jad1

Kev is reading this like ....

He could be Toe Blake, and a legit GM would still tell him to stand in the corner and let him do his job.

How wild is your imagination?

I'm not assuming that he will hire a good GM. I'm saying that the only way it happens is by luck. With that said, I don't think he should stop trying, even if the odds are against him hiring a good one. As for the GMs who he fired, they deserved it. Regardless whether the Pegulas felt shut out, they still couldn't build a winner around a team that has two #2 overall picks and two #1 overall picks on the roster. I got no problem with those guys being fired.

In regards to meddling. Do you think a good GM let's his owner meddle? Do you think that Big Baller Beane starts off his day every morning waiting for notes from Terry? Instead of asking Terry what he wants to do, he tells Terry, this is what we're doing. The Sabres hire a similiarily good GM, and all this talk about meddling will go away. Just like it did with the Bills.

Terry hired circus clown Rex Ryan before hired McDermott. In the two years that Rex stumbled his way through coaching the Bills, there was all manner of discussion of Terry needing to hire director of football operations, a football czar. Bill Polian was often mentioned for the role (Polian was not a fan of Josh Allen, so we're lucky that never happened). So Terry fired Rex (Terry is AWESOME at firing people; it's his super power), and hired McDermott. Why did he make this decision? He made it because Sean was a wrestler, and Terry liked wrestlers. Sean told Terry that if he's looking for a GM, he knows a guy named Brandon, who would be really good. Terry hired them and is now considered an exceptional NFL owner. Terry is just bad at hiring front offices. He (and we) got lucky that McDermott was a wrestler. He hasn't gotten lucky on the Sabres side yet, and for some reason he's ignored his super power and has refused to fire Adams for the last 3 or 4 years, so here we are, waiting and praying that Terry is lucky in his next decision. And Terry isn't unique. The vast majority of owners have no skill in hiring GMs. It's all mostly luck.

You're right about the rule that PEs can only own up to 10% of a franchise. I'm a bit confused though because the report is that Pegula is selling 10.6% of the Bills. Maybe that's a reporting mistake on the sale. My guess is that the percentage will increase after the initial investments as a way to increase capital. Once they are sure it works the way they anticipated it working. Another rule is that these PE firms can hold an interest in up to 6 different teams at once. This shapes it more as a passive, high-end investment opportunity, rather than traditional ownership, so my guess is that after the initial purchase, owners will pretty much ignore these guys.

Terry hired a good GM for the Bills, and bad GMs for the Sabres. How did this happen? Pure luck. But that's the only difference.

The sale is to a private equity group, falling under the NFL ownership rules change that happened this past summer. Under those rules, the equity group can only purchase a non-controlling interest in the team. This means they have no say in hiring, firing or roster decisions. They have no say in operations management. And they have no say in relocation decisions. Also, they are not going to be included in a succession plan. The minimum stake they must own is 3% and the maximum is 10%. The primary owner must retain 31% ownership in the team. The equity must retain their stake for 6 years before selling it. This seems to be a non-voting stock holder type of a relationship, rather than a true minority franchise ownership. It's a way for owners to generate investment capital, without cedeing any control of the team.

They're not cash poor. This just let's them use their investment in the team to create liquidity instead of their other businesses. It's a smart move. It's a result of the NFL changing its ownership rules allowing private equity firms to purchase minority interests in teams.

Physician Education Loan Repayment Program.

Why you asking?

I completely agree that Adams building of the roster is fundamentally flawed. I think I can make the case that he is the worst GM in league history. I believe most GMs see him as a rube and a mark, and that makes trading in the future difficult for the betterment of the Sabres. I'll even go on record to advocate that Adams should be fired even if the Sabres make playoffs. And sure the low expectations coming as a result of Adams idiotic timeline has impacted the organization at all levels. I still don't think that absolves the players completely though for the team's struggles. They could use another top six winger, and a top four defenseman. But even without these additions the Sabres aren't less talented than the Canadiens or Flyers. The Sabres aren't losing games due to a lack of talent, they're losing because of a lack of intensity and compete. The team is mentally weak. They are unable to compensate for the failings of the organization. After the Flyers game Dahlin and Tuch both said that this poor effort cannot continue. Great, what are they doing to make sure it doesn't continue? What are they doing to increase the team's intensity, or improve team toughness, or raise the general level of compete. How hard is it to call player's only meeting to address team effort after the Canadiens loss). Pegula is a bad owner. Adams is a bad GM. Ruff is a good coach who is doing a bad job right now (too much "patience"), and Dahlin is a great player who isnt really a good captain. If this is going to turn around, I believe this is on Ruff and the players. Adams isn't capable of fixing this.

Wrong about what?

I get your point that the youngest team in the an issue. I've criticized it also as a major issue with Adams' rebuild effort. But how long are we going to use it as an excuse? As the cliche goes, you don't get to pick the army you go to war with, you go to war with the army you got. Adams isn't making a trade to fix the youth issue, as much as we might want him to. If the Sabres are going to get better, it's the guys in the locker room who are going have to figure it out. And I don't think the issue is talent, or depth. I'd like see them make a trade, but does trading for Ehlers prevent them for no-showing against the Flyers last night? Does it prevent them from giving up a 2-0? This team continually fails to match the intensity of its opponents. The Calgary game is a perfect example. The Flames, a mid team, slept-walk thru the first half that game and the Sabres took advantage. As soon as the Flames picked up their intensity, the Sabres didn't match it and needed UPL to get them to shootout, where they won in a skills contest. Ruff called that game a "gritty" effort, but nobody should have been surprised when they carried their low intensity effort into the Canadiens game and lost. I think this all comes from low expectations. Nobody, with good reason, talks about the Sabres winning the Stanley Cup. Not the organization, not the media, not the fans, not this board (well one guy did, but he's gone I think). When Drury joined a bad Sabres team, he hung a picture of the Stanley Cup on the locker room wall. It set a standard. It introduced accountability. This team expected to compete every night, because that's what championship teams do. And it sounds crazy to set the same expectation for this team. It's more realistic to set the bar at making the playoffs. But making the playoffs means finishing in the top sixteen of the league, right? What do the standards look like for that? Do you really have to compete every game to finish in the top sixteen? Can you take a night off against bad teams and still finish in the top sixteen? I'd argue the Sabres' effort is exactly what you would expect from a team who's goal is to finish 16th in the league If you set the standard that you are a championship team and hold yourself accountable to that, but still fail, you probably end up a playoff team who makes a memorable run before losing in the playoffs. If you set the standard to finishing 16th in the league and fail, you end up with another lottery pick in the draft. No doubt this goes all the way up to the GM and ownership. The Sabres last three GMs all believed that they were going to eventually win a Cup three or four years down the line. And that has just sucked, because it ignored current success in favor of a pipe dream. But the players can do something about it. They can, within the locker room, set a higher goal for themselves. They can call out a lack of intensity, a lack of compete, a lack of physicality, and hold one another accountable to play to a higher standard. A strong captain could help them do this. I'm not sure if Dahlin is that guy. Dahlin is a great player, extremely talented (certainly more talented than Peca or Drury). But he seems like a guy who focuses more on his own game. He's more of an introvert, uncomfortable about criticizing (constructively) his teammates. I don't think a calvary is coming to fix this edition of the Sabres. To turn things around they need Ruff (who seems like he's in 58 year old Mike Tyson mode, but that's another story), and the team itself to raise the standard of their play. This means that Dahlin will need to be comfortable with introducing accountability in the locker room. If this doesn't happen, the Sabres will miss the playoffs, Adams will be fired, and the new GM will start another rebuild.