nfreeman

TM certainly looked crestfallen when the Sabres didn't get McD, but again -- no one could possibly have counted on winning a 1-in-5 lottery, or for that matter a 1-in-4 lottery.

I refuse to believe that any sentient human decided to tank because they thought a 1-in-5 chance to get McD would pay off. It had to be because they thought Eichel would be worth it.

He wants it to work here. FFS, get him a goalie and a coach/teammates who can produce 5-on-5 offense, let him heal up and the monster we saw last year will return better than ever.

I’ll bet your technique was still razor sharp though.

Well, a cracked rib would explain the slowdown in his play, to some degree anyway.

@john wawrow -- I hope you've been keeping well. We'd sure appreciate your thoughts on whether RK is going to get canned and whether Eichel will be traded!

This has the cold ring of truth. I sure hope it is somehow not the case though.

Huh? The Sabres were 30-39 last year and are 6-13 this year, for a total RK record of 36-52.

I think it is a certainty that KA cannot fire RK, or vice-versa, and that either such firing would need to be approved by TP. I also think TP is likely on the phone to KA pretty frequently, and that the topic of terminating RK has to have come up. I also think the most likely outcome is that the Sabres are unable to pull out of this nosedive and RK is fired, but not KA.

Welcome!

Do you know when specifically? The guy who retweeted it made it sound like it just happened. I will also note that Eichel doesn't appear to use twitter much -- his most recent tweet was a week ago, in support of McCabe, and the one before that was over 4 months ago. Having said that, him scrubbing the Sabres from his twitter page -- if that is what happened -- is quite consistent with asking to be traded. Has any of the Sabres beat writers straight-out asked him whether he's asked to be traded?

I don't either, and I don't think TP does either. My concern, and I think TP's concern, is that the more coaches you fire, the more the franchise seems like a Mickey Mouse operation. However, if we go another week or 2 like this, that concern is likely to be obliterated by the urgent need to make a change. I really hope they find the right guys this time.

I don’t love the idea of firing another coach, and this time only 19 games into a very screwy season, but OTOH, this is the earliest a season has been over since the tank. It should be unacceptable.

Huh? When?

Hang in there @Indabuff. We are pulling for her.

But it's not a bigger treasure trove than the tank. They had a zillion high draft picks from the tank teardown. That also was a chance to "do it right." And it bought us 8 years and counting of the worst stretch in the franchise's history. As @Taro T has astutely noted many times, when you effect a total teardown, too many things have to go right, along a long road, for you to end up as a contender. It happens once in a great while, but the likelihood is too low. You want to trade Hall, Staal, Montour and Eakin at the deadline? I'm in. You want to trade Reino for presumably good value instead of committing to him for a long-term contract? I'm skeptical, but it depends on the price to keep him vs the trade offers, and I'm open to discussing it. Also very open to discussing a new coach and a senior hockey guy to work with/instead of KA. You want to pay someone to take KO and Skinner? I'm all ears, although no one should kid himself. It's not happening unless you want to part with multiple 1st-rounders. But trading Eichel would be folly. He's not as good as Crosby or McD, but he's nevertheless irreplaceable and he will be great again.

Serious question: has RK implemented a change in the system since last year that has turned Eichel from a legit MVP candidate to a shell of himself?

I get the frustration, but I think a teardown, like the tank, is much more likely to result in another generation in the dumpster than in a positive outcome. What’s needed is patient and prudent addition of a few key pieces, and, more importantly, for the right guys to be in place to make and execute the decisions.

So Bryson is ahead of Irwin, eh? Good call IMHO.

Good man, but I think it only counts if you eat the bat.

Alright Risto!!

OK, here's a question: last season, the Sabres finished, based on %ages, #30 on the PK and #20 on the PP. A number of observers, including me, felt that these results, especially the PK, indicated a coaching issue. This season, the Sabres are #21 on the PK and #1 on the PP with a bullet. So they have improved substantially on the PP and a decent amount on the PK. I think coaching should get some credit for this, although it's a small sample size and we can't get carried away here. IMHO, the team shows up and plays hard for RK, and the issues that have kept them in the dumpster this year are goaltending and low production from their top guys. It might be fair to attribute the top guys' underperformance to RK, but Eichel had his best season last year under RK, and Reino and VO are both having good seasons this year. Is it crazy to think that the top guys will start to revert to their career standards and that RK's 5-on-5 coaching will improve, just like the special teams have improved?

IMHO, the path forward is: - Do not trade Eichel - Improve the goaltending - Figure out by the end of this year whether better coaching is needed and if so hire someone like Boudreau - Improve the rest of the roster around Eichel, either via internal development or opportunistic pickups from around the league. E.g. Vinny Trochek was available last year for a pretty reasonable price and he would've been a much better addition at 2C than Staal has been. The bones of a good team are already here -- Eichel, Reino, VO, Dahlin, Risto, young talent at F and D, and maybe Ullmark as part of a goalie tandem. Eichel is by far the hardest piece to find. What they should NOT do is panic, trade him and start over.

This is reasonable, but I think they could’ve had both Hall and Fleury. Maybe Vegas retains some salary, maybe Zemgus doesn’t get overpaid, etc. There were multiple ways to get there.