Skibum

Agreed. The Pegulas more or less hit the lottery with McBeane on the Bills' side of things, but their Sabres moves have not worked out, and they don't have the bandwidth to do anything about it. I know Terry wants better for the franchise and is willing to spend the money, but nothing has worked so far. Time to give someone else a shot.

The Sabres have no choice but to be sellers at the deadline. If they choose not to sell, they probably don't make any trades at all. But if they do choose to sell, maybe we see a fire sale.

Ehlers dodged a bullet for sure.

I just don't think the players are good enough, and I think that's been it for most of the way. You could have a whole separate poll on a list of reasons why they aren't good enough, and all of those reasons would be true. It's just crazy that it has gone on so consistently for so long. Even the sun shines on a dog's bum once in a while.

Id' like to see a trade, but I don't want Adams to be the guy who does it.

Giving Dahlin the C kind of reminds me of when Darcy went all in to build the team around Thomas Vanek. Both players are loaded with skill, but neither is the bona fide badass that can carry a hockey team to greatness on their shoulders.

When you say "scorers"...

Savoie will now proceed to win multiple Cups with the Oil.

Well, he has a few seasons with odd-numbered PIM totals, which means he must fight once in a while, right? You can't have odd-numbered PIM without the 5s.

I don't buy the weather argument - Buffalo is considerably warmer, with much longer winter days than a lot of places where pro hockey players come from. You refer to it as 'hockey Siberia'. Vladimir Tarasenko is literally from Siberia.

Ristolainen, Mittlestadt, and Ullmark fit the pattern best. Sabres draft picks who could have been stars, but instead were victims of the post-tank washout.

Could Mitts be next in line for an ex-Sabre Stanley Cup?

Still not ahead of Hasek and not in my top 5, but he can certainly get there someday.

Agreed - It's a very different league from when Lindy last had success in Buffalo, and a lot of his tactics, along with the types of players that could execute on them, are not part of the game anymore. That said, Lindy has clearly found success in the 'new' NHL as well. I just come back to 'these Sabres need a coach who's been around the block a few times and can get in their faces', and Lindy is definitely that.

Taking his Sabres history out of the conversation, he's as good as any other established NHL coach - call him a retread if you want, but what the heck. It's fine. It's not a great team anyway, so why not give Lindy Ruff a shot? Would Peter Laviolette or John Tortorella really yield better odds of Stanley Cup glory? And if there is some rising young genius out there in the coaching world that they could have hired instead, I don't even know who that would be. If the Sabres don't improve next year, it will be hard to blame Lindy. Let it ride, I say.