Thorner

This post touches on a lot of things. I love this board, and the interactions it produces far more than the national hockey league product. I don’t really even watch it. I used to love it. I don’t even know if the Sabres killed it for me, or if the league killed the Sabres. Don’t really know which way is up. My loyalty is to the crest. I don’t live in Buffalo, and never have, but if the Sabres left Buffalo there’d be no more hobby anymore. Because they are the BUFFALO Sabres. The crest is a buffalo, between two sabres for jeepers sakes. I can love them and i can hate them and sometimes that’s a very fine line but the sport would be barren, for me, without them

Good breakdown of how Ewing theory manifests

I don’t think I’m prepared for the amount of red X / green vomit one-two punch combos I’d find coming my way, but you are a gentleman and scholar - and I showed my mom your post. It’s going up on the fridge!

Never know. We got a team back here in Winnipeg when they said it would never happen

Often a team missing their best player elevates due to the loss of one player but the combined increase in output of the “rest.” I’d imagine it’d be even more prominent in hockey as one player makes much less difference than in basketball And Mario Lemieux’s points per game dropped by 15% in the playoffs. He’s missing something! Good player tho. Not everyone can be the epitome of intangibles and elevated play like Jack Eichel is, for example, putting Mario to shame by INCREASING his points per game in the playoffs by 16%

Ewing theory. Yes, it predates Auston Matthews

More goals than assists every year as a negative? I do see the bias you mentioned considering TT haha As for talk of Matthews “missing” something intangible: that’s absurd

Your strategy of never having any goalposts at all has worked out well

The team has been very bad for a very long time. We can logically conclude that someone is responsible. Or someone(s). It doesn’t really matter who we blame in the end for causing it: because we know in the end the owner is tasked with fixing it. If not, who else? What we are discussing is mostly the semantics of whether Terry did it, or allowed / allows it to happen obviously Terry isn’t out here just hiring amazing GMs who’s incredible aptitude somehow consistently fails to manifest through a comprehensive analysis of the gamut of moves made in the micro, like, we’d see some iceberg poking above the surface of a 76 point average in 5 seasons. We know Adams was agreeable to the format Terry wanted for the team based on the conditions he took over the GM job, and otherwise unable to convince his owner of a more efficient plan. Removing the GM only matters if we hire someone better the next time, but as Promo points out re: other owned teams - it can happen by chance. Easy choice to make after an analysis period of 5 years, imo. The risk of employing an inferior GM is minimal

The logic of Bane’s “open door” prison I kid. But seriously, that was the logic: the illusion of hope was the key aspect of the torture I think that’s where the “might as well sell” side comes from

He predictably led the league or was near the top of the league in penalties drawn for quite a few years, allowing any team with a capable power play a world of opportunity. Scholars will document whether we capitalized on that. Skinner may be totally shot, now, I don’t watch much hockey, but there was a good stretch of time where he was a very strong overall positive in the right fit If the buyout was the right call, it was the right call. But it’s not hindsight to say that re: team competitiveness, which is the only important factor, clearing the cap space was always only the first half of the equation

Definitely the Joey Tribbiani

I still think Adams can get it done, this season

And the social media team showed Adams over the moon at snagging Matt Irwin. It’s documenting ineptitude across the board, we already knew this When fans don’t see their owners involved they scream, “absentee owner!”.

Doesn’t that fact the “everything is actually fine” defence is being employed wantonly, after a stretch of hockey that, according to history, literally couldn’t have been worse, illustrate to you are arguing with an unmoveable position? There’s no standard. There’s nothing you could point out that classifies as failure: hockey history dealt its most significant blow and the position was left undaunted. There’s no proof against it: the team is simply fine until such a time as it’s good: those are the parameters

As long as he gets fired from the GM position after indisputably falling flat on his face in embarrassing fashion for 5 years (should we miss this year), as so told by numerous avenues of demonstrable evidence from team building down to, most importantly, record over an uncommonly long time frame to fail to find an iota of success regardless of context and geographical location, I’m good

If we miss the playoffs, I think it’s basically 50/50. 5 years is a long time; on the other hand, I could see Terry and others pointing to someone like Yzerman in Detroit in defence of Adams.. “it takes time” etc etc.

It’ll likely pick up, but the east could also just be really weak this year. It happens

To me, the entire reason the strategy was even *arguably* logical was because losing guaranteed one of the two. The framing around this website, for example, was much more so “McEichel.” I’ve come to disagree with the strategy entirely, but if it was in our control to achieve such a functional goal (be so bad on purpose we finish last, guarantee McEichel), I see the vision If they did it with the sole purpose of getting McDavid to the extent the strategy’s success was, in their opinion, dependent on it, they are absolute fools. I think they had a 20% chance of that, even if they DID finish last. That would be a horrendous, meandering gamble. Yup, Terry definitely picked out Beck Malenstyn

Teams have made the playoffs with players worse than Skinner, teams will make the playoffs this year with players worse than Skinner, and teams will continue to make the playoffs going forward with players worse than Skinner. Bogosian was a mystic detriment to a team making the playoffs until he wasn’t. The sabres were a point away two years ago: the gods didn’t step in because of Jeff: he was a central reason we were as close as we were. Edmonton is in a playoff spot right now. I’m not saying he’s who you target specifically, at this stage of his career: but sometimes I think people actually think Taylor Hall provides lottery luck or Jeff Skinner represents a curse against making it

Feel like the Sabres gain the most ground when they don’t play: …unlike last year, the playoff cut off line might not even require a mostly mediocre team, it might actually settle for “just be a bit less bad”. A team or teams may heat up, but at least as of now, you only need to be bad -but not terrible- to find yourself in the spot right now. I think all 3 carrion teams GM’s (detroit, Ottawa, buffalo) should be on hot seats correspondingly hotter because of this fact

You’re thinking of PELRP

Current pace for 8th is 82 pointz make .500 great again

Forest from the trees. The reputation risk seemed to go unbalanced in the equation. I think their chosen tact was far more risky, and it bore out: BEFORE we even consider the on-ice roster differences resulting *directly* from the Vegas swap. The other end of it is, as you present it, almost entirely rooted in scorned emotion: “he asked out, now he wants this? Screw him.” Zero accountability from the organization, when it mattered most. Why is that? *THEY* tanked to get Jack Eichel. Prioritizing Jack above the rest of the roster wasn’t just what they signed up for, it was their *enacted strategy from day one*. They thought they could renege in the end, after failing to build a team around the man they torpedoed the team for, and anointed savior? They refused to lie in the bed they made, when a franchise player asked out, not even because of their failings, but because they intimated they wanted to replicate them, in enacting another long form rebuild, their cheap “hack” to get high talent, at the cost of the prime of the player they burned the first go-round? So full of hubris. You let him get the surgery. Look at the results of situation, with an honest eye, I dare you, or anyone He doesn’t get credit because his teams have averaged 76 points a season since he took over. These teams are inclusive and reflective of the moves you mention results

Have you seen the film INCEPTION (2010)?