Thorner

Marino is misquoting him, though. Friedman never said that And a bunch of people have, of course, run with it. Some even stating is as sabres being THE favourite

“Can’t even be mad at that one” lol f*cking sad

It’s not input on roster decisions. It’s a self-imposed salary cap. This is a recording it doesn’t change the fact that ultimately the buck stops at the owner: but he’s absentee, he doesn’t care. The idea he’s overbearingly present is at strict odds with the actual root of the problem

I think what people underestimate most is that no one isn’t willing to consider the context and grant Adams and co certain caveats. I think people actually understand that, similar to Winnipeg, building a great team here isn’t the easiest thing to do. We aren’t talking about that, though. We are talking about making the playoffs once. We are talking about not failing to make it for 5 straight years. We are talking about how we’ve averaged 70 something points for 5 years. The caveats excuse some failure, not complete ineptitude. Maybe we can’t be the Jets. Maybe we can’t make the playoffs 8 times since they came back. The rub is that everyone is simply asking to make it once

Actually? I legit feel like they play every day. Must be in a busy stretch

Soon, Terry will have himself a new apprentice….one younger, and with an eye to the future far more powerful

When only unqualified candidates are willing to take the job because the opening requirement is firing a bunch of staff and operating within a self imposed budget, (and shining the shoes of the owner) - the mystery of why said GM can’t produce good results explains itself. An unqualified hire operating under restrictions that demonstrably prevent teams from making the playoffs The restrictions need to change regardless of GM

A lot of owners want eveything run by them. Most, I’d say. That’s not what makes Terry stand out from the majority. That’s not a variable that on it’s own comes close to distinguishing us from the rest of the league and thus explaining our inability to make the playoffs Youngest. Young teams are cheap. Cheap teams don’t win. Teams that don’t SPEND don’t make the playoffs. 2 of the last 160 spent bottom 10 and made it. A lot of meddling owners made it within that time frame. We have the data: Pegula is failing because of self-imposed restrictions. He’s not forcing Adams to assemble a team of young players because he thinks that’s the best way to win, that doesn’t make any sense. The mandate is to keep costs down - and when that’s the mandate teams don’t make the playoffs. And when the GM is inept you get what we are seeing: 5 years of averaging like 70 points

RIGHT!

It seems like a variation of how I keep saying Pegula framed this to Adams: “if you are going to be bad, you can do it while spending less.” Terry spent and the team didn’t win and it appears for whatever reason he’s locked into the idea he’s ok with losing money (and games) as long as we aren’t spending what we were. Ensure one “W” by controlling what we can (spending), sell the future, hope for the best. Maybe some sort of cost calculation reflective of both his obscene wealth and overall reputation hits both positive (bills - much larger fan base) and negative (sabres - smaller fan base)

It’s been missing since Lucic

If Raimi does Spider-Man 4 he’s gotta be the villain I’m as pleased w/Byram’s recent play as much as anyone but it’s disappointing he apparently needs to be stapled to a franchise defender to make it happen

People always say “how didn’t they win when they had all 3” but they never had all 3 when Jack and Sam weren’t fledgling players on their ELCs it wasn’t nhl playoffs leading scorer and 2-way menace JACK EICHEL and 50 goal man SAMSON playing with ROR it was “on some nights he’s a negative overall impact” Yeichel, and on some nights “is he even an NHLer?” Reinhartdtt lining up with him. (Remember, have to think back to circa 2017-18: Reino was sitting at a cool 11 points headed into the January 1 winter classic; his third nhl season and 4th post draft) 11 points. At a crucial stage, those 2 coming off their ELCs and poised for the development we saw, Botterill traded ROR At an even more crucial stage, Adams just gave up and traded the 2 of them none of the sabres failures are shrouded in mystery. They are all a poorly written open book to be perused and dissected by us fans and willingly ignored by management

We traded Eichel and Reinhart JUST as they were entering their primes so a lot of the improvement in another environment we saw was going to happen here anyways. People have gotten so into the habit of downplaying Eichel’s defensive improvement from 19-20 in the name of accrediting his improvement to leaving buffalo/new coach but 19-20 happened, Jack was 23, and he finished 8th in mvp voting largely because his D improved by leaps and bounds that year. We develop players and trade them and a big part is that young players are cheaper

I don’t like to toot my own horn when I can avoid it (ok, who am I kidding), but, I was screaming this at the board 3 full years ago: I told everyone exactly what was going to happen. Adams rode in on a purported (bogus - told you) mandate to fix the culture and in so doing cemented the sabres culture as “team that doesn’t care about winning”

Exactly. It’s youth. We are too young - and we are young by choice. We are bad on purpose. - - - It’s not insane we are in last. It’s insane we have at least SEVEN POINTS LESS than *every* other team in the conference but 1. truly the worst season I can remember the sabres putting to record. The fact the GM is still employed is mind boggling when you consider the owner isn’t going to fire himself. These are absurd, absurd results. You have to give someone else a try.

Investing in how the team might succeed despite the owner not caring about doing so, nor committing the resources necessary to make it happen is wiener behaviour and I won’t really do it. I can’t bend over that far for this organization. they, or, failing that, this board, will continue hearing it, from me

this is crucial: At some point we can’t just throw our hands up and say “no one will come.” You need to recruit. There has to be some level of personal, what’s the word, oh ya: ACCOUNTABILITY for the situation. They can’t pretend the issues are beyond them when a huge issue in recruiting, for example, is the idea we aren’t serious about winning, and we are *willingly* spending way below the cap. They are simply not giving recruitment an honest try. It’s not “no stone unturned” at all. They simply are content to fallback on whatever thesis results in an operation that involves NOT SPENDING

Sorry, that’s my mistake, was thinking it was your post I originally responded to. You don’t need to answer the question lol The issue here is this logic also applies to the players we’d want to trade Quinn for or any of the others mjd listed

Is it essentially mandated we parrot the company line? Doesn’t leave much room for discussion. And frankly grands an awful lot of write-off leeway to management and co. It’s literally in their job descriptions to convince and recruit. We don’t have the luxury of abandoning the pursuit of players with a NMC because it’s a “lost cause”. It’s literally management’s duty to press the issue. Certainly as a message board poster the bar for reasonable consideration is, then, met. Not to mention 75% of the league doesn’t have the clause. it me be there’s no viable trade available.. but your response was actually a non-sequitur to the point I raised

Which of those first rounders gets just as much in a trade? It’s always great when the assets we are more wanting to trade happen to be just what the other team needs, amirite?

The Quinn example is a good argument for why both optimism being warranted and caution when projecting out for next year are both apt. When considering team building in the immediate future (in the name of achieving a goal, presumably playoffs), i don’t believe the issue is one where said optimism strictly applies for the better Re: Quinn: we aren’t (see: shouldn’t be) in the business of development years anymore. It’s great Quinn appears to be coming along, im optimistic on his future, but it doesn’t change the fact we were counting on him for a full season of production in the name of helping facilitate a playoff berth: that was supposed to be the goal. Obviously his season in totality has fallen drastically short on that front. So we have to look at Quinn both in the context of an individual level and what the team expected of him. The latter is a management flaw. We can be optimistic about Kulich, but in the spirit of addressing the thread supposition, I think counting on a full season of solid production from Kulich next year in any kind of important role is negligent team building, optimism/pessimism neither here nor there

Thompson is a 1C, by leaps and bounds. If Thompson as 1C isn’t getting your team to finish *16/32* the issue is assuredly assuredly with the rest You can just feel it, eh? The creeping narrative. no. Lol. We do not need to “find a way to draft a 1C”. Nic DeLorean was traded ages ago, we don’t need to time travel back to 2015 build a competent team. Stop scape goating the few good players. This regime is pathetic if Tage at 1C isn’t good enough for them to build out the rest. We have 2 first overalls on D and a 3rd lol

GMs don’t want to be the guy to get “embarassed” by dealing the pick that becomes the star it’s all about job security to these guys if a GM struts up to the podium and takes the consensus pick, no one is going to blame the guy if the pick doesn’t amount to what is expected: they went with what the world said They are risk-averse. Got out on a limb and it backfires, you’ll get lambasted. We can be sure in cases of similar analysis the safe course is default, rather than what’s actually considered to be best for team in greatest likelihood