What Sabres team down through history have you liked less??

[PASabreFan]

Well?

Edited February 9 by PASabreFan

[Porous Five Hole]

Am I sucker for responding? 

As a fan, I’m disappointed in the results. I do not dislike the team.  Actually, I like these guys. 
 

Tage is slumping, but was a human highlight reel the last 1.5 years. I haven’t been this excited over a forward on this team since…ever? I am a little young for Mogilny, but I have some memories.
 

 Cozens is a young man who leads by example. Tuch is exactly who I hoped he would be. Ras is a calm guy with a mean streak and plays the right way. JJP & Quinn are very likable.  Hard to dislike Okposo.  I root for Krebs. Skinner can be frustrating to watch, but dang he’s likable. He moans at the opponent, acts petulant, and then hosts Between 2 Stalls. 
 

So yea, the results aren't acceptable. And I don’t hate them for it. And I am not going to call anyone dumb (like you have in the past).  
 

I really think you need to reevaluate your relationship with this team. 
 

If I am feeding a troll post, I apologize. 

[Marvin]

I am not mad at the players.  I am starting to get a hate on for some the coaches and some of management.  That is tempered by me recognition that Buffalo has many of the problems that Winnipeg and other teams have plus a few of Pegula's making.

[bob_sauve28]

Dislike? What's to dislike? 

 

🤷‍♂️

[PASabreFan]

32 minutes ago, Porous Five Hole said:

Am I sucker for responding? 

As a fan, I’m disappointed in the results. I do not dislike the team.  Actually, I like these guys. 
 

Tage is slumping, but was a human highlight reel the last 1.5 years. I haven’t been this excited over a forward on this team since…ever? I am a little young for Mogilny, but I have some memories.
 

 Cozens is a young man who leads by example. Tuch is exactly who I hoped he would be. Ras is a calm guy with a mean streak and plays the right way. JJP & Quinn are very likable.  Hard to dislike Okposo.  I root for Krebs. Skinner can be frustrating to watch, but dang he’s likable. He moans at the opponent, acts petulant, and then hosts Between 2 Stalls. 
 

So yea, the results aren't acceptable. And I don’t hate them for it. And I am not going to call anyone dumb (like you have in the past).  
 

I really think you need to reevaluate your relationship with this team. 
 

If I am feeding a troll post, I apologize. 

The question wasn't about liking or disliking individual players/people. It was about the team.

I find the team to be unlikable. I don't have to like a Sabres team because I'm a fan. As an American I don't have to like a particular Congress or Administration.

God willing this team as we know it will be toast by next fall. Many will of course remain. Some of them that have contributed to a poor season will be the same player with different results, like Tage and Rasmus. Others will be the same young players starting to enter their prime, like Cozens and Peterka maybe.

In the interest of personally attacking me as a poster and fan, you totally whiffed on the question.

And Rasmus was dumb and far too often still is.

[bunomatic]

Don’t dislike the players they are what they are. Dislike roster construction or lack thereof. Really starting to dislike KA for his roster construction. Dislike the patience aspect of KAs build. Dislike the fact that KA doesn’t see a need for experience. Hate, absolutely hate the don’t block the youngsters bullspit. Its garbage for development. Hey I’ve got an idea, why don’t they learn how to earn it like every other team in sports ?

Edited February 6 by bunomatic

[inkman]

Suspect wording in title 

[Porous Five Hole]

14 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

The question wasn't about liking or disliking individual players/people. It was about the team.

I find the team to be unlikable. I don't have to like a Sabres team because I'm a fan. As an American I don't have to like a particular Congress or Administration.

God willing this team as we know it will be toast by next fall. Many will of course remain. Some of them that have contributed to a poor season will be the same player with different results, like Tage and Rasmus. Others will be the same young players starting to enter their prime, like Cozens and Peterka maybe.

In the interest of personally attacking me as a poster and fan, you totally whiffed on the question.

And Rasmus was dumb and far too often still is.

Perhaps if you actually made a post to explain what your title was about, I could have responded more on topic.
My post was not a personal attack on you. If you felt attacked because I pointed out that you name call or insult players, that’s a you problem. 

Me saying you should reevaluate your relationship to the team was well intended. If you’re not getting what you want or need from the relationship, then do something about it. If this post was you doing just that, then good on ya.  

[dudacek]

I like this team and the majority its players. It still gives me hope. Over my 50 years of fandom, I'd put it somewhere in the bloated middle of the pack.

I dislike the degree of hatred it gets on here and am sad that 13 years of Pegula has skewed people's perspectives to the point it has. 

But to answer the question in good faith, I disliked all these teams more:

• The 2021 Krueger team was a god-awful mix of uncaring mercenaries and unhappy-to-be-here vets that couldn't score to save its life, played mind-numbingly boring hockey and lost game after game after game. That team fully deserved the scorn this team gets.
• The 2018 and 19 Botterill/Housley teams were extraordinarily hard to love, absolutely bereft any kind of edge or esprit de corps, and loaded with has-beens, not-yets and never-weres. Eichel's considerable talent was perhaps its only redeeming quality.
• The Bylsma teams offered a bit more hope than the Housley teams, but god-damn were they dull.
• The tank teams were miserable affronts to the concept of NHL talent, leavened only by Ted Nolan's charm and attitude in the face of the mess around him.
• Perspective over time has elevated the last Lindy teams, but at the time it was very clear they were a team on the decline and any hope was false hope.
• The 02/03 team(s) kinda mirrored the last Lindy teams, in that you knew the good times were past and the road to their return was bleak. No more Peca, no Hasek, and only the me-first Miro Satan (maybe my most disliked "good" Sabre) for skill.
• Some may have fond memories of the last Muckel/first Nolan team in '95ish, but the pleasure of Ted's underdog schtick and the May/Ray/Barnaby fun didn't start to ignite until the following year. I remember that year as the year the promise of the Lafontaine/Mogilny years was snuffed and the talent stripped from the organization.
• '85-'86 was a nightmare, the first time in my experience the Sabres were actually bad, with my passage to adult hockey fandom slamming home with the realization that Scotty Bowman wasn't really a genius and his collection of 1st-rounders weren't actually going to be great players.
• And '86-'87 was absolutely the worst year. Instead of a rebound, we got a hamfisted collection of waiver-wire pickups and has-beens like Clark Gillies and Wilf Paiement and the worst start in franchise history as we plunged to all-time low in the standings. Perreault retiring 20 games in - giving up - was the final, crushing blow.

This season will either mark a growth chapter where adversity shaped the Adams Sabres, or the beginning of the end of his era. The team wins about as much as it loses. The coach is nice guy who may be in over his head and players seem like nice kids who want to do the right thing.

I'm disappointed in them. I don't dislike them at all.

Edited February 6 by dudacek

[LTS]

2013-2014... i can't even think anything else compares.

That was a team comprised of the bottom barrel JAGs with no hope of winning and put together only to secure top draft picks.  They scored 157 goals in 82 games.  That's not a good G/GP average.

Today's team might be disappointing but they do at least have talent.  But 2013 was awful... and I never want to think about it again.

[WhenWillItEnd66]

This team by far. They are built wrong, show little heart and effort and were supposed to be a playoff team. At least the others were not expected to do well, but this one is embarrassingly horrible to watch. Even the tank teams played harder!!! 

[Quint]

2012-2023. I lump them all together in the Pegula Era.

The teams in the mid-80s were pretty bad too but have nothing on this bunch that can't even get to the playoffs for over a decade.

[mjd1001]

Some of the late 1990's teams I wasn't a fan of.  Actually, I liked wathing Hasek, but the rest of the team was terrible to watch for me.  Plante, Audette, Holzinger, Audette, Dawe, Grosek...Galley, Wilson, Huddy on defense.  I had zero connection to that team. Watching them was praying for one or two of them to score and then just watching (enjoying I guess??) Hasek hold on.  They had some good years becuase of Hasek, but I did not really like the players on the Ted Nolan era teams.

Some people are mentioning teams from the 80's. I liked watching those teams. Maybe its because I was a real little kid and winning and losing didn't matter as much, but watching Housley play, Foligno, Andreychuk, Turgeon, even Lindy in his playing days, Mike Ramsey was one of my favoite players ever...Again, they may have had some bad years but I LIKED those teams.

Edited February 6 by mjd1001

[#freejame]

3 minutes ago, Quint said:

2012-2023. I lump them all together in the Pegula Era.

The teams in the mid-80s were pretty bad too but have nothing on this bunch that can't even get to the playoffs for over a decade.

This is my thinking as well. It’s all the same. These teams have been so devoid of character and tenacity. My default setting isn’t to simply like a person just because they wear a jersey of a team I support. I won’t rule out liking anyone in the future, but these teams have done nothing for me so why would I like the parts that make them up? 

[That Aud Smell]

57 minutes ago, dudacek said:

'85-'86 was a nightmare, the first time in my experience the Sabres were actually bad, with my passage to adult hockey fandom slamming home with the realization that Scotty Bowman wasn't really a genius and collection of 1st-rounders weren't actually going to be great players.

And '86-'87 was absolutely the worst year. Instead a rebound, we got a hamfisted collection of waiver-wire pickups and has-beens like Clark Gillies and Wilf Paiement and the worst start in franchise history as we plunged to all-time low in the standings. Perreault retiring 20 games in - giving up - was the final, crushing blow.

This is an impressive inventory, @dudacek - thanks for sharing it.

Some of the Sabre teams of my middle school and early high school years (so, running roughly from 83-87) are ones that I recall disliking. That especially goes for those days where Bowman had drafted a bunch of wunderkinds, but all I remember is the girls being in love with Paul Cyr and Sean McKenna, but the team itself seeming like less than the sums of their parts.

[Weave]

18 minutes ago, Quint said:

2012-2023. I lump them all together in the Pegula Era.

The teams in the mid-80s were pretty bad too but have nothing on this bunch that can't even get to the playoffs for over a decade.

I find it damned near impossible to separate any of the ‘12-23 teams.

I started finding myself liking some of the new core.  That has shifted to ambivalence, at best.

[OverPowerYou]

The 2012-2015 teams are kind of a blur. I dont remember very much from those teams. Must have been very forgettable.

Edited February 6 by OverPowerYou

[#freejame]

9 minutes ago, Weave said:

I find it damned near impossible to separate any of the ‘12-23 teams.

I started finding myself liking some of the new core.  That has shifted to ambivalence, at best.

Absolutely nothing meaningful has happened during that time. It makes sense it’s all indistinguishable. 

[sabremike]

I hate this team more than the 1993 Worst Team Money Can Buy Mets, a group so horrible and unlikable it killed my enthusiasm for baseball until Piazza came in 1998 (The 80's Mets were THE team growing up and I would go to at least 15 games a year with dad). An utterly unlikable group of crybabies who failed as hard as you could and were so upset at the Fire Donny chant they no longer salute fans after a win.

[inkman]

45 minutes ago, Weave said:

I find it damned near impossible to separate any of the ‘12-23 teams.

I started finding myself liking some of the new core.  That has shifted to ambivalence, at best.

I don’t think I’ve like any Sabre team since Mike Peca was the captain.  I’m drawn to players like him and it’s been 20 years.  I want players I respect and have the respect of the league.  Our current group of figure skaters gets laughed at on the reg during games and to their faces.  Peca would have knocked a player out for 3 weeks if someone did that to his team. 

[Weave]

16 minutes ago, inkman said:

I don’t think I’ve like any Sabre team since Mike Peca was the captain.  I’m drawn to players like him and it’s been 20 years.  I want players I respect and have the respect of the league.  Our current group of figure skaters gets laughed at on the reg during games and to their faces.  Peca would have knocked a player out for 3 weeks if someone did that to his team. 

I had hopes for Cozens to be this kind of player.  Twas not to be.  Not in this current environment anyway.

[K-9]

Don’t know that I’ve ever really hated an entire single team, but there are individual players I’ve loathed throughout the years, that’s for sure. Meszaros and Bogo are up there, but Taylor Hall is the all time most hateable player.

Edited February 7 by K-9

[HumanSlinky39]

I don't dislike this team. I am wildly disappointed with the results thus far and think that lays more at the feet of the coach and gm than the team itself.

[Mango]

Some of the early Pegula years were uninspiring. I thought we might be in for a tough sled once Terry said something like "nobody has a monopoly on hockey IQ" when asked about secret meetings between him and Darcy behind Ted Blacks back. Like WTF is a Team President for if you are going to flip them off like that. 

Then there was the company wide presentation of "Maintain Family Lifestyle". Like people took screen shots on their phones. This was a slide that Kim Pegula presented to the Sabres org. Insane. 

We hired a soccer executive to coach during that time like he was some sort of John Wooden. Then we cut the scouting department. 

So what does that span? 8 years? That is my least favorite. 

This iteration of the org is the one I am by far the most disappointed in. I thought that even a broken clock is right twice a day (see the Bills), and maybe we were on the up and up. But we aren't. We aren't. It came crashing down this season when I realized we have a GM that 31 other owners in the NHL would not have hired to do the job, and the biggest thing in holding this team back is roster construction and leadership in the FO/org. 

Edited February 6 by Mango

[bunomatic]

3 hours ago, bunomatic said:

Don’t dislike the players they are what they are. Dislike roster construction or lack thereof. Really starting to dislike KA for his roster construction. Dislike the patience aspect of KAs build. Dislike the fact that KA doesn’t see a need for experience. Hate, absolutely hate the don’t block the youngsters bullspit. Its garbage for development. Hey I’ve got an idea, why don’t they learn how to earn it like every other team in sports ?

I misunderstood the question to a degree and my rant kind of went off the rails. Sorry P.A., but I won’t go back on what I said.😉Its how I feel. As to teams that I dislike the most it is recent therefore easier to remember but it would have to be Kruegers team. I was embarassed for the org. That they’d even go there  on the hire and he made it very difficult on the fans and players alike.