that scenario comes to pass? One of the biggest attributes a GM must have is the ability to assess his roster in a cold-blooded and analytical fashion. Our ill-equipped GM is in over his head. What makes this situation so exasperating is that even in this losing spiral period, the difference between winning and losing has been miniscule. I blame the clueless owner for the unqualified GM selection and this needless situation. It didn't need to play out this way.

No organization or front office in any pro sport makes personnel decisions where they all work out. That would be an impossible standard to judge by. That's not how you judge an operation. It's the overall body of work that includes plusses and minuses. When all is said and done the bottom line comes down to not assessing any one transaction but rather the team's record over an extended period of time i.e. multiple seasons. The owner can operate his multiple sport businesses any way he wants. If he wants to interfere or not, it is his prerogative. Let's not forget that it was the owner who chose KA to run the hockey franchise after Botterill was fired. It's not unfair to say that there wouldn't have been one franchise in the NHL that would have considered this inexperienced person, let allow to interview, for the most important job for a franchise. In reality, we don't know how much the owner interferes or not. He can do whatever he wants. What I'm focusing on is the team's record. It's freaking dismal. And to make it even more revealing is that this franchise has struggled since Pegula took over, nearly a generation ago. That is a ludicrous absurdity! Again, I don't need to microscopically analyze the inner workings of this franchise. The doors are closed to us. So we can't fully appreciate what's going on in the room. It doesn't matter. Just check the record.

There is not one sober or non-brain-dead GM in the league who would trade Power for Risto.

Compare the Washington Capitals with the Sabres? Last year, we were talent-wise basically comparable teams. And I would say that most hockey people judged that the Sabres had more upside young players on their roster. Over the past few years, Washington made a number of small transactions to better balance out their roster. They phased out the right players and correspondingly phased in the right players. Last year, the Capitals squeaked into the last spot in the playoffs. Their record this year is 20-6-2. There were no bonanza deals that were eye-popping that dramatically changed the roster. It was a series of smart moves over the past few seasons that allowed this franchise to get back into the serious playoff fray. Compare that to how the Sabres' organization has been run over the past five years or so? I strenuously disagree that a highly qualified new GM needs a lot of time to evaluate everything here. Experienced GMs know the league and players on all the teams very well. And they also know the hockey staff for most teams If you have listened to the many critiques of the Sabres from outsiders, it comes down to the same criticism of roster construction and other organizational issues. Over this recent hideous losing streak, almost all the games have been lost by one goal. The takeaway is that the difference between success and failure is miniscule. I wholeheartedly believe that with the right person at the helm, this sinking ship can get back to the surface and float again. This situation is inexcusable!

Yes, I'm serious. Byram is an offensive defenseman. That's who he is. He's not a stay at home positional player, and never will be. If you want that type of defenseman, then pursue that type of player. You can throw out whatever analytics you want and be enamored by them. I'm not as impressed or as influenced by the numbers as you are because they more often than not don't reflect the actual performance of the individual player. It's not unusual that the less than impressive analytics for a particular player are influenced by the other players on the ice. It's my belief (opinion) that the ineffective GM made the judgment that Cozens was a 2C. And if that were true, it would have made the departure of Mitts less impactful with the added benefit of adding a first or second pairing defenseman. Not surprising, the out of his depth GM miscalculated. The moral of the story: going backwards is not going forward.

Ruff then basically benched him in that period. After that public spanking Power played well. That's good coaching.

I was queasy about the Mitts trade for Byram for a variety of reasons. As you point out, the more one sees of Byram, the more impressed one gets. So, let's review this from KA's GM perspective. I have a versatile player who wants to be here but will trade him for an emerging offensive defenseman whose contract situation gives him the option to leave in the near future. Byram's mind-set is or will be after being subjected to a stream of demoralizing losses is: If I play well in Buffalo (a shiithole franchise) I can showcase my talents to all the teams in the league. What the befuddled GM has done is create leverage for this player to either leave for a bigger contract bid up by the market, or at worst, force this farcical organization to keep him in the fold for a higher market price. I don't know how this Byram scenario will eventually play out. I hope we can keep him. But from an overview perspective, the GM placed himself in a vulnerable position (less leverage) with this deal. There is nothing unusual about taking calculated risks for an attractive player. But when you preside over a systemically dysfunctional franchise you are in a weak position to begin with. Playing checkers doesn't mean that you can succeed in chess.

What's worse than being laughed at is being ignored. Buffalo has become the hockey world's invisible franchise because no one cares about it. A generation of losing will do that to you. The biggest problem isn't outsiders laughing at this clownish franchise. It's that most of its local market is apathetic to this lame franchise. Freaking pathetic!