Adams And Granato Media Availability Wednesday: What Do You Want To hear?

[TRIP65]

On 4/23/2023 at 3:35 PM, Pimlach said:

Listen closely to the first two question and his answers and you will have it.   

First question: The "universal theme" from players is they expect to get in (to playoffs) ...  as the leader of this, should that be the expectation going forward?  

Answer: Yeah, it is exciting to see the players raise expectations .... <not gonna type the whole response> ...

He ended  with "no one external to the team wants it more than those internal to the team".  

Second question:  What is going to make you better?  

He responded to that as well.  Players improving, age, strength, and addressing areas that they need to improve on such defense in front of the goalies, special teams, etc.  

That doesn't sound like a YES. That sounds like I am Glad the Players want more. Saying yes everyone wants more. Saying pat answers like "we will grow older", "we will improve". Same breathe I want everyone back.

Need more from the GM and the questions he GOT prove the Media didn't agree he thinks the Playoffs WILL occur. Rather have someone say Playoffs or BUST, Go get what he needs and FAIL. AT least they tried!!!!!!!!!!!

[Flashsabre]

23 minutes ago, TRIP65 said:

Your the person all over the place. Tout the CUP but the Sabres made no real trade that would deliver The Cup. So it is NOT the Main Goal cause they haven't been to the Playoffs in 12 years now, every other GM said the same thing. Actions matter more!

Sabres had a REAL shot, GM failed to help "YOUNG" TEAM

As far as the Bills go, They have won Playoff games, Got Bounce AFC Championship by a Team who is one of the Best the past 5 years. Lost to the same TEAM Divisional round by a FLUKE 13 secs and a Coin Flip. Last year The Bill and Buffalo had a Series of Life threatening Events they dealt with. Also were out Starting DT, DE and Two Starting Safeties.

Your the Donkey for even bringing that up, Totally CLASSLESS!

Get home safe

[Porous Five Hole]

14 minutes ago, TRIP65 said:

That doesn't sound like a YES. That sounds like I am Glad the Players want more. Saying yes everyone wants more. Saying pat answers like "we will grow older", "we will improve". Same breathe I want everyone back.

Need more from the GM and the questions he GOT prove the Media didn't agree he thinks the Playoffs WILL occur. Rather have someone say Playoffs or BUST, Go get what he needs and FAIL. AT least they tried!!!!!!!!!!!

I think people are reading much too deeply into what a GM says to the media. 

He pumped the tires of everyone he was asked about. He is 1.5 seasons from trading Jack (that was the true reset button for me), so he isn’t putting timelines on anything. He has identified and locked up the core of Tage, Cozens, and Muel to seven year deals (and signaled the intent to lock up Dahlin & Power—obvious, but relevant to note).

I got what I needed from this press conference…and that is that he is setting up this team for long-term success. I don’t have any need for him to announce the goal is the playoffs next year for me to believe it. 

Edited April 26, 2023 by Porous Five Hole

[MattPie]

Dropped back into this thread after a few days....

[TRIP65]

23 hours ago, Porous Five Hole said:

I think people are reading much too deeply into what a GM says to the media. 

He pumped the tires of everyone he was asked about. He is 1.5 seasons from trading Jack (that was the true reset button for me), so he isn’t putting timelines on anything. He has identified and locked up the core of Tage, Cozens, and Muel to seven year deals (and signaled the intent to lock up Dahlin & Power—obvious, but relevant to note).

I got what I needed from this press conference…and that is that he is setting up this team for long-term success. I don’t have any need for him to announce the goal is the playoffs next year for me to believe it. 

You think people are reading to much into Adams is setting up Team for long term success.

What exactly does that mean? They haven't gone to the Playoffs in 12 years. So they have a Bunch of players that have talent, Eichel had Talent, O'Reilly had talent, Reinhart. Translation; Sabres have a lot of Prospects.

Unless Adams replaces the weakest players on the Team with players that bump others off the Roster now then Sabres will be in a Perpetual setting Team up for "Long Term Success" that will actually NEVER arise.

How long before Dahlin, Tage, Skinner want out because Sabres are wasting their Prime years?

This is what has happened time after time with Sabres past 12 years. Been building from our draft since Girg. 12 years and running!

The Time has come to prove now Adams can bring a Contender. Have to get there first in order to prove you can sustain it.

[JohninMinn.]

On 4/18/2023 at 2:34 PM, PerreaultForever said:

Although they will say it, I don't want to hear about how proud they are of this year, how bright the future is, how the plan is working. I don't want to hear about 3-5 years, or the word development, or anything about steps and progress. 

I want to hear one simple sentence, Our goal next season is to make the playoffs. 

Anything less should be considered failure. That's the spot to set the bar and they need to make the moves needed to make that happen. 

It's time for this team to make losing unacceptable. 

 

 

Our goal is The Stanley Cup!

[PerreaultForever]

15 hours ago, JohninMinn. said:

Our goal is The Stanley Cup!

Let's go one step at a time. This Adams rhetoric about building for long term success is just marketing bs. If you still don't make the playoffs next year you're not building anything, you're failing. 

[MattPie]

18 hours ago, TRIP65 said:

This is what has happened time after time with Sabres past 12 years. Been building from our draft since Girg. 12 years and running!

Not really true. Shortly after drafting Eichel,  XGMTM went full-throttle into trade away futures for now. He was just terrible at it and found no success. I'm blocking out Botteril's tenure since by then I'd checked out, but I think he tried to work from the draft but didn't see success. Some of the success we're seeing now (because picks becomes players years later) is from what he did, all credit due. But GMKA is not approaching things the same way the last two GMs did.

[mjd1001]

1 hour ago, MattPie said:

Not really true. Shortly after drafting Eichel,  XGMTM went full-throttle into trade away futures for now. He was just terrible at it and found no success. I'm blocking out Botteril's tenure since by then I'd checked out, but I think he tried to work from the draft but didn't see success. Some of the success we're seeing now (because picks becomes players years later) is from what he did, all credit due. But GMKA is not approaching things the same way the last two GMs did.

Agreed.  Buiilding through the draft wasn't the problem.  How you drafted was the problem, or trying to accelerate the process too much was the problem.

Many of the people  on here like to say what the Sabres have done in the past decade (or so) was wrong so that is why they need to make more aggressive moves instead of just waiting on the young guys.  But again, there are 2 reasons why the past decade plus didn't work out 1.) bad drafting  2.) accelerating the rebuild too much.   

As far as drafting, the Sabres were awful in the few years leading up to the drought and through the drought.  They had a lot of first round picks, but read this list of 1st and 2nd rounders they picked from 2004 - 2017. And yes, I picked those years because those are the years that set up your roster through the drought :

-Drew Stafford, Mike Funk, Marek Zagrapan, Philipp Gogulla, Dennis Persson, Jonas Enroth, T.J. Brennan, Drew Schiestel, Tyler Myers and Ennis, Like Adam, Zack Kassian, Mark Psysk, Joel Armia, Mikhael Grigorenko, Zemgus, Jake McCabe, Risto, Zadarov,Connor Hurley, Justin Bailey Compher, Reinhart, Brendan Lemieux,Eric Cornell, Vaclav Karabacek, Eichel, Brendan Guhle, Alex Nylander, Rasmus Asplund, Mitts, Marcus Davidsson, UPL

16 first round picks. 17 second rounders.  The Cornerstone building blocks of your team. Not a single one of them yet has 200 career goals. 8 of them never even made it to the NHL and played a single game. Another 6 had NHL careers so short they didn't even make it to 100 career games. (Yes, the numbers are similar with many other teams, but few other teams have SO few big hits)  And of all those picks, 5 of them even being top 10 overall picks, how many superstars, or even stars are there? Reinhart (really a star? maybe I guess). Eichel?  

Over 14 years, 16 first rounders, 5 of them to 10 picks, and an additonal 17 2nd rounders....you generated a total of TWO players (that you needed to draft both 2nd overall) that can be considered anything close to difference makers.

The strategy of 'draft and develop' isn't the problem. The probem was/is probably the 2nd worst drafting of any NHL team over the past 2 decades (I think only Arizona might be worse).

Edited April 27, 2023 by mjd1001

[Weave]

1 hour ago, MattPie said:

Not really true. Shortly after drafting Eichel,  XGMTM went full-throttle into trade away futures for now. He was just terrible at it and found no success. I'm blocking out Botteril's tenure since by then I'd checked out, but I think he tried to work from the draft but didn't see success. Some of the success we're seeing now (because picks becomes players years later) is from what he did, all credit due. But GMKA is not approaching things the same way the last two GMs did.

GMTM made more draft picks than Botteril.  Don’t confuse choosing poorly with trading the future for now.

[MattPie]

25 minutes ago, Weave said:

GMTM made more draft picks than Botteril.  Don’t confuse choosing poorly with trading the future for now.

I think I'm lumping draft picks and trading away young guys into the same bucket, really. Although I could ask, how many of XGMJB's picks did XGMTM trade away?

[Taro T]

3 hours ago, Weave said:

GMTM made more draft picks than Botteril.  Don’t confuse choosing poorly with trading the future for now.

Murray did get more picks.  He'd had more guys traded away for futures just before his tenure and he traded more away than Botterill had.  And he didn't trade the "future for now" but he absolutely intentially "accelerated" the rebuild.

Murray's big issues IMHO were 1. he flat out didn't see any point in considering chemistry within a team, on a line, on a D-pairing, in a dressing room, etc and 2. he was too willing to throw extra pieces into a deal to make sure he got the player(s) he really wanted.  The 2nd was by design.  He often talked about how he'd have too many prospects/picks to have all of them make it onto the big club if some weren't traded away and also that his job was to know which of the prospects were going to pan out and to trade away the others.  Which was reasonable as a philosophy but when combined with #1 it was a recipe for failure.

Botterill's issues were he couldn't pick a good head coach for the type of team he was trying to build to save his life (his 1st pick was lauded for making Nashville's D something special which was nuts because by pedigree that was a stacked D and most of those guys were studs long before Wowwee got there; and his 2nd pick to run his fast paced high event hockey team he was building (as a direction change from Murray's big bruising LA/Anaheim model) was a coach who's claim to fame was making bad teams play very low event hockey to have opportunities to be competitive against significantly better teams); he couldn't land a legit goaltending battery; he wasted 3rd round picks on overpaid bottom 6 F's; he couldn't figure out how to not bump against the salary cap; he didn't build a farm team; and he was afraid of drafting CHL prospects (pretty sure Cozens is the only one he drafted).

They both had way too many flaws to get a team that intentionally made itself irrelevant back to relevancy.  Especially when they both were 1st timers and had such radically different plans relative to their predecessor.  (Regier - we're going to rebuild through the draft.  Murray - we're going to accelerate the rebuild and we're going to try to build LA/Anaheim East.  Botterill - we're going to switch to a fast team that somehow outskills other teams.)

[JohnC]

10 hours ago, Taro T said:

Murray did get more picks.  He'd had more guys traded away for futures just before his tenure and he traded more away than Botterill had.  And he didn't trade the "future for now" but he absolutely intentially "accelerated" the rebuild.

Murray's big issues IMHO were 1. he flat out didn't see any point in considering chemistry within a team, on a line, on a D-pairing, in a dressing room, etc and 2. he was too willing to throw extra pieces into a deal to make sure he got the player(s) he really wanted.  The 2nd was by design.  He often talked about how he'd have too many prospects/picks to have all of them make it onto the big club if some weren't traded away and also that his job was to know which of the prospects were going to pan out and to trade away the others.  Which was reasonable as a philosophy but when combined with #1 it was a recipe for failure.

Botterill's issues were he couldn't pick a good head coach for the type of team he was trying to build to save his life (his 1st pick was lauded for making Nashville's D something special which was nuts because by pedigree that was a stacked D and most of those guys were studs long before Wowwee got there; and his 2nd pick to run his fast paced high event hockey team he was building (as a direction change from Murray's big bruising LA/Anaheim model) was a coach who's claim to fame was making bad teams play very low event hockey to have opportunities to be competitive against significantly better teams); he couldn't land a legit goaltending battery; he wasted 3rd round picks on overpaid bottom 6 F's; he couldn't figure out how to not bump against the salary cap; he didn't build a farm team; and he was afraid of drafting CHL prospects (pretty sure Cozens is the only one he drafted).

They both had way too many flaws to get a team that intentionally made itself irrelevant back to relevancy.  Especially when they both were 1st timers and had such radically different plans relative to their predecessor.  (Regier - we're going to rebuild through the draft.  Murray - we're going to accelerate the rebuild and we're going to try to build LA/Anaheim East.  Botterill - we're going to switch to a fast team that somehow outskills other teams.)

After reading your well out thoughts the comparison and contrasts of the current regime to its predecessors is starkly evident. KA didn't undo everything that his predecessors did. He gets credit for getting a good return on the assets that he dealt away but he should also get accolades for making the right choices in who to keep and how to utilize them. Some would say that the players he needed to keep were obvious to all. I don't think that is necessarily true. Maybe keeping Tage, Dahlin, Mitts were not challenging decisions, but that's only half of the equation. All three of these players were not only kept but also used differently. And what shouldn't be a surprise is that their production quickly went up. It was KA who elevated Granato as an interim HC to replace Krueger, and then installed him as the permanent HC after the season. The consequence of that coaching decision was that the team internally improved before outside assets were added. 

What KA did is bring in quality staff to rebuild the organization that was torn down, covid certainly was a factor in that disassembling. Besides elevating Granato to be the HC, he also added Karmonos to work with him in reconstituting this organization. That was a critical hire because he added someone with GM type experience, something that he didn't actually have. 

If you take an overview perspective what is evident is that the organization is in sync from top to bottom. There is a level of synchronicity throughout the system that didn't exist before. What distinguished KA from his predecessors is that there is more analysis and less scrambling to address an issue/deficiency before making decisions. And in that process is a willingness to be more patient when addressing a problem.

Anyone who has followed the Sabres for a long-time can't deny the fact that this version of the organization is functioning much better. There is a degree of coherency that didn't exist for a long time. There may have been a time-lag but the results are now following. 

 

 

[Thorny]

On 4/27/2023 at 3:11 PM, MattPie said:

Not really true. Shortly after drafting Eichel,  XGMTM went full-throttle into trade away futures for now. He was just terrible at it and found no success. I'm blocking out Botteril's tenure since by then I'd checked out, but I think he tried to work from the draft but didn't see success. Some of the success we're seeing now (because picks becomes players years later) is from what he did, all credit due. But GMKA is not approaching things the same way the last two GMs did.

Botterill dealt more draft picks than Murray 

evergreen 

On 4/27/2023 at 4:55 PM, Weave said:

GMTM made more draft picks than Botteril.  Don’t confuse choosing poorly with trading the future for now.

Oh, thanks 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Thorny

[Thorny]

Murray traded away 12 draft picks, acquired 13

Botterill traded away 17 draft picks, and brought in 11