Don Dokken

Glad Dan remembered to say “scores” on that one

It would be cool if I won the lottery tonight, too! But hey, we’re due for a good player to come out of nowhere the way other teams seem to have happen with some frequency. Why not

Ullmark deserves 2 points for this effort. C’mon guys

Re: goaltending, this quote from Ralph was news to me. “At the moment” doing some heavy lifting, a little like saying “I’d like to introduce you to my current wife”

Ha, much better than mine. Thank you.

Still from the last minute of the Embedded video. Some of it is too blurred for me to make out, so here’s my Mad Libs version: “A Buffalo Sabre is an athlete that is (something) on and off the ice, driven to grow and (something) in whatever challenges and adversity are presented. Through grit and mental toughness, a Buffalo Sabre will be unselfish, resilient and (something), with the goal of winning a Stanley Cup Championship.”

There's a lot of talk about emulating the Bills' model with Adams and Krueger, but the Bills model is more than just Beane and McDermott. After Beane was hired, they brought in a slew of player personnel staff and assistant GM types -- Brian Gaine, Joe Schoen, Lake Dawson, Malik Boyd, etc., all of whom were highly thought of around the league. I remember marveling at what an improvement it seemed to be from the days where they had Tom Modrak, John Guy, and seemingly nobody else. Ever since they invested in beefing up the front office staff, they draft as well as anyone in the league. I don't think that's a coincidence. I thought the Sabres front office was understaffed before this morning, and now it's even worse. This team badly needs to bring in competent people at the management level to help Adams. But when Terry talks about being "efficient", that feels like a signal that this kind of staffing will not be coming. It's troubling.

Terry's praise of him as "loyal" was telling

Nice of Krueger to wish Botterill well...was conspicuously absent from Terry and Kim's statement at the top of the press conference, unless I missed something

Terry "doesn't believe in" a President of Hockey Ops, wants a flat organization "where we can all communicate...without any walls and barriers between us"

In his opening statement, Kevyn says he wants to learn from Ralph and his staff. What a leader!!

https://wgr550.radio.com/media/audio-channel/02-14-sabres-vice-president-of-business-administration-kevyn-adams Adams on WGR back in February. Not exactly any clues in there about how he’d run a team — but, frankly, as someone who thought Botterill came across as an idiot in every interview he ever did, I can already tell I’ll find Adams refreshing

Well, wouldn’t have been my move. Must be a primary consideration for Terry and Kim to fix their reputation in the league for being too quick to fire people. And Botts seems to be respected by people around the league, for whatever reason. If I squint I guess I can live with it as a long-term strategy play. And I guess I’ll have to live with it because, hell, what choice do I have? I couldn’t quit these jerks no matter how hard I tried

"Kim Pegula has taken on the role of president for all five of PSE’s teams and with an inner circle that has gotten smaller and less experienced over the past two years." I find this chilling. No person could be president of five large entities and serve any of them well.

Sadly, this is probably right.

Public opinion of them is gonna matter a lot when they come looking for taxpayer money for a new Bills stadium in a few years. Why they would incur this totally self-inflicted wound over pocket change (for them) is beyond me. There is simply mounting evidence these people are morons.

Hey, at least that guy in the other thread who thought fans should be ejected for booing must be happy!

Glad I stayed up for that memorably bad goaltending display

Well, Jason is a genius now

Leafs blueline gets even weaker

Vogl thinks Sheary

God this would be such a bad loss. Got the help we needed tonight too. Blah

Well I guess we should just keep two guys in the net from now on

Looked like Dahlin, at least, raised his arms as if to say “WTF”. I don’t even know what to say anymore

The czar/president of hockey ops idea seems like the right first move to me. Firing JB in the near future and installing, say, Randy Sexton as interim GM while you search for someone new does nothing to change the perception that TP is too quick to fire people, and probably limits the pool of experienced GM candidates who are willing to come here. With a good president of hockey ops, you start to change that perception. Future GM/coach candidates may not trust TP at first, but hopefully they'd trust the czar, who has established relationships in the league. I hope TP would be willing to make such a move. Maybe he would be wary because of the way things went with LaFontaine. Maybe he would think it unnecessary because of the success the Bills are having with a similar organizational structure. Based on the way other teams around the league fill positions like this, we'd probably be looking at someone with some history with the organization. I remember how excited I was the day we hired LaFontaine and would probably feel a similar burst of energy (and, dare I say it, hope) if something similar happened again. That would be nice.