Thorner

I agree completely.

You know what they say.. You smelt it, you dealt it

It’s also a really good point. The better UPL performs, doesn’t that nearly necessitate KA finally making the goaltending move he’s been reluctant to make?

Absolutely read the OP in the tone of Jimmy Fallon’s “thank you notes”

I can’t be nearly as annoyingly certain in my viewpoint on this as I usually am because….like I said I’m not actually sure what the correct course is (or, rather, what I personally suspect the correct course to be). While playoffs were reasonably possible I was much more set on keeping him up but there’s probably a mathematical line where playoffs become so unlikely it probably makes most sense to prioritize his development, even in a season where winning is/is supposed to be the priority Are we at the line? Maybe. My gut still says no cause, for a team that’s missed 12 straight years, it would be pretty hoity-toity to turn up our noses at even the slim chances presented to us right now id keep mah foot on the gas pedal

I guess for me it’s the relative comparison between “best we’ve got” and “some of the best we’ve got”

The sultan of swat Across the entire fanbase? I think it’s a few thousand at least maybe even as many as 5 or 6K

If the Bills won the Super Bowl this season, would that make you feel better about Pegula’s ownership of the hockey team?

Doesn’t say anything from a Sabres perspective but, as a noted Jets disliker the only saving grace for me here is that the trade amounted to a whole lot of nothing for them, too. Especially after their entire building chanted, “best trade ever” for a solid year And actually watching live in person here as Kane silenced the crowd on “track suit night” by setting Reinhart up for his hat trick was a nice silver lining too considering it was the first time I saw Buffalo win live. Sticking it to a crowd emboldened by arguably racist undertones was enjoyable

I think where we see it manifest most often is that people forget that everything a team does, every roster move they make, purely exists as a means to achieving an end: achieving a result. We look to evaluate trades and transactions by anything and everything we possibly can, before measuring them based on wins and losses. The only thing that actually matters. We fear that expectation

Apologies, I was mistakenly under the impression that Eichel winning the cup proved he could be part of a winner, ROR the same. No? Lol The book is written: obviously the Sabres COULD have built around them. I thought that was generally accepted around here tbh. For the life of me I don’t see how it could be argued otherwise at this point. They PROVED they could be key components of championship teams! That proved them not winning in Buffalo was a Buffalo issue. It was a team building issue.

I’ve already illustrated factually why your argument misses the mark “They were a bad team with him here, they were a bad team after he was traded. I didn't see them getting better with him on the roster. End the story all I need.” Substitute Tage in for a hypothetical comparable: if we dealt him now for a couple prospects. What are the potential resulting scenarios? Let’s lay them out, using the logic of your argument to define how we feel about it we trade him and we remain bad: “bad team while Tage was here, bad team while he was traded”. Inconsequential deal. we trade and we get good: “I guess Tage was the problem.” Can you see that you’ve backed yourself into a position where, if your team is really bad, you seemingly can’t make a bad trade? respectfully, it doesn’t make any sense. Coming up with an analysis for why dealing anyone from a bad team just doesn’t matter and convincing yourself of it is probably the type of thinking that keeps a team bad

The gall to suggest a guy who led the playoffs in scoring, and a guy who won the Smythe, wouldn’t have made the team better had we built around them is a little much, no? What do we think is more likely? That two players who proved themselves capable of being the very best in the world at the most important stretch of hockey in the universe, combined, WOULD have provided a solid base to winning, or WOULDN’T? The same people who preach patience are ready to write off the combo because we saw them together on a disfunctional roster under disfunctional coaching and management, immediately after burning the roster to the ground and salting the earth, during Jack’s 18-20, *elc* seasons when he hadn’t even learned to play 2 way yet what do we feel is more representative of their abilities to be built around? The fact they won cups? Or what the worst franchise in hockey history did with them? Seriously, answer the question, what’s the better marker? What the Sabres did with them? Or what competent franchises did with them? A shred of Occam’s razor reveals the answer blindingly

Looking back, trading ROR away was absolutely disastrous for the team. It led to that core collapsing, Botterill being fired, and an additional 6 years (and counting) in the wilderness since. How one could look at that trade and not call it terrible is beyond me. You are just guessing with no real logical backing that keeping a good player wouldn’t have mattered. Whereas, we KNOW we’ve been terrible since and we KNOW the lack of forward depth led to the collapse of that roster, Eichel and Reinhart and Ullmark leaving, and the lack of depth we still see today: because we are still in the process of rebuilding Your argument respectfully isn’t a very good one. “They didn’t do anything here so it doesn’t matter that we dealt them.” By the same logic we can trade Tage today because we haven’t amounted to a single playoff berth with him. This is what you are actually arguing: worst case scenario is that we are bad once we move him, right? Which, as you laid out in your argument makes the trade inconsequential, as we merely maintain the status quo. No harm no foul. You can see once broken down like this it doesn’t make any sense. When will people learn and except it’s the *collection* of talent and about building depth, and a team? “We never won anything with Eichel and ROR”. You mean, when Eichel was 18-20 years old and we were literally recovering from a scorched earth tank? Be serious for a minute

It’s probably why Levi is still here. Which I’ll credit Adams for I suppose in the sense that I’m choosing to believe that’s a reflection of the GM’s commitment to winning this season and not some random agreement. Keeping Levi here because he’s a bit better than Comrie would imo be evidence towards what the priority is

Re: the bold By *far* the most important and beneficial thing, long term, for both franchise and fan, would be making the playoffs this year. If, hypothetically, keeping Levi here resulted in a berth, it will have been a better strategy by orders of magnitude than sending him down. So it’s not as clear cut as you think: you have to be certain we can’t get in, and certain there aren’t segments of the team that think they can get in, when you make the move

I wish Kague Clale the best

Casey has been great

I think almost…maybe everyone on the team could and would be successful in the proper situation. What I don’t trust is the current collection and what it amounts to. How could we

We are sort of sitting at where we thought we’d be on the goaltending front coming into the season, too, just with the personnel switched up a bit. I think most gave Levi the benefit of the doubt in locking down a roll, but the backup was a huge question mark as we knew, even best case scenario with Levi, we’d need a second guy. Well we sort of got that good scenario, after a while, just with UPL instead. But we’re still lacking the second guy we assumed we would, to the detriment of the goaltending output overall.

I agree that making the playoffs isn’t a huge part of my consideration here. It doesn’t look like we will. But if the priority is winning, I don’t think that’s something you can be wishy-washy with once you’ve committed to it, to backtrack would potentially be disastrous and is at least playing with fire on the other hand, even good teams sell at deadline sometimes..teams that committed to winning at start of year. So maybe I’m being too naive and it’s just something that happens..but my gut says there’s no reason to think a team that’s proven themselves constantly to be the anomaly would do so otherwise here: we might be THAT team where it’s just too dangerous for us to take our foot off the gas. Climbing such a steep slope, hesitation on that front could be costly I dunno

I get you are saying “yes” (we do suck with Comrie) and “it’s better to help Levi out and send him down, though” and I see the argument if UPL truly is going to play 3/4 (which never seems to actually transpire so I’m not sold yet), but it would still feel icky to actively send down the better goalie the fact it might be the correct option is just a sad commentary on how the goaltending situation was configured for this season

Maybe UPL plays better when he knows the other guy can actually put on pads facing the correct direction I dunno. Whenever Comrie is here we suck.

I still think what’s best for the Sabres long term is to spend every ounce of energy necessary in breaking the “losses are ok” mindset Play your best contributors this year.

I hear you, I just happen to think that that a big key to the development of the team, overall, is the prioritization of winning in the now term. I’d hate to back down from that as Focus and think it sends entirely the wrong message You may disenfranchise the somewhat older players in the name of prioritizing development yet again