SabresVet

This is why having a deeper prospect pool is important. One player being somewhat better shouldn't make or break your franchise and, if there's any consolation to this season, it's seeing multiple young players begin contributing. I'll also insist that faster development is not necessarily better. A 20 year old on one team getting out to a fast start in their career is nice to evaluate now, but these players needs 3-5 full seasons to judge. That said, I'm liking the center depth Buffalo has built...perhaps there aren't elite players, but all seem to have scoring touch Cozens included.

No, you cherry picked the timeline to fit your narrative. I corrected it to reflect player's NHL service time beginning in Aho's case. The Sabres from 2015-16 through 2020-21 are nothing like a comparable duration with TB and Carolina. You're analogy is not...analogous. And...with Eichel...you do care enough to bash him and make it seem he had no right to hurt your feelings by demanding to leave. And you've largely excused the Sabres for being bad for so long. Eichel, et al. have left. Let's just admit the Sabres were poorly run and the inevitable departures happened as a result...unlike other franchises that eventually got good.

Comparing Buffalo to Carolina and Tampa Bay in those players' first few seasons is laughably bad. Aho was in the playoffs with a 99 point regular season (2018-19) in his 3rd NHL season. Carolina subsequently made the playoffs in 2019-20 and 2020-21. As for Stamokos, just before his 3rd season TB hired Yzerman in 2010 and the Lightning played in the Conference Finals that year. Which, by the way, was Hedman's 2nd NHL season. Contrast that with Buffalo, which recorded in Eichel's first 5 seasons, point totals of 81, 78, 62, 76, and, in the shortened 2019-20 season...68. They weren't even close to the playoffs, aside from that 2019-20 season they finished...25th overall. Point is, there was a path forward with observed success for Carolina and Tampa Bay. Yet, before that 2019-20 season, there was nothing like that in Buffalo. I'd argue that Buffalo's blood-letting of front office people in early 2020 indicated they were paring down expenses and, if I'm a player, I do not see that as a franchise going for it. It was perfectly reasonable for Eichel to seek out a trade after spending 5 years in a veritable wasteland of new HC's and GM's. And, ownership did themselves no favors hiring said HC's and GMs. Buffalo was mired in the mud going nowhere. The post-Eichel Sabres have only so long before the rebuild needs to start showing success. There are some signs, but poor on-ice performance is what those vets who wanted out could see coming. If I spent years of my career playing for a moribund team and then realized another rebuild meant 2-3 more seasons of losing...well, anyone would want out. There's only so much losing an athlete can take, particularly when the franchise lacks direction and a sense of urgency.

The Pegula's don't have 2 years worth of patience seeing ticket sales equivalent to 45% of arena capacity. Especially if they're again among the bottom quartile of the league by mid-season next year. They need to be in the conversation for a playoff spot next season.

Early returns look good on the trade, but it's waaaaay too early to evaluate final grades. Reminds me of team's draft or UFA signings getting graded as though that's the time anyone can draw a conclusion. Likelihood is this trade will be more level than the ROR deal.

They two franchises may be under the same PSE roof, but no business is going to look to one side of the house to cover another. I'm 100% confident they're viewing both teams on their own and as such, that each stands on their own financially. At the same time, the prospect of building a new Bills stadium is impacting their financial decision making with the Sabres. They can't keep losing millions as they did in 2019-20: https://subscribe.buffalonews.com/e/limit-reached-bn?returnURL=https://buffalonews.com/sports/sabres/sabres-lost-10-9-million-value-dropped-in-2020-according-to-forbes/article_9e2c7828-3a3b-11eb-b9e4-17ec3fa4b12d.html I could definitely see them selling part of the Sabres to provide some liquidity to put toward a new stadium that, despite an initial proposal, will cost them I'm guessing a couple hundred million. Especially now that 55% of the Key Bank Arena isn't selling out on average each home game.

There's no way I'm letting him wear 51. Does he now know who Brian Campbell is?

No one's arguing DG is the only one or thing at fault right now. That's just a hyperbolic assertion.

Of course, everyone knows TB is more talented and this time had Kucherov. It doesn't justify their 1-10-1 home record these past 2 months with their lone win against fellow bottom-feeder Montreal. A lack of talent should never inhibit the effort a team demonstrates.

A Lightning team they demolished 5-1 earlier this season. The quibbling really needs to find an end this season. Because at some point fans should expect to see a team competing for 60 minutes each night with some more wins coming from that effort.

Doubtful. They have 15 points in their last 28 games and, all quibbling aside, that's really bad. We're talking one-third of a season and, applied to a full season is a 44 point year. No one thought they'd be in the playoffs or be at 80 points but this 2 month stretch is not a isolated event. Frankly, hearing about how they have a "plan" or "direction" is nothing different than what 31 other NHL teams have. Even taking the lack of W's out of the conversation, the Sabres are not improving as a team on the ice. They have compete issues even with the new HC and that's cause for concern. Young teams might lose because they're inexperienced, but shouldn't be flat-lining for a period like this team has.

What would be odd is the current core, albeit younger and less proven, not becoming disenchanted with repeated losing into 2022-23. If next season sees Buffalo finish outside the playoffs, guys like Dahlin will be gone when their contracts expire or they have enough leverage over the team just like the guys who left this year did. At least Adams acknowledges how they need to win back the fanbase, which is evident with each home game's attendance. And I'd expect that the GM in the sky is looking for results before year 3 of an Adams rebuild or 2023-24.

Complex problems typically have several causes, some root and others contributing. Prominent contributing are 3, 4, 5, 6 and maybe 7. I doubt 1 is a major impact to game attendance though, but could be a contributing cause. The main reason is #2...a very loyal fan base has, after 10+ years of misery under this ownership, finally stopped supporting the team in-person. Die-hards still exist, but it's the middle of the road fans, who may well being facing financial challenges, but even if not the team is not worth going to see for ticket price points. And I'd point to the 45% of the arena filled through 18 home games as evidence. In fact, this is almost half of what it was in 2019-20. https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att_graph.php?tmi=5054 We can quibble about minor details, but even if there were no virus restrictions most people wouldn't go watch this team. At least with Eichel and Reinhart there were some very good or better players to see even if they lost. Now, there's no marquee players and they're still likely going to lose (they've won 2 home games in the last 2 months).

Do your own research. Reality is, you don't remove 15 out of 33 games because the goalies are/were known as underperforming. That hits to a bigger issue where the position was mismanaged and poor resulted followed. Which means, if UPL and Subban are better, there's an issue identifying talent. And, it doesn't explain why they score twice the goals in the 2nd period than the first.

What makes this game unique is how, through 33 games now, Buffalo has held the lead after the first and second periods 5 times. Three of those games occurred during the 5-1-1 start. Someone before mentioned they don't have the talent, and that's true. But the other thing is, they're getting out-scored 34-21 in the first during the season and now 28-15 since the hot start. Otherwise, in GF, they're 42-41 in the 2nd period and 27-31 in the 3rd. I'm not taking a deep dive into the analytics, but being so poor during the 1st period is cause for concern.

No one deserves luck.

I'm sure the owners would be thrilled with losing 7 home games a year. No professional sports league wants to voluntarily decrease their revenue.

With 8,500 fans in the building each night, that's 10,000+ tickets unsold per game. Over 41 home games (and I don't know if they share ticket revenue with opponents) that's more than 400,000 seats unfilled this season. At an average of $75 per, you're talking a 30M loss. If that continues into season 3 (2022-23) I can definitely see Adams being canned. It's hard for me to understand how people minimize the financial piece of this business. We know they reduced payroll in anticipation of lower revenue, but that's a lot of money for a smaller market NHL team. For the record, Buffalo is more than 3k less than the 31st ranked team for attendance: https://www.espn.com/nhl/attendance

Listening to the interview on GR this morning, one would think Sabres aren't all that bad. It was player health updates and talking up players like Okposo and UPL. Can't expect fire and brimstone every time, but they've lost 7 straight. I guess that doesn't warrant talking about a schedule against Winnipeg, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Colorado, and Columbus these next 2 weeks.

😆

If wins aren't the qualitative measure of success, just create the ambiguous metric of "effort" to demonstrate improvement. Hard to say things are going well when they were 9-16-3 to finish 2020-21 and 8-15-4 to begin 2021-22. Only difference is that different players are on the team and...some holdovers are playing better (Thompson).

So did the owner.

You did not answer the question. Do you believe the dominant voice in re-signing Skinner to that contract was Botterill?

Adams has a lot smaller budget to use as compared to Botterill. Doesn't make one GM better than other, but context is key. Do you believe Botterill was the decisive factor in signing Skinner to that contract?