Ghost of Dwight Drane

Hockey Heaven!!!

Fantastic!! And this was yeoman's work bumping the thread. Life goes on and wonders to be had.....

BINGO! There had to be a solid dozen regulars begging for this 3 years+. The whole point was to gut the core, start from scratch, and most importantly, get a new GM in here. Even in that thread back in early 2011, I wasn't clamoring for Ruff to go. As long as we had a new chef and new ingredients, Ruff would have been "new" to them. Instead, all 3 facets remained the same and the clamoring and disgust just grew to a point where they all had to go. Somehow Darcy is the one who will survive all this. Unbelievable. The roster was salvageable back then with enough of a turnover and gutting. We'd be ready to roll now going forward. Now the stagnation has given us another 3 years of losing culture, and the guys that were young then either haven't moved forward (Myers, Ennis, Stafford)...or pretty much outright regressed. It was such an easily avoidable situation.

Please read my posts on that page. I said exactly what would happen over the next 3 years by them not rebuilding then. The culture is STILL the same today, and they have half-heartedly, in slow motion started a rebuild. Now you are entrusting the SAME GM who it took 3 years to come to the realization of what I said 3 years ago....we wasted 3 offseasons of finding a true captain and leaders to show the kids how to play, and are 3 years behind the curve in the quantity of draft picks that could have been developing. How anyone in the world wants to tell me that I am "negative", have a "narrative", or whatever.....your GM and team just wasted 3 years and got paid $5 million to just start the plan I advocated 3 years ago. But "what has he done wrong?" There were others here who thought along the lines I did. We are supposed to get excited about a GM who is 3 years behind the curve of a message board and we are even more of a laughingstock today? JEESH!!!!

http://forums.sabrespace.com/topic/18550-2011-trade-deadline-thread/page__st__360#entry256669 Oh...and please look at the date of the thread.....will you give me the LAST 3 YEARS of my life back?

Colorado -160 Buffalo +140

Chz....I wasn't astute and admitted so to X. a few weeks ago. I had season tickets from 1994-2007. I supported the team through a lot of bad years. The way the entire situation unfolded that summer was enough for me to feel I was being yanked around and I gave them up. There were still 5 seasons of brisk sales and a demand to watch this team afterwards. I lost out if my goal was to have a viable outlet for selling seats while maintaining my option on playoffs and seniority. I figured it would have happened earlier. I was wrong. The bright side about this is that people are only committed to their seats 1 year at a time. I was wrong for 5 years. So in essence, you are way ahead of the game compared to me. I only point out the market conditions so that maybe Mr. Pegula, and Mr. Black have a sense at how much fans are willing to tolerate. I said when they walked in here and decided to keep status quo....don't take the fans for granted. Look at the TRUE dynamics of what is driving the market. I ate more tickets than I care to remember over the years. Under almost any normal circumstances...I am with you 100%. I love the team that represents my city, I will go through thick or thin, and I appreciate the fans that pledge their support. What we have seen the past 17 years however is one of the biggest outlying cases of 1 or 2 people being in charge of a non-championship team in the HISTORY of professional sports. I have a high tolerance level for enduring pain for things I love. I reached my breaking point. Many others seem to be as well now. There is nothing more I would like than to have full confidence in Mr. Pegula and the franchise to use their seeming unlimited resources and enthusiasm, to full efficiency.....or as close to it as possible. I love this city....I love it's people....I enjoy the game of hockey.....and when the light bulb finally goes on for him, I will be the first to forgive and throw my full support and positive energy behind this franchise. I hope you can relate to where I am coming from. Please don't mix up my history of cantankerous playfulness on this site for a lack of passion or desire to love this team again. And I owe you and other ticket holders thanks....because if you didn't support this team over the past 6 seasons, we might not have an owner in position to bring us to excellence once again.

I'm just telling D4rk to keep looking.....he will get his price most likely. I feel bad for you guys. You put out tons of money and want to be entertained and feel passion. I am not rubbing it in. I had however warned that eventually this would happen. I gave up my tickets years ago figuring it would be sooner rather than later. I also took tons of crap when I tried to explain that the market was buoyed by "artificial" demand of season ticket holders. That the actual demand of the community at whole was not there and could be seen by the ticket sales and promotions. Heck, even before the season I was questioning how in the hell they still had the season ticket numbers given the lack of single game sales. Sorry people are taking lumps. Bologna.....you are spending at 93% of the cap and this is the product. If you are doing 60 in a 45, and other cars are doing 63....you are still speeding and barely getting passed.

I think it's time for everyone to stop assuming Regier is going to be here, and go balls to the wall with the "Fire Darcy" chants, leave games early, don't show up, don't buy stuff, keep pounding GR phone lines, etc. This "tank and pray we get a couple elite players" plan is ridiculous. This team is freaking only $3 million under the cap as is, and can't do a dang thing. They incompetence is so much that we are left to hope for luck. Fans didn't have patience 30 years ago to tank for 3 years with a competent person managing. Do you really think this city will tolerate "this plan" for 3 years in the ADHD/Twitter/Immediate Gratification environment we live in now...with a proven failure in charge? Other than the home opener...you could have gotten seats in the arena on the open market for $12 or less. People have been lamenting they can't give their tickets away to family/friends/coworkers. Last night the 3rd period seating Doppler was blue, with scattered humans. This is home game Game #5 into their plan. What is Game #20, #60.....#120 going to look like? Either this team starts to put up some respectable play and at least passible results in a hurry, or the momentum behind this thing will be a true fan revolt. I've been praying for this for years....and it is MY only hope. I have to believe Mr. Pegula does not take pleasure in looking like a fool, whether he has ultimate patience and stubbornness or not. There comes a breaking point for anyone. I hope he is there. There is still tons of promise long term if he can get some real hockey men in here. Great...we have 279 scouts.....maybe one of them will find the next Steve Nebraska on skates in the middle of Chile. It's sad, but for me the biggest entertainment has been to see how they can make this trainwreck even worse. It would be nice to actually believe in leadership and my team again. It's been a long time coming..... To quote Mortal Combat..."Finish Him!"

Keep looking Saturday. My guess is at worst you can get in for $18. Lower level for $35. In every game except the opener, you could get in for $12. Club seats $29 and lower $24 for majority. If this gets disgustingly bad, I may pull off a Drane Campaign at the arena. I'd pay $20 a game in the clubs just for the train wreck.

Thanks boys....everyone gets to keep their patellar tendons........

Vancouver -140 Buffalo +120 I'm at $1430 and will be throwing 140 on Vancouver. Let's see if this team is just bad, or disgusting. We will find out over the next 5 games.

How the hell do you include all that in the same post? It's not an "advanced stat".....if I pay $49 for a filet...I want a filet. If I pay $0.99 for a double cheeseburger.....I have standards set. If there was no salary cap....then I would hope Mr. Gasman would be offering $20 million a year for every free agent. We live in the real world though. A world of genius #blueprint

OK...I have 3 conflicts... Rico7...I have you at $450. I think where you missed the extra $100 is when you bumped your Sabres bet on the Ottawa game from 200 to 300 after the line came out. Nobody....I have you at 1050. You were at 1500 and put 450 on the Isles. TomWebster.....I have you at 200. You were at 800 and put 300 on the Sabres twice and lost. Please double check and tell me if I am missing something......and to make it easier, everyone doublecheck their totals on the current toteboard and give your total as you bet each game. You don't have to subtract the bet until after the game. Just say, "At 1000, 260 on Ottawa"...or whatever the amount. It is easier to wait until after the game than to subtract the bet and add it back with any winnings. As we go along and I update the totals, I am going to use the total of the most recent toteboard as your official total unless you can point out a mistake in timely fashion. I can't go through 30 pages in January. Thanks!!! Standings after Game #7: wjag $1950 Rayzer32 $1500 GhostofDD $1430 TrueBluePhD $1400 Cereal $1400 nobody $1050 ClaudeVeret $900 wyldnwoody44 $1200 Eleven $1000 ChileanSeaBass $960 RCentered $850 Hank $400 LGR4GM $750 mustacheofgod $900 ThirtyEight $800 tomwebster $200 TM8-PL16 $600 TaroT $680 qwksndmonster $460 cwchze $700 MattiePie $710 BuffFansR_Crazy $340 Rico7 $450 SwampD $60 Assquatch $550 thesportsbuff $600 Eliminated: GlassPommerFan, skaught, sabresnipe, weave, deluca67

I don't want this to just sound pro-bills. The Bills were outright insulting a few years ago where the season ticket holder "gift" was a plastic coffee mug from Tim Horton's that cost 20x more to mail than to manufacture. Looks like they have learned.

Question for the season ticket holders....what types of freebies have the Sabres been giving out other than Sabresbucks? I ask, because the Bills have been going all-out this year in giving stuff to season ticket holders. They did a similar BillsBucks at the start of the season at 2.5% of cost...at least my seats. They sent out a Tim Horton's gift card. They sent out a random prize generator where you could get anything from autographed photos to a game suite. They sent out clear NFL totes that were stadium approved. Now they just sent out a free Bills blanket. I've never seen anything like this...every 3-4 weeks a new little goodie. I'm not sure if it is to make up for the discounted prices on some single games they have been doing, the sewage flume, or just because. Either way it is a nice little gesture even though nothing blows you out of the water....just 5, $10-$20 goodies showing up every month.

For anyone who loves to rail me for "negativity".....let the record show I was the ONLY person to wager on the Sabres tonight.....while close to a dirty dozen of you went against them. Haters be Hatin'......or whatever the heck it is..... I will take my imaginary $130 and make it rain on all you haters! :P

They were downright Giddy when Seth Jones went off the board and Ristolainen was still there. Who they really wanted was Drouin. If they could have found a way to get that pick from Tampa, that was their guy....little doubt in my mind.

See my Ristolainen post. Even if this team does get a high pick, it doesn't mean they will know what to do with it.

Did you watch the Blue and gold video of Darcy and Devine at the draft? It didn't matter!!! Ristolainen was THEIR guy...as Devine was RELIEVED when Nashville took Seth Jones. All this crap talk about tanking for picks. Like mentioned, the odds of having the #1 pick is 25%. Getting it 2 years in a row is 15-1.....or worse than the odds of an AVERAGE team to make the Stanley Cup this year. We are resorting to hail mary lottery tactics like the crackhead spending his last dollar on a Powerball ticket. The whole idea is a disgrace, and I am amazed how many people were willing to accept it going into the season.

You're in. A parlay of the original $1,000 against the Sabres would have landed $36,000 to this point.

No problem....in a way I know that by the end of the year, there is going to be some wife, somewhere, cursing my name for getting their husband back on the Pointspread Shuttle.....but I had a feeling things would be pretty nasty this season and a sideshow would work. I am very entrenched in the oddsmaking and handicapping world of horses, and in all honesty, I prefer contests that are "pick the winner" as opposed to a live bankroll, which I decided on here. I figured it wouldn't be fair to make people pick every game...and in fact it would be too much work to include other teams. Everyone seems to have a good time with things like this though, so I will keep rolling. Keep the ideas flowing for a secondary contest. I will really reward the winner of this one though.

I set the rules....I knew it would be hard to keep everyone going, so I will set up a secondary contest. At this point, I think I will keep the original going, and add a bunch of prizes to the jersey....start a secondary, make the prize a jersey, and make it so you can't blow your load so early. Ask and you shall receive... Islanders - 150 Buffalo +130 In a shocking turn of events, I shall wager an imaginary $100 on Buffalo.

That's the whole reason I started this thing.....I figured this would be total suckitude so we need at least a sideshow to keep things interesting. You just have to laugh at this point. The way things are going, Kassian scores the game winner Thursday and concusses Hodgson for 6 weeks.

You get a mercy bet with your $60 After October I will start some sort of secondary contest since some people are having a difficult time controlling "the itch".....