Tage story on ESPN

[Two or less]

If this was posted in the game-day thread i apologize, but for those who weren't able to watch on TV tonight or missed this, here is the special feature ESPN did on Tage Thompson. I thought it was excellent.

 

[Sabres Fan in NS]

Excellent !!

[msw2112]

Thanks for posting.  Just watched while eating lunch at my desk at work.  Nice 20 minute video that tells Thompson's story very well.

[matter2003]

49 minutes ago, Sabres Fan in NS said:

Excellent !!

Wayne's World!

[Drag0nDan]

Jeeze no one said it was going to be so emotional! 😭

[Pimlach]

A fine young man and we are going to see more great hockey from him.   

[WNY Sabres]

Awesome story!

Go Tage, Go Sabres!

[French Collection]

I can’t believe his parents moved 30 times, that is extremely nomadic.

He’s been through a lot in his life already,  he seems very grounded.

[Porous Five Hole]

The story showed Tage’s path, but more importantly his work ethic, resiliency (life and hockey), and maturity.  He would be in strong consideration for the captaincy role after Okposo…but the Sabres have a lot of deserving candidates.  You love to see it. 

[Randall Flagg]

Tage Thompson taught me some major lessons, and I feel as if I have to make something up to him, like I don't deserve to watch him now

[Thorny]

5 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

Tage Thompson taught me some major lessons, and I feel as if I have to make something up to him, like I don't deserve to watch him now

The universe still owes us for the second RoR trade, I’m still collecting on his good plays without an ounce of shame lol

[GASabresIUFAN]

Now if he just could use that size and strength to play a consistent 200 foot game.  Getting some goals this season would help as well.

Edited October 19, 2023 by GASabresIUFAN

[Zamboni]

Good guy

Good story

Cute wife and kid

Rooting for his continued success 

[Sabres Fan in NS]

I just watched it again before work.

What an amazing story.  What a great man.  A fantastic wife and now family.

Thanks for posting it.

I encourage everyone to watch it at a time when you are able to give it your undivided attention.

Edited October 19, 2023 by Sabres Fan in NS

[msw2112]

12 hours ago, Thorny said:

The universe still owes us for the second RoR trade, I’m still collecting on his good plays without an ounce of shame lol

Everyone is too quick to judge a trade that involves "future assets" such as draft picks and young players, me included.  I thought the trade was a bust and one of the worst in team history.  Years later, the ROR trade is a great one for both franchises.  St. Louis got O'Reilly in his prime and won a Cup.  While the veteran players thrown in didn't amount to much, Tage has developed into one of the top goal scorers in the league, he's still young with many good years ahead of him (he could even get better), and I don't think he's being paid any more than O'Reilly was making as a Sabre.  On top of it, Ryan Johnson (who the Sabres drafted with the pick acquired in the trade) looks to be on the development path to becoming a starting NHL defenseman (probably a top-6 and maybe even a top-4 guy) within the next couple of seasons.  That Sabres team was not going anywhere with O'Reilly and badly needed a reset, so acquiring future assets was the right move.  And although O'Reilly was an excellent player, his tank is running out of gas.  Tage and Johnson will likely be productive NHL players on a winning Sabres team long after O'Reilly retires from the game.

[Thorny]

5 hours ago, msw2112 said:

Everyone is too quick to judge a trade that involves "future assets" such as draft picks and young players, me included.  I thought the trade was a bust and one of the worst in team history.  Years later, the ROR trade is a great one for both franchises.  St. Louis got O'Reilly in his prime and won a Cup.  While the veteran players thrown in didn't amount to much, Tage has developed into one of the top goal scorers in the league, he's still young with many good years ahead of him (he could even get better), and I don't think he's being paid any more than O'Reilly was making as a Sabre.  On top of it, Ryan Johnson (who the Sabres drafted with the pick acquired in the trade) looks to be on the development path to becoming a starting NHL defenseman (probably a top-6 and maybe even a top-4 guy) within the next couple of seasons.  That Sabres team was not going anywhere with O'Reilly and badly needed a reset, so acquiring future assets was the right move.  And although O'Reilly was an excellent player, his tank is running out of gas.  Tage and Johnson will likely be productive NHL players on a winning Sabres team long after O'Reilly retires from the game.

I’ve spoken about this ad nauseam, so while I respect this take I don’t have much interest in re-hashing it all. The ROR trade will never be good because it torpedoed a roster that was ready to compete / capable of being moulded into a contender *at the time*. We dealt ROR at the exact time Eichel became an actual mvp level player and rostered Marcus Johansson as the 2C behind him. Botterill ended up losing his job and we undertook another endless rebuild where we still haven’t made the playoffs since. The trade failed. Adams just picked up the pieces and salvaged it.

In the end, I don’t believe in the logic. If we dealt Tage right now for a draft pick that in 5 years becomes prime Malkin, does that make it a good trade? Of course not. Context and timing matters 

“The Sabres weren’t gong anywhere with ROR” is just massively revisionist. And takes like this just, consciously, put zero value on the results on the 5 completed season since. It doesn’t value the 5 lost years.

Edited October 19, 2023 by Thorny

[K-9]

9 minutes ago, Thorny said:

I’ve spoken about this ad nauseam, so while I respect this take I don’t have much interest in re-hashing it all. The ROR trade will never be good because it torpedoed a roster that was ready to compete / capable of being moulded into a contender *at the time*. We dealt ROR at the exact time Eichel became an actual mvp level player and rostered Marcus Johansson as the 2C behind him. Botterill ended up losing his job and we undertook another endless rebuild where we still haven’t made the playoffs since. The trade failed. Adams just picked up the pieces and salvaged it.

In the end, I don’t believe in the logic. If we dealt Tage right now for a draft pick that in 5 years becomes prime Malkin, does that make it a good trade? Of course not. Context and timing matters 

“The Sabres weren’t gong anywhere with ROR” is just massively revisionist 

Per the bold, revisionist or not, the simple fact is that we got progressively worse after his first year here until we traded him. Not saying that ROR was responsible for any of it, especially given the other crap going on in the organization at the time. But it’s not unreasonable to assume we weren’t going anywhere with ROR when we hadn’t gone anywhere with ROR especially when we got worse during his tenure. 

That said, I wish it hadn’t come down to us trading him. He was a good player at a time when we needed good players and there were several other players more deserving of being jettisoned. 

[Thorny]

11 minutes ago, K-9 said:

Per the bold, revisionist or not, the simple fact is that we got progressively worse after his first year here until we traded him. Not saying that ROR was responsible for any of it, especially given the other crap going on in the organization at the time. But it’s not unreasonable to assume we weren’t going anywhere with ROR when we hadn’t gone anywhere with ROR especially when we got worse during his tenure. 

That said, I wish it hadn’t come down to us trading him. He was a good player at a time when we needed good players and there were several other players more deserving of being jettisoned. 

We didn’t get worse his second year, we were only a few points short and Jack missed the first quarter of the season with an injury. Remember that awful, deflating start? Still gives me the shivers 

And I absolutely believe it was unreasonable to think we couldn’t improve - just yesterday there was a thread abuzz with people taking the rounds on their “see, young players continue to get better, what do you know?” statements and that’s exactly what was happening with a young developing JE at the time. Yet people seem shocked when I point out his 200 foot game developments began in sincerity in 2018-19, wanting to act like development wasn’t possible without the trade, when in reality, much of that was correlation

ill always wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t torpedoed that team by trading our second best player right at the time our number 1 became a true number 1

Edited October 19, 2023 by Thorny

[dudacek]

I can’t really sink my teeth into the above debate until someone explains “why” ROR was traded.

It never made sense from the roster construction they had, so what forced their hand?

Edited October 19, 2023 by dudacek

[Thorny]

1 hour ago, dudacek said:

I can’t really sink my teeth into the above debate until someone explains “why” ROR was traded.

It never made sense from the roster construction they had, so what forced their hand?

Eh, Botterill had an expansive body of work to the tune of suggesting we need not dig deeply for a “why” beyond “he was a poor GM who made a lot of poor moves”. Moves that were bad for roster construction need not have a defensible “why” attached. Wasn’t even consciously aware that after all this time we were still looking for a “why”. We do know Botterill was interested in bringing it “down to the studs” and Dahlin would help with that. There were those rumours: those would still fall under aims of roster construction 

I can vaguely sense where this is headed, not in your estimation I don’t think but for the thread at large, I’d hazard a guess. Perhaps this will save time:

Eichel made the chemistry bad, Eichel demanded ROR be traded, Eichel demanded MOJO be the 2C behind him to make himself look better 

Edited October 19, 2023 by Thorny

[dudacek]

17 hours ago, Thorny said:

Eh, Botterill had an expansive body of work to the tune of suggesting we need not dig deeply for a “why” beyond “he was a poor GM who made a lot of poor moves”. Moves that were bad for roster construction need not have a defensible “why” attached. Wasn’t even consciously aware that after all this time we were still looking for a “why”. We do know Botterill was interested in bringing it “down to the studs” and Dahlin would help with that. There were those rumours: those would still fall under aims of roster construction 

I can vaguely sense where this is headed, not in your estimation I don’t think but for the thread at large, I’d hazard a guess. Perhaps this will save time:

Eichel made the chemistry bad, Eichel demanded ROR be traded, Eichel demanded MOJO be the 2C behind him to make himself look better 

I think Botterill chose the return and accepts responsibility for that.

I just wonder if he thought the team needed to ship O’Reilly because:

• He didn’t fit into Botterill’s plan and vision for the Sabres moving forward
• He really liked the return and thought the Sabres were better off with 2 veteran middle sixers and 2 lottery pieces
• He thought ROR was a bad fit in the room, or needed to be moved for some “HR” reasons.
• ROR demanded a trade
• Pegula demanded a trade

Circumstances forced the Eichel trade; the situation was broken beyond repair. I wonder if the same could be said about the ROR trade as well.

 

[Thorny]

24 minutes ago, dudacek said:

I think Botterill chose the return and accepts responsibility for that.

I just wonder if he thought the team needed to ship O’Reilly because:

• He didn’t fit into Botterill’s plan and vision for the Sabres moving forward
• He really liked the return and thought the Sabres were better off with 2 veteran middle sixers and 2 lottery pieces
• He thought ROR was a bad fit in the room, or needed to be moved for some “HR” reasons.
• ROR demanded a trade
• Pegula demanded a trade

Circumstances forced the Eichel trade; the situation was broken beyond repair. I wonder if the same could be said about the ROR trade as well.

 

That’s fair, but I don’t believe any of these options has bearing on whether the trade was a good one or not. That’s measured based on the results. Is there a “why” here that shifts the results to, “oh ok that was a better alternative”? I don’t think so.

It didn’t work out in the moment, which was presumably the aim as the time to win was then, and it didn’t work out in the “future” re: Botterill’s plan as he got fired and we started over 

the aim of the trade wasn’t to punt on the next 5 years and in turn allow the next GM, whoever that ended up being, to ice a 1C by way of a prospect who was a long shot to reach that ceiling in the first place 

the main thing is still, for me, the logic. Even the argument where it’s claimed the trade “worked out” isn’t the same as it being a good trade. Again, if literally the same logic can be applied to dealing Tage for a draft pick, right now, that luckily turns out even better in a few years, it’s exposed as faulty logic

- - -

regardless, and perhaps more importantly, the Sabres need to start salvaging these relationships rather than conceding to issues being “beyond repair” and creating “beyond repair” fallouts in the first place.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Thorny