Porous Five Hole

Get well soon Meatballs. Both the Amerks and Sabres play tonight, so it’ll be some firsts for both staffs. Seth in the show & Paetsch/Prospal sharing head coaching duties in the AHL. I hope it gets the boys fired up for both teams tonight!

They beat Laval at home on Nov 23 & 25th. Guess how many home games they’ve had since then? Three before last night. You’re inventing reasons to be mad. It’s almost like you enjoy it. I hear you on the trend. But they’re the reigning division champs and conference finalists. Veterans throughout the roster. This team deserves the benefit of the doubt to get things figured out. This has been the most successful 2.5 year period in Amerks hockey in a generation. But hey, guys like contempt, SabreMike and Amerks6969 flame away. Burn it all down. Everything sucks and no one is trying to win. Enjoy your echo chamber thread of negativity. I’ll leave you to it.

Y’all need to chill. Hershey is the best team in the AHL at 26-6-0. The Amerks hung tough, but they were by no means supposed to win this game nor were they the better team.

It is going to be a packed house at the Blue Cross Arena tonight. The walk up crowd should sell it out.

Uh oh

I forgot he was even here in ROC

I know the NHL TOI leaders are all 25 min a night, but I still think that’s too much. The Sabres struck out adding prior defensive depth in the offseason and here we are.

He was injured for a month and came back early. And he’s disinterested?

Personally, I stopped here. I guess you can somehow observe this and run with it… but to attack someone like Tage & his professionalism is a hard stop towards meaningful conversation.

Call me when he fixes his mess in Arizona first.

What a captain sounds like

I’ll be the contrarian for you. Bah humbug. 😬😊

Liger, thanks for this thread! I’m following.

Someone sent this to me for Christmas with no return label or identifying information. Someone knows me pretty well 🤣

Brandon Biro scores in OT to beat the Crunch. ROC finally outshoots someone and Toker with the win tonight.

Did you know Cliffy has been a +4 the last ten games? His mistakes are glaring, but he’s settling in. At this point, he is not on the top of the list of problems. 🤷‍♂️

GMKA is in over his head. His plan was to draft and develop. And after last year, he thought he could mostly sit on his hands and this would be a playoff team. He was wrong and he doesn’t know how to pivot. WORST TEAM IN THE CONFERENCE?? If he isn’t second guessing himself and being active, then there’s no reason to expect anything other than results like this.

Nice post. You’re giving GMKA a long runway and I don’t know how deserved that is. My issue is the GM’s inability to do ANYTHING relevant to better position his roster and his coaches to demand accountability. The head coach cannot tell the team to, “play better or I’ll find someone who will” because Kevyn won't. Time and time again we find that he literally won't do anything. So does the coach yell idle threats at the players or do you just treat it like daycare, and hope the players get better/have self accountability? This team is still waiting for an NHL goalie, a top four defenseman, and some veteran presence over and above what is already here & Erik Johnson. Remember when this team needed a nudge at the trade deadline because the Sabres were “in the hunt?” Crickets. The goalie and the Dman was needed a year ago at this time, it was needed at last year’s trade deadline, free agency, the draft, final cuts, and still today. DO SOMETHING DARCY!!! Hard for coaches to hold players accountable when the GM doesn’t do anything. Ever.

The easiest move is to fire the coach. I get it. But is Meatballs truly accountable for being the second-worst points percentage in the conference today? You could say he isn’t a fire-ry Torts type. You could say his system change to a larger focus in their own end is failing. Both are probably true. But I keep going back to the roster construction. There’s no NHL goalie on this roster and this team is the youngest team in the NHL. Again. I don’t believe the team is rotten to the core. While I recognize a lot of the roster had career years last year and it would be hard to replicate…the truth is this roster was not assembled properly to compete day in and day out. They’re just not good enough and it isn’t growing pains. It is roster construction. So what does accountability look like? The GM has had two “go for it” years (this year and the Taylor Hall/Jordan Staal year) and both have failed spectacularly. It’s time to move on from GMKA. Thank you for your talent accumulation, but pack your *****. I recognize that puts the head coach on borrowed time, but it’s important to refocus on what can improve the group. And that’s a new guy in charge of hockey ops and GMing. It is time.

@JujuFish fyi I was responding to this

It’s interesting how you tout McD as a good coach, but limit/ demerit Allen because he hasn’t won more playoff games. Has Allen been the problem aside from the Texans hero ball game that they lost in OT? I would be interested in your follow up…

You’re dead on. The Bryson who was called up in 20-21 was a competent player who moved the puck and was good defending with his stick to make up for his size. 38 GP, 9 pts, -1 on a Krueger/Meatballs team that was the shortened covid season and could not score goals. He was fine. From there, it has been gross.

So far in ROC: 3.64, SV% 0.898

Each of those guys have given up 33 goals in nine games each. It can get a lot worse than Comrie.

Not opposed to sitting Clifton…but I noticed he has five assists in his last five games. His mistakes are glaring, but he’s playing better than the start of the year.