Thorner

Also, I sort of resent the goal post moving, I’m sorry. It makes being around here a bit difficult. What did you say coming into the year? What did we all say? Progress was making the playoffs. That was the expectation. The BARE MINIMUM expectation. If you want to betray the focus of results to the level of what feels like a cop out, I just can’t do it. We aren’t going to sit here and say, “well, I guess this is what a good build looks like” because we get seduced by a strong finish. There’s zero perspective there: we KNEW that would be possible before the season started, NO ONE claimed that would be evidence of success. NO ONE called that shot! The theory of “is this actually the proper way to build?” falls apart with a simple question: Would you be satisfied with missing the playoffs next year, provided we finish much stronger than we start the season? of course not. *that was supposed to be this year, too.* If you want to change your thinking on that and say, no, I was wrong, playoffs didn’t need to be the expectation this year by the prism of whether the rebuild is coming along successfully, have at it. I’m good here. And I’ll continue rooting for the playoffs this season because making it wouldn’t just be “nice”, it’s the only thing that makes the season worth it It just makes me laugh. The argument for Adams taking so long was at least we improved year over year. We really gonna sit here and say, “well, as long as we are playing better at the end of seasons than we did at the beginning of seasons, it’s all good.” Where does it end? lol. You see we are just creating a situation where they can never fail because the expectation is basically nothing they can’t fudge manually. The logic is bad because a scenario where Adams willingly ices the youngest team every year where we struggle to amount to anything but get better as year goes on, before re-upping on youth the following year, and thus repeating the same cycle is apparently evidence of success. We could improve during the course of 10 straight seasons and never make the playoffs. Please, for the love of all things holy: call your shot. Have an argument. Stick with your argument. When are we supposed to make the playoffs? im actually asking. When is it ok to measure by actual results, if not this year I am actually asking. 10 years? Is it ok that we say, regardless of how strong we finish, we need to make the playoffs in 2030? What is the timeframe by which it would defy logic to suggest you can’t expect a team to amount to something every other team does? I am actually asking. We all agreed that was this year and now we want to do this whole song and dance again. If we don’t make the playoffs this year, we failed. I don’t need to run scared and hide from that expectation. I’m not gonna betray everything we talked about all offseason to make myself feel better. I can live with the failure if we call a spade a spade. I’m even willing to give KA another chance I’m not going to sit hear and eat sh*t and tell you it tastes good: how it’s supposed to taste. Have at it

Well, no, it’s not what it looks like. The answer to your questions lies in the overall output of the team. The three seasons you detailed (after leaving out KA’s first) are not created equal in that, each or the first two left us in a better place overall than when we started. Those two seasons, Granato helped fix, and we improved overall. Regressing a bunch this season to start, and then battling back to the point we nonetheless still take a step back overall this year isn’t progress If Adams torpedoes the roster this summer and we start 0-41 and then 25-16 over the final half, that’s not progress for the rebuild: it’s just progress over the course of a solitary season. You can take a step back to take two steps forward, but that’s not what we’ve done this year so far. We took a step back, and might not even get back to where we finished last season we aren’t grading on a curve here: that’s a dearth of expectations, Buffalo only thing: this season if we finish with 90 points isn’t ok because we did it with a poor first half and good second half The proof it doesn’t translate is now in the pudding, in that case. Even if we did improve year over year, and took 5 years to make the playoffs: no, that’s definitively NOT what a “building the right way” looks like. I frankly don’t understand the question: 5 years is a demonstrably long time league relative to make the playoffs. Most teams don’t come close to that time frame. A situation where a team hasn’t made it in 4 seasons with the GM on the job where season 4 went backwards is not what we want to be seeing here tl;dr - “2nd half improvement” (I cannot believe this is still the lingo we are using (cursed development year jargon) is not close to as important as year over year improvement. Especially when your GM has been on the job 4 years and everyone else has already figured it out in the time we’ve been bad

Guess I’m wrong then. I’ll avoid watching this one

If they end up catching up on the same race track, the horse was always in the race. It would be revelatory

If we don’t make the playoffs, it’s a huge fail. The expectation hasn’t changed. They don’t have an excuse to “run it back” if they miss. Those results aren’t close to good enough and the macro season result is still obviously what’s the most relevant, not when your distribution of wins was. But I think we can make it

Checks out

They don’t need Jack, he was a complimentary piece /s

Cause Comrie stanks

Grizzly Adams DID have a beard Grizzly Adams DID have a beard

Dunno about Levi

9 iron eh? you’re fired

Well f*ck them we’ll be laughing it up, fuzzball! soon

When you realize we are witnessing a playoff berth come to fruition in real time

Lol ok right i knew that I just thought someone else made a Vegas specific version of the quote last Vegas was good

Is that the Hangover, Last Vegas, or Fear and Loathing?

Never go full Vegas

Tampa looks primed for another loss!

I’m not really joking. I think we might do it Just ftr

Plenty of room on my “the math doesn’t actually look that bad” bandwagon

Maybe this Will die

The Sabres might only need 30 points 15-7 might get us in the playoffs

A playoff contender, yes But we are a “playoff contender”’ more less, right now. But that’s not the point anymore. The idea isn’t to contend for the playoffs, the idea is to make the playoffs. The idea is to measure based on results, actually having expectations. We don’t want to minimize everything we need and squint really hard to the point we dial it back to the bare minimum theoretical supplement possible, to where the playoffs stay in range next year, should everything go to plan that’s bad strategy, and that’s how you miss the playoffs. People crunching the data and shaving off the most neutral and negative possible outcomes in favour of a hope for the most positive outcome are missing the forest for the trees The roster needs to be in a place where, if we are pessimistic about whether it achieves its full potential, said result for team is still comfortably in the 8th spot