Mango

Terry Pegula has really cucked this entire fan base. There’s no way around standing behind Adams after he disparaged the city and the franchise. I can never look at my wife…errr my hockey team the same again.

My biggest kick back to that would be the Cozens and Power contracts. Both are looking really bad. Sure, FO constraints by the owner. But now we have to go down the path that Terry also forced both those values. And once you go down that road I think you then have to go down the path that no actual quality GM would stay in that role very long if at all (see Botts). And now we’re right back at GMKA being really bad.

I think Terry finding success in the Bills has emboldened him to a certain extent.

I think that issue is that our isn’t talented enough. And when talent isn’t enough you lean into effort. Unfortunately our effort guys and our talent guys don’t have a ton of overlap. Which is part of the reason the talent is talented enough. and around and around we gooooo……

This is almost offensive vague and ambiguous. Draft position doesn’t equal good. It means they have a better chance of being good. Sometimes great fails without the proper supporting cast.

I find Lindy so low on the list of things that are wrong with the team, I don't know why we bother discussing it. The patient is bleeding out from multiple gunshot wounds and we have people talking about the importance of the general public washing their hands after using the bathroom. Yes wash your hands. It is good for everybody, but in the post industrialized almost nobody will ever die from it. But also....this dude is over here dying over here, so what are we wasting our time on?

Adams should have been shown the door with 24 hours of that presser. 100% yes. That presser is the breaking point for this regime without a doubt. Many fans took that presser as a man admitting he can't do his job, but it is not his fault, its the fault of their (home)town. A good GM would need a quality body of work and work to absorb his comments about nobody wanting to come to their city. Which Adams has neither. Fans reacted aggressively. Here we go round and round again. Time to reset, and you can't do it with the guys who have been shirt on by management and fans, and the fans don't want to get behind anybody involved in an era that shirt on the place they live and/or are from.

This is the biggest (only?) reason I was pro the Lindy Ruff hire. If Ruff gets fired and/or Adams claims this is a coaching issue I hope that the next time he’s in front of a mic he gets roasted about his lies about a “thorough and extensive coaching search”. If it isn’t his roster it’s his choice of coach…twice…no GM in any major sport in the US gets to botch two coaching hires in a row.

The FO lost the fans, the fans lost the team, the locker room lost the fans. There’s no coach to win that back because the fatal flaw is roster construction. Scotty Bowman wouldn’t get this roster to playoffs. It’s not a team, it’s a collection of players.

Is he meeting the team with or without a Lindy? Adams? Forton? I little bit worried he may be trying to go on a fact finding mission and asking if the players like Lindy, Appert, etc. I see a reason for a Lindy to be in the room but certainly not Adams or Forton. I’m still baffled at the fact that Adams is employed.

Pegula cannot fire Lindy 30 games into year one of a disastrous Adams tenure. This is already one of the least respected franchises in American sport. You can’t do that to a long time respected hockey man when your entire org has been the butt of every NHL joke for the better part of a decade. But I wouldn’t be shocked if he leans in hard to his core employees and Seth Alpert gets named HC. Firing Lindy Ruff a few months in while promoting the brother in law of his Oil and Gas partner would be an all time low for Buffalo sports.

A Corona commercial came on during the Bills/Lions game. Lots of pine trees. My GF goes “is that a Sabres commercial”. My GF doesn’t really like hockey at all. Doesn’t follow it. Doesn’t sit and watch any games with me. That’s the state of the org.

I guess some of it depends on the terms. I assume that he'll get something closer to Power than he does to Mule. Which I don't like even if it is just Dahls, Power, Bo without Mule. Still too much spent on a core that doesn't play much defense.

I think Byram and Power are good but they need to be on a better balanced blue line. Their defensive flaws are magnified because everybody else sucks at it too and the trio of Dahls, Power, and Bo are supposed to be "the guys". But as piece on a better defensive unit they'd probably be awesome.

I actually strongly disagree here. We have the most expensive blue line in the league and we suck at defense. This team absolutely cannot extend Byram without moving on from one of Power, Mule, and/or Dahlin. It would be an incredible over investment with an upside down return. Just swapping costs/players with Mule and Byram could make this a bit more palatable, but it is still an upside down investment. I think the best return is likely trading Byram for a better return than Mitts or keeping Byram and trying to get a hall for Power. Otherwise trading for Byram with the plan of keeping the entire defense was and is terrible.

You are just making my argument for me. There is no reason to keep a guy in house who never should have been hired in the first place. Anybody else could do his prior job managing junior hockey. Keeping around Adams stank is bad for business. It is unfortunate that Pegula put him in a position to fail, but you can't go from CEO to secretary in the same business. It isn't healthy for anybody. Not the owner, not the new CEO, not the janitors, or account managers, or engineers, or lawyers. You can't unscramble an egg.

There is no good reason to keep a terrible GM in house for any reason. Especially one the owner has a liking for.

So few draft picks end up really doing anything in the NHL no matter where they are picked in the draft. I think we have drafted "well enough". It has been development and roster construction that has held us back.

No he shouldn't. Adams needs to be removed from the org. The same goes for the every one of the USA Hockey dev guys in the building. Anything short of that will just be more of the same.

Could you imagine these snowcones under Torts. They’d go from not saluting fans to refusing to get out of their cars in the parking lots.

Right all that can be and is true. But I also don’t think there are more than 2 or 3 coaches in the league that get this team as currently constructed into the playoffs. That list gets smaller when you think of who’s available, who would take the job, and who Terry would hire. For the record I don’t think this was the case in all the draught era rosters. Right now we are a lot of pieces that aren’t exactly a cohesive NHL team. And I don’t mean that as an in “lets do this one for the Gipper” sense. I mean it as in they just don’t have a roster full of complementary skill sets, and developing players don’t have the right players to help them develop properly. I think we have a slightly above average HC managing a below average roster (as a whole)

At worst Lindy is an average NHL coach. If you give him the 9th best roster in the league, you'll make the playoffs and probably win a series, maybe 2. If you give him the 20th ranked roster in the league, you'll be an average NHL team who sometimes makes the playoffs and sometimes misses. What we are seeing now is all the deficiencies in roster building once you get one real life NHL adult in the building. Lindy isn't a world beater, but right now he is a giant magnifying glass on the rest of the org. He has flipped on the lights and the roaches are scurrying.

At the risk of being pedantic I don't think this is the case. I think Pegula, Forton, and Adams are for the most part in lock step. This was all of their plans. The big reason I was pro Lindy being hired is because he might be the only guy with enough trust from Terry to move the franchise forward. I know it is a pipe dream, but it would be great if this offseason let Lindy bring in his own GM. Somebody he has a prior working relationship with, like Dan MacKinnon from NJD. Lindy sits behind the bench for 1, maybe two years and he brings in an old assistant like Ryan McGill to join. Lindy moves to some sort of performative "Senior Advisor" role and the team just pushes forward fairly seamlessly. What cannot happen is Terry hires a new guy, then they both hire a different new guy, both new guys roll up to Terry independently. To your overall point, I think that if Terry doesn't go down a similar path to what I laid out with Lindy, I don't think there is any hope.

I am actually shocked that Adams has not yet been shown the door. That continues to be such an embarrassing presser that the fans at home, nor in the stadium are letting go. Adams has thrown gasoline on the a fire that was maybe the worst in Buffalo sports history. I don't know how Terry doesn't see this as an immediate need for action. It is hard for me not think that Terry is doing anything other than going full "Major League". I don't see how anybody paying attention to the Sabres are not terrified of what the Bills could become in a post McBeane/Allen era.