JohnRobertEichel

Ok, but I don't think it's irrational to hold JB and PH accountable for the past 35 games. The team has been treading along at a 65-point season pace for the past 3 months. Remember that JB and PH inherited a roster that finished a disappointing 78 points and then took them to an NHL-worst 63 points last year. And all this with a healthy roster all season. You cite the individual progress of our top line. Fine. I will cite the overall team's lack of progress. Which is more important? At what point will all the "voice of reason" fans like you start holding these guys accountable? If they don't make the playoffs next year, will that be ok with you? How about the 2020-21 season?

Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. $59 for a half hour, $79 for a full hour. Much better deal than tickets to a Sabres game.

JB and PH can both ***** off with their "progress" talk. The more sensible Sabres fans among us are just about ready to "progress" to more enjoyable forms of leisure than religiously following the worst NHL franchise of the past 8 years.

I'm expecting absolutely nothing to be done to better the team in any appreciable way. Why the negativity, you ask? Because our dear GM believes that championship NHL teams are built on geological time scales. Those 3 first round 2019 draft picks are sure going to be valuable contributors on the 2022-23 Buffalo Sabres roster that finally snaps the NHL postseason drought record. Not all will be forsaken, however. JBots will make enough deals over the next few days to ensure we have a full cache of Remi Elies to propel the Amerks and Cyclones to minor league championship glory.

I can't believe all the bullsh!t positive vibes in this thread. Doesn't anyone else remember the previous 3 games we played against Tampa Bay this season? We played very well in all of them. Those competitive games against an elite opponent didn't lead to much, though, did they? This season is in the same toilet bowl as the previous 7 because the Sabres chose to build on quality TB games like this one by proceeding to repeatedly faceplant against the NHL's bottom-dwellers.

I'm not comfortable blaming JBots fully for the Kane and O'Reilly trades. Aside from the obvious (Tim Murray), some of the blame may need to go to our sanctimonious owners who likely forced JBots to run these two out of town for their off-the-ice behavior.

Risto is currently at a career -125. He is on pace to destroy Bob Stewart's NHL-worst career plus/minus of -260. A lot of the blame, however, for Risto's plus/minus should go to the atrocious rosters he's been on and to an atrocious franchise that has mismanaged his career from the beginning.

Note that the Sabres are currently on a 67-point season pace since the famous 10-game winning streak ended. That is over a sample size of 33 games and 2.5 months. That is very clearly no longer an aberration, but rather a firmly established trend. Also note that the Sabres finished with the following point totals for the last 5 years: 62, 78, 81, 54, 52. So....progress?! I think even the Pollyanas among the loyal, tortured Sabres fanbase are going to have a hard time getting it up for this Panthers game. The players clearly gave up on themselves. So the fanbase should quickly follow the players' lead.

Is this still a thing?! If I see this thread open for voting tomorrow morning, I'm throwing my laptop out the window.

I'm starting to come around to this conclusion. Maybe Phil inherited a bunch of guys who are just inherently dumb and lazy.

No. Jack Eichel is not a leader of men. He should keep wearing the "C," though, as long as everyone knows it stands for "coach killer."

I stopped watching over a week ago once it became obvious. I check in periodically to read what's happening and I'll occasionally watch highlights on nhl.com. But I'm trying to wean myself off from all things Buffalo Sabres. To me, the franchise is quite clearly going nowhere in the direction that leads to an eventual Stanley Cup. Not with the current cast of people in leadership positions on and off the ice. But a lot of people here still think this team is going places. So Godspeed I guess... I'm curious to check in here next year around this time when the Sabres don't make the playoffs for the 9th straight year. I'm sure more people will agree with my opinion by that point, but I'm equally sure we'll see more of the same excuses: still too young, still learning how to win, unlucky bounces, still need more talent, still need to win more lottery picks, etc... I've seem them all this season, with the exception of the commonly used injury excuse.

I love it. People make all kinds of excuses for this pathetic ***** franchise's continued losing ways, but this one is my favorite. Why aren't the Sabres at least equally desperate at the moment?! This team is so obviously not making the playoffs this season, so if that's the main reason why anyone here still bothers to watch, then you are in for a world of hurt and disappointment ahead.

This clown is a ***** disgrace. Check out the NY Islanders and Montreal Canadiens to see what good coaching does.

Possibly. I'm much too pissed off to post rationally right now, so I'm going to take at least the weekend off from this message board and from Sabres hockey in general.

For a lot of stupid and pathetic Buffalo Sabres fans, this IS actually part of the plan. Because lottery picks = winning. Or something.

Yup. And I have ZERO respect for any man who plays a team sport and doesn't physically stand up for his teammates.

The Buffalo Sabres will never win a Cup with Jack Eichel as captain. Tanking for the Pierre Turgeon of the 21st century was a franchise-crushing mistake that won't be rectified for an entire generation.

That's pretty accurate. 10 of the next 14 points puts us back on a 95-point season pace.

I personally have no idea anymore. It keeps getting pushed back with this franchise. But there are a lot of people here that know a heck of a lot more about hockey than I do, and so I value their opinions greatly. So if they tell me that an 8th straight season without playoffs is not reason for concern, then I will try not to get too worked up over it. Keep all of our high 2019 draft picks and keep drafting for a future of an unspecified length of time ahead? Fine. Today (January 31) is the first day of the 2018-19 season when I realized and accepted that these guys just don't have it in them to make the playoffs. But I do still look around and see teams like the NY Islanders and Montreal Canadiens somehow ahead of us. And then I think about a full three seasons ago, under Murray and Bylsma, when we finished with 81 points (we're currently pacing for 92 points and definitely less if you factor in the pace since the 10-game winning streak ended) and wonder how much progress this franchise is actually making with JB and PH.

This is the final road game before a 7-game, 17-day home stand. A Sabres win and a Pittsburgh regulation loss tonight puts us in a tie for the #8 seed and no more than 5 points behind playoff spots #2-7.

No, it's about the other 15 teams and not the points. That's quite obviously the way the playoffs are decided; there is no point threshold you can reach to assure playoffs. And we also don't have enough data to make a strong conclusion about this threshold. Five seasons under the new Eastern Conference division alignment and playoff format isn't enough. Here are the points for the lowest wildcard team and also the points for the first team to just miss the playoffs: 2013-14: 93 / 90 2014-15: 98 / 96 2015-16: 96 / 93 2016-17: 95 / 94 2017-18: 97 / 96 So you can perhaps say with some degree of confidence that 99 points will get you in and 92 points will keep you out. But these numbers depend a lot on how top-heavy or bottom-heavy the rest of the league is, or how many games are going into OT. Note that the 97-point demarcation you suggested wasn't sufficient in 2015 and may have also been insufficient last year, depending on the win total. I think my point is that we - as Sabres fans interested in the playoffs - need to do both: track the team's progress toward the 90-100 point range, but at the same time follow which teams in the top 8 are potentially collapsing (Montreal?) or which teams in the bottom 7 are quickly rising (Carolina?).

Another way to look at this is that we need any one of the 7 teams above us with 58-62 points to collapse - Wash, Pitt, NYI, Columbus, Boston, Toronto, or Montreal. The most likely team to collapse, in my opinion, is Montreal. They are 5 points ahead of us but have played 2 more games.

It was absolutely painful listening to Marshawn Lynch on the Bill Maher show. I love the guy, but he clearly doesn't belong anywhere near a political show. And come on dude...you need to vote. No excuse for not educating yourself and participating in the democratic process.

A few things wrong with this statement: 1. Who said that any of the 1st round draft picks have to be traded? I'm sure JB can find a couple useful forward rentals for the playoff push without having to sacrifice any major asset. 2. JB can always make trades that convert 1st round draft picks into older prospects further along the development path. This might be the more preferable use of the 1st round resources, no? 3. JB has spoken extensively on the importance of building a "winning culture" in Rochester. Shouldn't that philosophy also be true for the Buffalo squad? We're quickly approaching 4 straight seasons in Eichel's career where the team didn't make the playoffs, the middle 2 of which the team underachieved in a very big way. At what point does a "losing culture" become ingrained in Buffalo, assuming it hasn't already? Patience is a virtue....to a point. Beyond that point, it becomes a cause of failure. I don't know exactly where that point is for JB, but my fear is that he has been looking at this as year 2 of the rebuild and not an inherited year 8 of a rebuild that began with Regier. If the former, then he may be building a roster of Pierre Turgeons - that is to say, individually talented players who collectively never end up winning much of anything bcause they don't know how to do so.