jad1

He does, because he knows he's going to be booed every year (maybe for wrong reasons), but he shows up anyway. Let the hosting team pick the MC and step out of the way for the draft. Let the team spokesperson open the draft and welcome everyone to the event, and get out of the way when they honor their legends.

Bettman is such a smarmy weasel.

The air is thick with anticipation!

So this franchise ends up paying a 3rd and McCabe (a 2nd round pick) for Vesey? How many successful franchises spend a 2nd and 3rd round pick for a 3rd liner with mediocre numbers?

This is the point in time where O'Reilly's contract becomes a bargain.

If Terry 'drill a well' Pegula chose $7.5M over the opportunity to make this team better, then this franchise is doomed.

Every locker room has issues, but there's a difference between a locker room having issues and it being toxic. O'Reilly wasn't toxic, but the front office treated the situation that way. It would be interesting to see how Krueger would have handled the situation. He seems to have a stronger approach to handling the locker room. Hopefully he can keep the team on the same page as it continues to mature.

The response equivalent to an old man yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn.

In other words, standard message-board fodder.

The seemingly cosmic ways the Sabres were screwed in this unbelievably bad deal is mind-boggling. Discussing it as part of the current events makes sense at this time. If people are still obsessing on it after the draft and FA (where hopefully Botterill will acquire a couple of legit 2nd liners), then we can play the move-along card.

You are most likely correct. And this is the most disappointing thing about Botterill and the current franchise.

Depends on the situation of those 29 other teams. How many teams had the need and the cap space to sign O'Reilly? How many teams were waiting (perhaps foolishly) until the Sabres paid O'Reilly's bonus? Did the Sabres shoot themselves in the foot by trying to make the trade before the bonus was due? In the end, it still falls on Botterill. He was the one who decided that O'Reilly couldn't make the Sabres a winner. That he wasn't worth the cap space. The Blues had different opinion, and now they have a Selke finalist, a Conn Smythe winner, and a Stanley Cup. Meanwhile the Sabres are still trying to figure out who their 2nd line center will be this season. Anyway, the most insulting thing coming out of this is Armstrong claiming that Tage Thompson is a good player.

I'd push it further back to Peca and Hasek.

On the flip side, you got to hand it to Tim Murray for trading a bunch of nobodies for a future Conn Smythe winner.....

The Sabres franchise needs to stop bleeding talent.

I know, O'Reilly won the Conn Smythe like 20 minutes ago, and I'm STILL carrying on about it in an aptly titled thread.

Right. The proper attitude is that the Sabres have not been, nor will be (over the next 5 years) in any position to take advantage of a player of O'Reilly's caliber.

JBott, is that you??

Yep, all they need is a Ryan O'Reilly-type player. So close.

Whatever floats your boat. I guess I wouldn't characterize fans who have followed this team the last 8 years as "whining" or "petulant," but I guess that's also an opinion to be shared on a message board.

Sounds like the way a horrible GM with an MBA would describe it.

Yeah, Blues SCF history is proof of the NHL's 50+ year love affair with weird playoff formats. Hope they win the series.

Let's not forget that Kane was also playing in the conference finals, and that trade sucked too. If Botterill doesn't sign Skinner, he will have let almost 100 goals walk off the roster for practically nothing. But he was able to snag that EPL guy to coach this mess, so great GM I guess.

Dragons have killed plenty of Targaryens, so the reason Drogon let Jon live is uncertain. Further, Jon being a Targaryen had no impact on the show's plot at all. Some claim it helped drive Dany to madness, but the last show explained Dany's actions as tactics, not madness. She burned Kings Landing to show future foes that using innocents as shields will not prevent her from using her Dragon. Tywin Lannister would probably agree with this strategy. And it can be further argued that listening to Tyrion's advice to avoid immediately attacking King's Landing in season 7 cost her 2 dragons. At this point, she realizes that delay caused by mercy has cost her power. Dany had also found her purpose as a liberator back in season 3. So it makes sense that she would want to continue her crusade after winning the Iron Throne. She's not mad, she's just determined and ruthless, like several other characters in the show. Jon being a Targaryen doesn't change this. In fact she willingly accepts Jon's killing embrace. Which comes back to the purpose of Jon being a Targaryen. There is none. It's like it was just thrown in there for (show) fan service. By the way, Gendry had the best claim to the throne at the end of the show. Robert, Joffrey, and Tommen were all Baretheons. Even Cersi gets her claim from being married to Robert, and not from her being a Lannister. When Dany legitimized Gendry as Robert's heir, he also gained a claim to the throne. That the writers didn't even recognize this at the council scene shows how the quality the writing has declined as Dan and Dave have looked to move on from the show.