jad1

So that's Mittlestadt (22p in 41g) and Olofsson (32p in 53g). They are the only remaining forwards still on the roster from last season who were on a 40 point pace for an 82 game season. (Reinhart, Hall, and Eichel were the only other fowards on pace for 40 points). Mittlestadt will be moving into the 1C role, which means he'll be facing opponents best shutdown players. That could easily knock him off pace for 40 points this season. Oloffson's point total was driven off the power play and 1st line minutes, meaning he played with Eichel and Reinhart. If the poweplay struggles and the play from the top two centers falls off from last season, Olofsson could struggle to hit 40 points. Dhalin scored 23p in 56 games, so he wasn't on a 40p pace last season. So the post wasn't so strange. Outside of Mittlestadt and Olofsson, the Sabres aren't returning any forwards who were on a 40 point pace last season.

No GM should be okay with an exodus like that.

This is what I mean about accountability. Who give a F about what I thought about those signings? I'm a fan with my own day job, not the GM of the Sabres. Joe Blow thinks that signing Staal and Hall we good moves, so the professional GM who signed them gets a pass. And blame it on Krueger? Adams could have and should have fired Krueger day one. Again, as A professional GM, Adams should have recognized that Krueger was not a quality coach and moved on from him day one. Here's a good one, Botterill finished in last place, so why expect more from Adams? Why hold him accountable to finish anywhere above last place? The only thing I have against Adams is that he is an inexperienced and bad GM who has more excuses than results. I'm a long time Sabre fan, and will be one as long as they are around. When the puck drops, I'll be on board with the magical thinking and be rooting for the team to win every game. And there's a part of me that wants to be dead wrong about Adams and this team. But there is also a part of me that that is tired of the endless regression, the continual shedding of talent that's been going on for decades, the total lack of urgency not just to win, but to even compete. I'm just over rooting for players one season, then sh###ing all over them the next. Maybe Adams is will be the answer to all of this, but so far, to this lone fan, his results have been more of the same.

Nice try, but two of those flops were Staal and Hall, who Adams recruited himself. If you want to give kudos to Adams, then recognize him for backstabbing and sweet talking his way into a GM job that has no accountability. Nice to see him take advantage of that opportunity and drive his team to DFL in his first season. Yes, the Pegulas are 100x better at firing people than hiring them.

Sweet talking the Pegulas isn't anything to be impressed by. Buffoons like Rex Ryan were able to do it. He seems less effective in selling his vision to the team, considering the exodus of players, and that falls in line with the front office since the Pegulas took over.

All right, close the thread until 2028.

And that's the trap that this organization is stuck in. Three different GMs the last 7 seasons, each one has a last place finish to their record. Before this era of incompetence, the Sabres had one last place finish in 40+ years. Whether it's an intentional tank or not, there is no organizational urgency on winning now. And while many will claim that attempting to win now and build for the future are competing interests, they're not. The Sabres could have developed their young players and find a 2c. Or a legitimate starting goalie. Or figured out their defense. Hiring experienced front office people who could set the foundation for a rebuild would have been a much better approach than hiring inexperienced guys who sell a slogan, but have no functional plan to deliver on that slogan. Granato seems like a guy who's floor is a competent coach. And that's a huge improvement over the last guy. No idea what his ceiling is, but he probably won't have a chance to reach that ceiling with the lack of talent the Sabres roster will have this season.

We've seen this before, too many times. An inexperienced, but overconfident GM is hired because a gullible owner buys the bs line that the GM can win if he can bring in "his guys." So the new GM removes any 'win now' pressure by trading away the best players on the current roster for future picks so that he can draft his 'guys.' But the GM is also incompetent so he screws up hiring a coaching staff, and his draft strategy is questionable, so he panics and undercuts his build for the future by making bad trades and even worse FA signings. Meanwhile, his equally inexperienced coaches that he hand-picked make hash out of player development and day-to-day operations. The talented players who are actually producing under this chaotic situation voice their frustration and are then signaled out by the GM as being part of the problem, and are eventually moved for more futures. The owner, who willingly sacrifices any chance to win now in favor of the GM's build for the future plan, gets fed up with the losing, criticism, and $6 game tickets after a couple of seasons and fires the GM and coaching staff, looking for candidates that are even more inexperienced and arrogant to hire as the replacement. So here we are, 2nd year under the Adams administration. Still no legitimate 2C. Still no legitimate NHL goalie. No scoring depth. No clear cut top pair on defense. And no expectation that the Sabres will compete for the playoffs, and yet somehow we believe that these young guys will deal with the oppressive losing brought on by the incompetence of the front office better than previous group of young players did. That they will deal with losing better, because they really, really, really want to be here, and the previous guys didn't. What's the definition of insanity again?

Same goes for Cozens.

I think this more a reflection of Hamilton's idiocy than Cozens' leadership. The worst thing that the Sabres can do to Cozens is to put him on their Middlestadt/Thompson development plan. Cozens showed promise last season, but he still was young and inconsistent. He only scored 12 points in 40 games. Cozens should spend the next couple of seasons working on his own game, and that probably means racking up big minutes in Rochester for 30 or 40 games. The biggest problem with every GM and coach the Sabres have had since the tank is that they needlessly rushed the development of every young, talented player they drafted, and gave them roles they weren't ready to handle, and then did nothing to support them in those roles. Making Cozens the captain this season would just be more of the same. Giving him the responsibility of the captaincy during a period where its questionable if the GM's first priority is to win games, and after the fiasco of the Eichel situation, would just be the latest in a series of dumb moves that this franchise has become famous for.

There is a such a thing as cutting too deep in trying to stack assets for the future. The Sabres have had 3 GMs who have mortgaged immediate success for future gain, and the results have been devastatingly bad. Eichel, Reinhart, Ullmark, Ristolainen, and McCabe all want out. At some point you need to stop blaming the players and seriously consider changing the team-building strategy that has resulted in this mess.

The Bills message board was right. The GMs that followed Butler up to Beane were terrible and deserved to be fired. Same goes for the coaches who followed Levy. Negativity follows a team has spent the last 7 years playing under the worst GMs and coaches in the history of the franchise.

26 year old undrafted left-handed defenseman who has played 1 NHL game. Sounds about right.

This move gets a nod of respect from the Coyotes.

So Jack is healthy enough to play a pick-up hockey game. Hmm. Excuse me, while I go scream into a pillow for 25 minutes.

Like rats abandoning a sinking ship...

So are we at the point when the question is not if Adams is tanking or not, but are they tanking intentionally or is it a result of rank incompetence?

A team that is proud of its culture (and the 15 wins it's going to post next season).

I guess that the rest of the league isn't buying into the whole, 'we're trading out best players for guys who really, really, really, really want to be here' strategy. Who would have guessed?

I hope this settles quicker than the Reinhart trade. I don't know if I can spend another night waiting for info from the Adams administration.

The only team that could out-tank them is a team with NO goalies! 😄 😁😆 Wait a minute....😶

Coyotes determined not to lose another tank battle with the Sabres this season.

Here's an article from a couple seasons ago that might provide some context with players venting frustration. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/connor-mcdavid-frustration-reverberating-across-hockey-world/sn-amp/

Haha, that guy sucks! Tampa Bay Lightning, what a bunch of rubes! 😳

That list is tank-tastic.