dudacek

The two bolds are not the same. The second is correct. What I heard is Adams saying is that you can’t blame this team’s record on the goalies. He also said Ullmark has played well. Both statements are true. He blamed our team’s record on not competing hard enough to score, or to defend.

“Thanks Mike, that’s a good question.” ”Yes, I want to fire Ralph, but Terry and Kim don’t want to spend the money. You’d think with them paying Leino, and Ehrhoff and Hodgson and Skinner and Okposo not to play they’d be used to it, by now (shrugs).” ”What’s that? Yes, I was surprised, but I’ve since discovered the Fired Executives Fund was reduced with COVID, and I kinda overdid things last June. We are still paying out the Lafontaine and Russ Brandon cover-up deals, but the Housley, Botterill, Bylsma and Murray contracts all come off the books over the next two years. I think that if we can get fans back in the building to start next year, we can probably let Ralph go in mid-November.” ”Ted Nolan? No, that ***** isn’t getting a penny. Never has, never will.”

How fast can we get a goalie with quarantine rules? Faster than Ullmark’s healing process? Are there goalies available that actually make sense beyond a stopgap? Or did we already miss our window?

Seven RFAs and 8 UFAs. Of the others, I can’t really seeing them doing anything with Skinner except cross their fingers with a new coach, but Okposo enters buyout territory this summer and Miller and Risto will be a year away from UFA. And of course there are the Jack fears. There is a ton of potential for movement, although I suspect most of it will come in the summer. As far as the deadline, would expect a sell-off of UFAs (Montour, Staal, maybe a few depth guys). We may also see an attempt to add Adams version of “grit.” What they do with Hall is the most interesting question.

Great point and something people saying "why not today?" need to consider. It speaks to the long game.

I don't know why I post so much when you people do such a fine job of saying what I'm trying to say. I now know what Adams thinks. Let's see what he does.

Good point made on WGR that ties to Adams remark about balancing long- and short-term value. Maybe he knows who he wants to be his next coach and maybe that guy isn't available right now, but might become that way. (And maybe I'm just really curious about Rod Brind'Amour.)

This to me is the money quote: "As for the players, once you’re in a losing situation — and I would never have admitted this publicly when I played — many of them think in the back of their heads “I just want to get out of here” because ***** is not changing. And once that mentality seeps into a team setting, then you have a losing team. Guys don’t even have to talk about it. Even if they just think it. When you have two or three guys thinking like that, then pretty soon you have seven, eight, nine, 10 guys thinking like that, and you cannot win. That’s what I see here." We've seen multiple seasons in a row that when times get tough, the players check out, even when they are different players. We lost a number of games even when we played pretty well, we got COVID, and we checked out. The number of players we have who are pending free agents hasn't helped.

I think a GM's relationship with his coach is like a cup. Once it fills up, the coach gets fired. Ralph's cup hasn't quite started overflowing yet — remember for Adams, it's 21 games, not our 10 years — but it's at the brim. Julien had been coaching the Canadiens for Bergevin for years.

I don't think this quote ^^^ is going to age well. Nobody wants to hear this, but Adams has employed Krueger as his coach for exactly 21 games, and part of that time Krueger had COVID.

Agree on both points. I suspect Jack doesn't want it talked about.

I really think he's at the first real juncture of his GM career: how much rope do I give a coach who I like personally, who is running a team that does not appear to be well-coached. I'd say he's at the end of that rope.

That's what I heard too.

I actually thought he showed more leadership there than I expected. Kevyn Adams the hockey player would not have tolerated the way the Sabres are playing. Kevyn Adams the GM talks the same thing. I think he genuinely feels the same way about the compete as we do. I get the impression it actually embarrasses him. It remains to be seen if he can do anything about it. We play the Islanders twice this weekend. If the team looks like it did yesterday I would be surprised it Ralph is the coach Monday morning.

Around the players every day, asking them questions. Theme is: they know it hasn't been good enough. But that's talk, it has to turn into action.

Trades? "Never do something because you are emotional, but lets be honest, we gotta get better." "We need to be grittier. Period."

"All systems work, the key is everybody is buying in."

Denies shopping Jack, won't talk about his health.

Culture: The guys are good guys, they like each other, but they aren't driven enough. We need to be a tougher team to play against.

I will never, ever have a team that makes excuses that my confidence is down, or that we've had injuries.

We need to have a better identity as a group.

Blaming lack of competitiveness, first and foremost. Not hard enough on defence or at driving the net. Goaltending has been fine. Linus was at a high level. Haven't been good enough around them.

"Jeff's a pro. He works every day. Figure out a way to get out of this."

"Continuity happens through success." Sounds like he likes Ralph as a man, but he's not going to last if he doesn't turn it around. Is that how you guys read that?

"I'm angry. I'm been empowered by Terry and Km to fix this, and that's what I'm going to do."