Weave

It's the kind of move that we should have been making the last 5 seasons. Rings all the Jack/Ralph bells. Bigger, tougher, veteran, winner. Staal is the kind of player we should have stocked the team with coming out of the Tank.

I'm inclinded to agree with the point PA is making. I think JBott was throttled by the Pegulas. My gut feeling was that he was an implementer of Pegula decisions and not a maker of his own decisions. We are leaving a trail of beaten and crushed GM's in the wake of this Pegula led team. I'm ready to believe that the bad decision making wasn't necessarily the GM choices.

The rest of the league may very well be in the same boat, but if the internal cap means we can't make the scope of changes that this team needs to make we're still a bottom half of the league team. We NEED to spend to the cap just to get this team right again. An internal cap is another handcuff on this team regardless of whether the rest of the league has an internal cap or not.

It didn't come out of my garden but we got a big paper bag full of a variety of hot peppers dirt cheap. Nothing too wild. Jalapenos are about the hottest thing in the bag. Majority of them appear to be hot Hungarian peppers. This evening I chopped the whole bag up into pepper rings and made them into pickles. Got a bunch of jars of pickled hot pepper rings cooling down on the counter now.

Tomato plants go feral quite readily. I've had them sprout up when I didn't clean out the garden of dropped veggies well enough and turned the whole mess over. I'd bet that what you originally planted was a hybrid of some sort and what came back was one of the parent plants that produced the hybrid you started with. Alot of those hybrids are pretty unstable and you don't get what you started with in a second generation plant.

Sam lacked NHL caliber center skill sets but does well along the wall and shooting the puck, and did from early on. Mitts skill sets are center ice skill sets, not wing skill sets. It's the opposite of Sam, really. I agree that winger is likely an easier position to play than center, but I also think Mitts doesn't have the needed skills to be proficient at it. Sam always did.

I don't think Mitts game would translate well at wing. He doesn't have tenacity to do the board work. He's not terribly shifty on his skates to find openings. He's not a sniper of any sort. And I don't see him doing any better with what he's got with half the ice closed off to him. He needs to figure out how to make those hands work at this level and use them to get the puck to the sides. IMO it is center or bust for that kid.

Had today off so I spent some time on the water. Took the kayak out this morning. Had a good morning. Caught a bunch of smallmouth bass in the 2-4lb range, a few crappies and perch. And got in some good exercise in the process.

Holy cow, chz. Get well.

A-freaking-men

We’ve been sacrificing for some future season for about a decade. The unknown is why you build a team for now, not for an unknown future.

I hate that I love this team so much. Another season in the abyss.

OSP strikes again.

YDIW You are supposed to jump onto this forum, full of excitement like a 4yr old at 5am on Christmas morning for your find, not read any posts to see if it is already being discussed, and start a new thread to have two places to discuss it. Right, GA?

Don’t like that trend.

Which center's game is best suited to playing with Skinner? And which center is best suited to shadow the other teams #1 line and add some grit? Those are the two I want.

I missed this. And I don't know that I have the time anyway.

I'm not calling him mindless. I'm sure he has his own ideas. But let's face it, the world is full of ambitious people that are willing to do what they are told now in the hopes that it gives them the opportunity to do what they want to do down the line. A slimmed down, automated organization is what the Pegula's asked of Botterill. That Adams chose to implement it doesn't assume that Adams believes it the best way to run the organization. It is equally likely that what he believes is he ca do it well enough to use it as a stepping stone to what he really believes in. He knows the room and is willing to work it to his own ends. Office politics 101.

The only difference between Botterill and Adams that we know anything about at all is, Adams was willing to follow the owners lead and Botterill felt strongly that their lead needed push back. The rest up until now appears to be Pegula decisions implemented by Adams moreso than Adams decisions.

This is the fundamental dichotomy that made the Tank a near certainty to require 7+ years to recover the damage. Everyone recognizes that you need to stream a supply of high level prospects to build the talent level back up. But you also need to fill the team with veterans that can capably play and create a positive developmental environment. The dichotomy is because both of those items require assets to obtain, and every asset you spend on prospects is a veteran who isn't on the team. You cannot have both. To his credit, Murray recognized this and went after Gionta, Moulson, Kane, Bogozian, ROR, etc. And even then, a GM that gets pilloried around here for trading futures for now still ended up filling out the team with nobodies. And he had no choice but to fill the team with nobodies. There were no more assets to acquire somebodies. This is how we end up with situations like Girgensons at 1C, Mittlestadt and Berglund at 2C, or Taylor Fedun or Justin Falk on the team at all. So, if we overcorrect and focus our assets solely on draft picks we likely have a team that was even worse than what it has been over the last 5 seasons, but lots of youth. And unfortunately they all would have been in worst case scenario situations for their development, too much reliance on them at too young an age and no veteran leadership. And if we move even more assets for vets instead then our prospect pool is even shallower than it is now, but maybe the development environment is better for the few that prospects that we do retain. This situation was a close to no win as it gets, tank and rebuild. Strategic and tactical.

Ugh. The Tank was a strategic decision. The rebuild was a succession of tactical decisions. But they are very much linked. Tactics require strategic guidance. The strategic decision in 1941 of a 2 front war determined the tactical decisions that followed. They were NOT separatable events. And neither are the Sabres tank and rebuild, for the same reason. The Tank years of '13-14 and '14-15 required the team to to make the strategic decision to decimate the roster at all levels. There was no way to ensure at least a top 2 pick in those years without decimating the roster. It was absolutely required to guarantee a last place finish. The depth of the roster destruction was such that only perfect tactical decisions and a modicum of luck would result in a successful rebuild. It was an unrealistic task even for the absolute best GM's. Given flawed, rookie GM's and the totality of the rebuild required, (another failed tactical decision) it was inevitable that the rebuild would fail. And it was linked DIRECTLY to the decision to tank. Let's not forget that Tank fanboi teams Pittsburgh and Chicago did NOT tear down their teams. They had a base of NHL caliber players to build from, not a collection of never was. And that is because those two teams didn't tank. They were bad teams, for sure, but they never sold off the organization so they had a foundation to plant elite talent on top of.

Thorny, we definitely disagree on Larsson’s level of play. I’d describe his play as effective in a specific role. He’s one dimensional and not excellent at it, merely good. I think the view of his play is skewed by the rarity of effective play on this roster over the last 8 seasons.

I'm really curious to hear Sabrespace vets takes on these two things. I wonder where the breaking point is?

Larsson, IMO, is somewhere south of Paul Gaustad, and somewhere north of Adam Mair in terms of overall effectiveness. In and of itself, losing Larsson shouldn't be a big deal. But he's one of two natural centers on the roster, and the LOG line seemed to be greater than the sum of its parts. And in that context he's going to be difficult to replace. If we had a reasonable center spine I wouldn't sweat this at all, but we don't.

I seem to recall one of the Sabre's beat reporters strongly suggesting it without actually using the term. Our beat reporters catch alot of ***** but I don't think any of them are liars. I'm not sure how one would go about proving it short of an audio recording.