jad1

At the time it was said, it was true. Peca and Hasek we lost during uncapped years. Drury and Briere we lost due to executive limitations on negotiations and budget. Having a deep-pocketed owner would have helped there. It's more difficult to buy a rebuild than to keep a good team together with a wealthy owner. The biggest area of impact is hiring coaches and GMs. Pegula struck out with Babcock, but both his GMs have been first-timers. Maybe he should have spent money on a GM and/or coach with more experience.

This franchise right now is Eichel, Skinner, Reinhart, Dahlin, and maybe Mittlestadt and UPL. You can dump the rest of the players, the GM, and the coach, and it wouldn't make a difference

If they can pick up a legit 2nd center at the deadline, they should spend the picks.

Yeah, that almost never works. Peca, Drury, Briere, Hasek, Lafontaine, Hawerchuck, Dumont, and Barnes were just a few of players the Sabres acquired by trades.

She'll love him when he trades Skinner for a conditional, lottery-protected 1st round pick, a middling prospect and a couple of salary dumps. After all, everybody loves the 'Botterill special.'

More embarrassing than being the first team to finish 31st in the NHL? Let's let Housley decide.

Botterill would never jeopardize the Amerks season that way.

Moping and attitude criticism coming from a fan is the most useless criticism in sports. Fans aren't on the benches or in the locker room, so complaints of those type should be dismissed out of hand. As far as hustle, in addition to being a point-per-game player, he's the team's best face-off man and is at the top of the league in zone entries. He also kills penalties. That means he's on the ice for defensive and offensive zone starts, and he's often the guy lugging the puck when he's out there. The dude hustles. He could, however use a 2nd center to help carry the load. Again, Eichel is the shiny object on the team, so he's subject to criticism. But when talking about Sabres and their anemic offense, blaming Eichel for the team's issues makes no sense.

He's better than a point-per-game player on a team that can't score. He's 9 points clear of the 2nd leading scorer on the team. Even games where this board claims he's the worst player on the ice, he still posting 2 assists. I get he's the shiny object on the ice, but calling out the only point-per-game player the Sabres have had over the last 12 years in a thread about scoring doesn't make much sense. The Sabres have 3 legit top 6 fowards on the team. That's why they're not scoring. No team can make the playoffs with one strong line and 3 weak ones. Want to fix the Sabres scoring? Fill out the second line with legit top six foward talent. That's what's really wrong with this team.

Until he frames every observation with his experience while in Buffalo, and fans remember how he left. Same with Drury. And Lafontaine. Problem is that the Sabres have burned every relationship with their star centers to the ground.

Total lack of intensity on that play, Jack ?

"Respect for your own net" is the problem according to the guy who named Hutton starter tonight.

McDavid has lost a lot in the NHL too. It takes more than one guy to turn a team around. The fact is that O'Reilly is having an all-star season and the Sabres have throbbing, gaping, noxious need for a 2nd center, and JBot made that deal WAAAAAY too early. Maybe if the Sabres had a coach who could handle a locker room, the Sabres would have an extra 20 goal scorer on the roster and a legitimate 2nd line, instead of the never ending clown show that they've been putting on the ice the last 12 years.

This is one of the worst offensive teams in the league, but they overpass the puck like their the freakin Globetrotters.

I don't know, Hutton's positioning is just awful. He's not a butterfly goalie, he just relies on his reflexes, which are spotty. I think he gives up soft goals because he doesn't take the bottom of the net away. I agree about housley. His system is to have the D push the puck, which is going to lead to turnovers. Playing that style, you need solid goaltending, and Hutton has been shakey for the last month. For that reason, I have no idea why Ullmark hasn't started the majority of games since Xmas.

Yeah, all while posting all-star numbers. Obviously he's the problem.

They traded away the guy who hated losing.

During power plays, they should turn off RJ's mic and play "Turkey in the Straw."

This division has Babcock, Julien, and Cooper. And the Sabres are going to stick with Housley.

Can we just pull Hutton...and send him someplace else. That dude's legs never stop moving.

Amateur-hour head coach

It'll stop when they hire a legit NHL coach.

I would add that their Rube Goldberg-like entry plays also eat up valuable time on power play. Eichel has a high zone-entry success rate. Why do they need four drop passes to get it to him to carry it into the zone? And when they get it into the zone, they screw Eichel to the left side board, the Ovechkin-one-timer zone. But Jack never really takes that one-timer shot. The puck goes to him and the defense collapses, and Jack sends it high to the dman, who works to get it back to Jack, and the defense collapses. And the funny think is that Jack is probably better shooting from the right side than the left. The whole premise of the powerplay is to get Jack a shot that he probably won't be able to take. They'll move other guys around to get Jack his shot, Dmen go high to low, wingers dig on the boards and move to the net. The only guy who is stationary is Jack, the best skater and scorer on the team. They need to abandon this one-timer set-up mentality and let Eichel be the guy that moves. Let him play high on some attempts. Move him to the right side on others. Make it harder for the defense to find him.

I don't think they're that bad. There is no reason the power play should be this bad. Defensive coverage is a coachable thing. It's been terrible the last few weeks. Line-up choices have been iffy too. And the locker room management has been pretty terrible. What does it say that the team decides that Housley can't manage a guy like O'Reilly. A veteran coach would get more out of this team.

Housley is a John Scott away fron being the worst coach in Sabres history.