Sabres have elected arbitration with Byram

[Thorny]

16 hours ago, PromoTheRobot said:

You keep changing the topic. First it was "he's not addressing goaltending now." Now it's "he didn't the past 5 years" which is also not true.

He did commit to UPL but he also traded for Devon Levi. He's drafted goalies every year. (Leinonen, Ratzlaff, Leenders, Meloche, Prokhorov) So to say Adams is doing nothing is demonstrably false. You may not like it or agree with what he's doing but that's a different argument.

And this year in particular, the Sabres are beefing up their defense which should help the goaltending out considerably. 

Over and over people talk about addressing goaltending in the abstract. Gotta get that magical guy who'll be awesome! Who that is is rarely identified or is a player who's team would never trade away. (Even an offer they can't refuse, which no one ever articulates what that is.)

 

Adams has provided poor goaltending relative to the rest of the league. That’s it: that’s the equation 

No one has to be a professional online to prove Adams wrong. No one has to be as good of a hockey player as Casey Mittelstadt to evaluate him relative to his peers. Adams has demonstrably addressed and assembled the position over the course of half a decade in worse fashion than the vast majority of other teams 

that’s what actually happened: regardless of how hard you describe it to be, or how much magic you think needs to be worked into it

Edited 1 hour ago by Thorny

[Taro T]

3 hours ago, Weave said:

Revisionist history.  We didn’t let Ullmark walk.  Ullmark decided he needed a change of scenery.

Yes, and no.

By bridging him and Reinhart (ostensibly because ownership was worried about cashflow in the heart of the pandemic) the Sabres created the situation where they both decided they needed a change of scenery (and Montour did and McCabe did and ...).  BUT had those 2 been given real contracts at the time, really doubt that they and Eichel all want out that next year.  

Totally get WHY ownership would be hesitant to make the LT offer at that time.  Their wealth was tied up in non-liquid assets.  But had they done so, well rebuild #2 might've actually worked.  Botterill's love of 3rd liners for 3rd rounders wouldn't really have done much, but a team built around Eichel, Reinhart, Dahlin, and Ullmark would have a great core to be building around.

[Thorny]

12 hours ago, Dr. Who said:

Yep, but ours are on the Titanic.

Sabres also don’t have the luxury of pretending they can address their roster with the urgency the teams who haven’t missed the playoffs for 14 years show. Their results are a statistically documented, historical outlier. Their approach to fix it has to be relative. 

4 hours ago, That Aud Smell said:

Lol, Harrington relying on @PromoTheRobot for content.

Either that or Promo is Harrington’s screen name here. That seems unlikely, though. Harrington’s a hack, but be doesn’t generally carry water for the Sabres FO.

He also thinks “ppg forward” means “power play guy forward” lmao

edit: Harrington, that is 

Edited 1 hour ago by Thorny

[Thorny]

3 hours ago, Mr. MVP said:

We could’ve traded him, right?  

Could have traded him, signed him way earlier (from Ullmark’s own account he was negotiating with the team in good faith for a long time before changing his mind), convinced him to stay, or, failing all of that, do the bare minimum as a GM and understand where your player’s head is at if he truly wasn’t interested in staying, and then not back yourself into a corner by leaving yourself literally no other options and having no backup plan to Ullmark if that didn’t work out.

But this is Adams’ documented MO: he doesn’t have a pulse on his players. He blamed them coming into camp “too overconfident” 2 seasons ago and last year he blamed them coming in “out of shape”. He’s always surprised by where his roster is at because, professionally, he’s a buffoon 

“Given the circumstances.”’

Yes, Adams let the Ullmark situation slowly slip away through inaction, found himself in a corner, and did the “best he could”. How many times do we wanna see it eh