Archie Lee

You are right that my reply was snarky. I was sucked in by @oglethorp’s “nice try though” comment. This was my mistake. It is better to walk away from some posters on occasion. At any rate, the initial comment I was replying to was that Levi could not do worse than UPL. I simply pointed out that Levi has been worse than UPL in the NHL this season. So, it might be a stretch to conclude Levi can’t be worse than UPL when it has been demonstrated that he can be worse. I was not making any predictions about the future.

Oh, my mistake. I understand now that Levi can’t be any worse than UPL next year, even though he was worse than UPL this year. Logic checks out.

I’ve watched a lot of hockey in my years, but I wouldn’t say that I’m skilled at identifying subtle differences in team structure. I can, though, see how good teams commit to team defence. Mostly though, my take on Ruff just comes from his recent history. Most years since he left Buffalo, his teams just give up a lot of goals (near bottom of the league). Perhaps he has been unfortunate and repeatedly gets dealt the bad hand of players who can’t execute a sound D system combined with a bad goalie. At some point it seems likely though, that he is a contributor to his own demise. That said, there is no denying that since he left Buffalo he has also had two seasons where his teams topped 50 wins (these are his only 2 winning seasons since he left). He should get credit for those. But it’s worth noting that the success was not sustained in either case, and that the following year those teams were out of the playoffs and Ruff was fired. He simply does not coach a sustainable, repeatable, structured system. For a franchise looking to develop young players and achieve a stretch of longterm sustained success, Ruff was the oddest of choices. He is the oldest coach in the league and has not had sustained success with a team in a quarter century.

It’s not just goaltending. In the 13 games we played since the deadline, we are scoring on a 300 goal per 82 game pace. That’s back to where we were two seasons ago. On average in the last 5 full NHL seasons, two teams do that per year. During the 13 game losing streak, we scored at a 175 goal pace. We would not have gone 0-10-3 if we had been scoring at a 300 goal pace then. It isn’t just goaltending. Of course, there is no reason to think the post trade deadline scoring pace is sustainable.

Except, in his 9 NHL starts this year, Levi was worse than UPL. I start every new season with hope. But I am not optimistic of how Levi (or most goalies) would perform playing 40 games in Ruff’s system.

The Oilers lost Holloway, Broberg, and McLeod, in order to keep or bring in Jeff Skinner, Arvidsson, and Henrique. If I were McDavid, that might give me the final nudge I need to say to myself, l’m just gonna see what happens in free agency.

The point is that Armstrong was willing to be aggressive and act with urgency to improve his team. There are lots of moves Adams could make. When the season was still on the line, he did not make any.

Also with being willing to fire his recently hired coach because a better one was available. Montgomery is an upper tier coach.

Exactly. Or maybe Kulich is the piece that brings you the better player.

You are right, but I think you are overlooking factors that led to UPL's performance cratering. UPL's performance began to suffer during the worst stretch of the Sabre season. During the 13 game losing streak, Reimer played 3 games and was 0-3 with a .865 save %. How would Reimer's season have gone had he been required to start 52 games for this team without respite? Reimer started only 10 games for the Sabres from Oct - Feb. I'm not saying that there are no goalies who could have done better than UPL (unequivocally, UPL has been bad and needs to be better), but it is one thing to start 10 games over 4 months for a bad defensive hockey team, and quite another to start 52. We are not likely to bring in an elite netminder in the off-season. Swapping in a couple of goalies who are largely available because they have lacked consistency in their career (that is who will be available), without addressing the other root causes of why we give up so many chances and goals, will not likely result in a positive outcome.

Adams has done the same thing with goalies as he has done with other positions. We should not forget that he waived Reimer and lost him to Anaheim. There was no guarantee we would get him back. We could have Felix Sandstrom backing up UPL (that’s not a stretch). Adams rolled into the year with UPL and Levi as his goalies the same as he rolled into the year with Power/Byram/Samuelsson/Jokiharju on D and Cozens/Quinn/Benson as the 2nd line. His methods have failed multiple players. Some of those players might be just not good enough, but I think some have also been positioned to fail by a demonstrably awful GM.

You aren’t serious, are you?

I think we would all take Logan Thompson and his career .912 save %.

I totally agree. If DeBoer or Bednar became available and were interested in coming to Buffalo? Sure. Maybe Sullivan. I don't have any interest in Tortorella. I'm not a big Laviolette fan. At this point, Gallant seems to be out of the coaching picture. Knoblauch might be on the bubble in Edmonton. 40 year old Washington Assistant, Mitch Love, might be my first choice: Todd Nelson, from what I understand, has resisted offers to return to the NHL as an assistant, because he is committed to being a head coach. The man just wins at all the levels he has coached. He is 55.

Agreed totally. We need a new head coach. Ruff has had two seasons with a better than DeLuca .500 record in his last 11 as a head coach. He hasn’t coached a team to 3 straight years in the playoffs, for a quarter century. He is not the coach you hire to bring structure to a team. He is yesterday’s man. If an established head coach with a recent track record of sustained success is not available, and they likely won’t be, then Carle would be a good choice. Others: Washington assistant Mitch Love and Hershey coach Todd Nelson.

Yeah, Adams is not good at his job. According to Adams and/or his head coach, he has assembled a group of players who are over-confident, don't take accountability, and don't take off-season workouts seriously enough. At some point, maybe the players just recognized that accountability is a one-way street with the Sabres. A leadership change at the GM position, is the most needed move for the coming off-season.

I’m not opposed to trading a prospect or two. Since we are overflowing with forwards who are legitimately in the NHL now (14 by my count), I would prefer we package 2-3 of our current NHL players for that difference maker. And, no, I don’t mean we can package Lafferty and Malenstyn for a top 6 forward. If we are not prepared to move on from a Quinn, a Kulich, or a Benson, then we are really just running another young team back and again hoping for internal development to carry us there. If we are going to trade our way to being better next season, and not simply be passive and wait for internal growth, then we need to bring in talented players and be willing to move on from some young roster players. The beauty of this is that it still leaves us a strong prospect pool. A good GM can manage these waves. There would be nothing wrong with the Sabres having Östlund or Rosen or Novikov playing an important role at some point next year. Contending NHL teams have such players on their team all the time (see: Knies, Lundell, Samoskevich, Sanderson, Grieg, Jarvis, Jackson Blake, Nemec, just from Eastern playoff teams). What you can’t have and be successful is all 3 on the roster plus Kulich and Benson and Power and Levi…etc.. Layering these young players onto the roster and moving some out at the appropriate time for veterans is the answer. Adams’s big error, in my view, was not being willing to move out any of the kids from the first wave to make the NHL (Peterka, Quinn, Benson, Kulich). It might pay off long-term, but he needlessly squandered 2-3 years when they could have been in the playoffs.

I see this as the flaw in having so many young players and not being willing to block them, or trade them until you know what you have (acknowledging they moved on from Savoie). The thing is, it is possible that Quinn will stay hot and becomes what we wanted/hoped/needed. We just can't rely on it. And his value has likely shrunk.

My math has the Rangers coming in at about $10 million under the cap with K. Miller and Cuyle as RFA's. They would likely need to move out a contract to get Byram signed. Schneider and Cuyle for Byram and Quinn?

Again, I'm not eager to trade Power. But, doesn't your statement make the assumption that we don't get a comparable player in return? There is always risk in a trade, but aside from one or two posters who think we will be better if we just dump Power, nobody is suggesting we trade him for less than fair value.

Anybody paying attention to the last 13-14 years of Ruff’s career, knew there was no reason to think he would make a difference.

On track to be a top pairing, 22-25 minute a game, 50-60 point, d-man. What we drafted.

I agree he is on track. I’m not worried about Power. I’m not dumping him. Trading him would not be an addition by subtraction move. But, I’m not sure why it would be absurd to trade him for a player who helps us be a better team? Not for a rental, not for a prospect, not for picks, not for a 35 year old, but for a 24-27 year-old legit top 6 centre with 4-5 years of team control.

It certainly is not a game being played with playoff level intensity. Wilson probably would like to start something with a Sabre to spark the Caps, but when he looks at the Sabre bench he sees nobody he can go after and retain his credibility as a tough guy.

Not a lot of self-awareness on Ruff's part. His teams have now missed the playoffs in 7 of his last 10 seasons as a head coach and he has a .471 winning % in that stretch. He is the man who was brought in to ensure structure and accountability, yet in those years where his team missed the playoffs their average league position for goals against has been 26th. At this point, Ruff is disrespecting the game as much as any player.