Jsixspd

The Sabres had almost as many shots on goal in the 1st period (16) as they did the remainder of the game(17). And only 7 in the critical 3rd period! Clearly a strategy change in those 2nd and 3rd periods. Bylsma had them circling the wagons for both the 2nd and 3rd period and playing not to lose, instead of playing to win. Ted Nolan and the Tank teams had a better W-L record against Boston than does Bylsma with the rebuild teams. Bylsma needs to post wins against one of the Sabres biggest and most hated rivals or else he needs to be shown the door. Period.

Brandon will usually oil his way onto the stage, though, when it's a big hire or acquisition, so he can grab some credit whether its due him or not. He keeps his head down when the news is bad and lets others take the heat. Brandon should have been out there - Ryan's hire had his fingerprints all over it. If the Pegulas were on the ball, they'd have told him or Whaley or both to get out there. This situation was handled in a deplorably unprofessional and classless manner. Shame on the Pegulas and shame on Brandon.

The COACH should still be the one making the ultimate decision and relaying said decision to the team. Hey, if Whaley thought it a good idea to bench Taylor (hopefully to save him to trade) he should have at least discussed it with Lynn and asked for his opinion? And requested, behind close doors, that Lynn endorse that plan. Rather than making the HC look foolish by having roster decisions made without his input. It just appears very unseemly to handle it this way. And we're ASSUMING it was Whaley who made the decision - for all we know it could have been Russ Dumbdon or Kim Pegula and Whaley was told to sit Taylor. This team is a totally mismanaged disaster.

Rex, OTOH, is just plain fired. BTW, video of Rex departing in his giant Bills-wrapped truck. If it's a wrap vs custom paint, it would only cost about $150 and a couple hours labor to have the installer remove. http://www.thescore.com/news/1193913

Wow, I was just thrilled at the outcome last night. I knew they would win - as I didn't have tickets to watch. My son in law checked - the cheapest he could find were $150 tickets (usually $40-50) - probably because of the big celebration of the 97 Wings team last night. :( At least Sabres spoiled the celebration I'm so accustomed to Buffalo players shooting right into the goalie's stomach or chest - like that would do something. Nice to see actual shooting SKILL in action. Awesome win - Kane was the player we all hoped he'd be last night - if only we could find a way to make it last!!!

hahaha - yeah, hilarious that Tops didn't pull the commercials!!! I laughed when I saw those two idiots! Major fail right there! You mean you didn't get a Lexus for Christmas? I think most of us did. ;)

Beautiful goal by Kane. If only that Kane showed up every game.

Couple nice turnovers for Gorges. :rolleyes: Fortunately, no harm no foul.

How does Brandon continue to survive these blunders? The Ryan Hire is mostly on him! If they do retain him, why don't they keep him out of football operations completely and force him to work on purely marketing stuff like "Aaron Maybin Bobble-Head Day" or similar; he should have ZERO voice in any player or coaching decisions!

Also, in Murray's defense, DD was not his first choice- he was actively courting Babcock, and that deal slipped away; Unlikely there was anything that Murray could have possibly done to change Babcock's mind. OTOH, Murray hasn't seemed very aggressive of late, and obviously continues to back DD as HC. I fear he's slipped into Big Contract Complacency; hard to believe there were no ramifications to that horrendous and embarrassing loss to a below average Islanders team before Christmas. That was so ugly, and the season has been so bad to that point, it seems like Bylsma should have lost his job then and there. And....now Bylsma has more injury excuses with ROR out indefinitely - trouble with that excuse was the team didn't seem all that much better (if at all) with Eichel, Kane, ROR, et al back IN the roster from the DL. However, the excuse clearly works in Murray's office.

Oh man, that's terrible. That can be nasty! No worries about hockey - I hope ROR fully recovers. Hockey comes second.

It's really hard to judge offensive performance in shootouts - Lehner is such an absolute sieve/pylon in net that just about every shot scores - shootouts end pretty fast when the goalie is next to useless at them. I noticed he seems to be about as good (or bad) on breakaways as he is at shootouts. He got scorched last night on a breakaway too.

Gorges is having statistically the worst season of his entire 13 season NHL career if it continues. His productivity is 556 minutes, 3x to 4x worse than his previous 2 seasons with the Sabres. His PIM rate is a tie for his worst year ever, last season. He's got ONE point after 29 games!!! His performance has been worse since he came to Buffalo - and this is the worst of the worst so far. Perhaps the way he's being coached and used in the game is to blame? He's never been strong with defensive assists, but this is a Leino-esque performance.

It's easy to miss with all the losses, but the Sabres are on FIRE!!! They're now 7th in the Atlantic, up from 8th, and have jumped from 28th in the league to 25th in the league. woo-hoo!

But the issue is - we have only 2 or 3 shot attempts IN the shootout before the other team wins. When the first 2 or 3 shots go in the goal like it's literally an empty net, just about any team will lose in the first round every time.

Lehner was double-face palm worthy in that shootout. He's got a decent SVG%, but is horrifyingly bad in shootouts, (and doesn't seem good at defending breakaways either). He wasn't that great at shootouts before he came to Buffalo and has gotten considerably worse since arrival. Whether one likes shoot outs or not, they're a fact of life, and a good goalie has to be good AT them too - not just regulation and OT. At this point, I would just like to see him stop a single solitary SHOT in a shootout - it's that bad! :doh:

One of the best Eichel photos I've seen. Thank you! Nowhere near as good as Mr O'Rally's performance on ice was, though. That was truly magnificent!! :)

C'mon, let's win this game!! I hate the damn Islanders. The Islanders and that moron Mike Milbury are inseparably, indelibly linked in my mind.

Ok, that was officially awesome! I just loved that 2nd period One Man O'Reilly Rally! Should we call it an O'Rally? Holy cow, he was like a one man team on that first Buffalo goal - there was just no stopping him. I have no idea what lit such a fire under Ryan's butt, but it was awesome to see - and the fire spread to the rest of the team!

Tyrod Taylor with 208 net yards passing in a do or die game for Buffalo. Steeler's Le'Veon Bell with 236 yards rushing. And the allegedly mobile Taylor sacked 5 times, and statue like Big Ben not sacked a single time. Unbelievable!!! These stats show significant deficiencies in both the offensive and defensive lines. This team has definitely gone backwards from the Marrone Era, and the defense is awful compared to where Jim Schwartz had it. They cannot defend the run at all. Doubling down on Ryans by bringing in Ryan's corpulent wildman from Borneo-looking brother really helped that defense, didn't it? LOL Y'know, I used to think Ryan Fitzpatrick was Captain Checkdown - but OMG - Tyrod Taylor is 30th in the league in passing yards per game with a squalid 194 yards, even worse than Fitzpatrick. And 27th in yards per attempt. Yeah, Russ Brandon & Co. found Quarterback GOLD just sitting on that Ravens' bench, ripe for the picking, didn't they? Why do they think that strategy's gonna work? Brohm, Fitzpatrick, and now Tie-Rod for starting QBs? :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: I'm almost glad I don't live in the Buffalo Market any more - I can only receive 2 or 3 Bills games per season now; nothing about this team that would make me purchase the NFL pack.

LOL - well, I do say that with a degree of sarcasm. :lol: He is definitely expensive though - $3 million a year, which makes his salary higher than average (at least the known salaries). https://www.capfriendly.com/coaches

Well, that was a horrendous game. Brutally bad - not ONE SINGLE even strength goal scored by the Sabres. 4 goals against by one of the WORST scoring teams in the NHL, and Ovechkin in a scoring slump to boot - only 1 pt in the previous 5 games and no goals scored. I was gonna add the consolation prize from this awful loss was that at least we'd crawled up to 7th in the Atlantic ahead of the Maple Queefs. But apparently that was only because they'd played fewer games than us. Now like the Titanic, we're sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic again! :(

Even a blind monkey can find a nut, now and then. Even when Regier did right, it was for the wrong reasons. As I recall, one of his big motives in adding Risto to the team was Regier's desire to add a "Finn" to play with Leino. Thank goodness he added him - imagine how bad this team would be right now without him? Can't get much worse really - we're currently 28 out of 30 teams in the overall league standings. This is a gutter team that's somewhat watchable, as opposed to the outright trash of the previous 3 seasons. But it's still a gutter team. 3rd year of GMTM at the helm, along with the "franchise big dollar coach" I would expect quite a bit better than what we're seeing.

Ok, that was wonderful! Yeah, and it was ugly to see the Sabres hemorrhage a 2 goal lead to end up behind near the end of the 3rd. But the empty net team work at the end of the 3rd was the best I'd seen in a while from this team; keeping possession and control of the puck. And then Risto's awesome PP goal in OT. 2 points against one of the top ranked teams in the NHL - how could that be ugly? And I went from loving Kane (goal) to hating Kane (dumb penalty that let the Oilers take the lead on the PP) to loving him for his last second goal that tied the game and led to overtime. That's the story of sports fandom in Buffalo - love, hate, love. And the cycle will continue.

Yup - one of the first things they did after taking over was give a big promotion to Russ Brandon; the snake oil salesman had clearly weaseled his way into the Pegulas hearts and minds - I figured we were in for years and years of more of the same with the Ralph Whisperer now having the ear of the Pegulas. Rex Ryan = Russ Brandon's baby. The entire front office should have been purged, including the talent/scouting departments. Clean house, start with a clean sheet of paper. But The Pegulas seem to love the band aid approach, or trying to 'fix' something instead of replacing it; it's like they couldn't see that they bought two TERRIBLE teams that needed to start from scratch; there was nothing really worth salvaging about either franchise.