Thorner

Does Reilly cost more than Jost? Saw his salary was 1 mil higher this year

I wouldn't be so definitive as to say he has "failed". But I would think it's fair to say, definitively, that the results of the rebuild, for this season in particular, failed to live up to what should be expected of the GM and team. Drafting top 5 would be an extremely disappointing season for the rebuild

6 teams have lost 7 games in a row this season: Buffalo, Calgary, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Anaheim, and Vancouver Only Buffalo has lost all 7 in regulation. St Louis lost 8 in a row, in regulation, to set the league mark - a win today allows the Sabres to avoid matching the longest league-wide losing streak of the year. Get it done.

That's sarDARian no mr, accent on the "dar"

It's been horrible for the advances metrics of the D as a whole, so good call

Exactly. The poor drafting beforehand, leading into the tank, and the stripping down of any and all talent on the roster, created a franchise that was both lacking in system and on roster, creating an exceptionally high degree of difficulty in creating a good roster. Murray did not wheel and deal an inordinate amount of picks and prospects - he just didn't, I've run the numbers and posted them several times - it's just that he had no runway in making mistakes. He couldn't afford to miss if he made deals and...he certainly missed on a few. He wasn't a good GM. He failed because of it - but his poor aptitude doesn't sully all strategic attempts at supplementing a core with reasonable deals, forever more at least it shouldn't. Gotta find that balance

ROR was still a good trade Kane not so It's also amazing that the "spectacularly wrong" still led to a point total (81) we've failed to match since I think under a good GM, this could be true. There's no reason to suspect that Murray, who showed poor aptitude in identifying the players to add to the room re: culture, would have had the aptitude to successfully pull off a different strategy

There's a common perception that a guy who was GM here 6 years ago "traded away" all our prospects and picks, even though he traded less away than his successor Botterill. IMO Murray's failure was significantly more about the timing of when he chose to bring in vet players who would dominate the room, and in particular that he failed at identifying players that would be good for the room. His error was that of aptitude. IMO people conflate this often with some sort of idea that any kind of trade while we are supposed to be in "wins don't matter" mode is "bad" just on it's surface as a strategy. Rightly or wrongly, you will find that beyond the obstacle of needing to put together a trade people think is fair (didn't seem like your suggested trade was a good one) - you better make it a trade that looks really, really safe for the Sabres because as mentioned, there is an underlying resistance against moves because of Murray seemingly ruling out that supplement your core strategy for the foreseeable future decades. Kevyn!

kinda looks like he could be Malone's brother

Regardless of what happens with his tenure, and really with the Sabres in general, that moment will always have a very special place in my heart Truly very fond of it

Ahh help for Roch makes sense thanks

I agree with those online saying it only really makes sense if there’s a trade coming. Otherwise it’s another 12th/13th forward indistinguishable from our other fringe NHLers. Or maybe he called Kevyn and said he wanted to be here and there’s going to be a 20 min embedded Buffalo thing about it who knows

Like I said, if you peruse the vote, it leans harder to playoff bubble and 90 points than anything else “Oh we knew it’d be like this, rebuilds take time. Baby steps.” No bueno on the fan backtrack. People are literally allergic to maintaining expectations.

Nah. More than a few people were saying the team we saw to end last season was the real them. People were touting their record to end it endlessly. Saying they had established that as a consistent pace at this point. It’s pretty disingenuous to now be like “oh well the majority knew they wouldn’t come close to playing how they finished to end the year” Quite bogus tbh and an incorrect representation of the optimism of the offseason “Extremely obvious” we’d only be incrementally better? Your post almost reads as satire honestly because of how inaccurate the characterization was. Plenty predicted playoff bubble/the thought we could fight for a spot all year. What’s incremental improvement, 80 point? Most were sitting mid-high 80s or low 90s. And even BEYOND that, we are currently pacing for 68 points. - - - Leading option was: somewhere around 90 PLUS points and playoff bubble Second option is modest improvement listed at 80-90 so let’s break it down the middle and say 85. So the board leaned towards a combination of 90 plus and mid 80s.

Literally zero chance they can sell another development year next year to the fans You are suggesting the intention for this season was a high pick?

6 in 16 for Sam, but also 4 of those points (3 goals) in his last 5. Maybe that turns out to be a blip, but considering he has almost always started very slow, it's likely just par for the course, and now we are seeing his production come along. Will have to wait and see to know for sure. I'm actually pretty surprised Larsson is out of the NHL. We should sign him

This should give Josh a chance to......grow

As long as we don't start touting a looming Cup next time they string together a few wins, I still think we might be ok LT. That's just rose-colored glasses bias on my part, but. Ya - gotta turn it around eventually, right? ...right?

Forget seems to be, they've outright said it

It's a salient point. Winning isn't supposed to be such a precious commodity that we want to save it for later. It's not an endangered resource. A .500 team is like bottom 3rd of the league, it's really, really not very hard to construct a team that can win ~ half its games or, more accurately, attain half the available points. Agree but deluca .500 isn't that meaningful of a connotation to me if it's simultaneously of the NHL .500 variety at the same time. I just call that NHL .500 then

I hate doing this, and presented w/o comment: Ralph: 36-49-12, .433 points % Don: 48-65-14, .433 points %

.500 is still in reach. I think that'd be a reasonably achievable benchmark at this point. Can hang our hats on improving from the 81 total in 2015 which I said was the bare minimum acceptable total coming into this season.

That's "culture", too, right?

I think it's the mindset they are being infused with. See: ROR Comes from the top down. I know we say "it's different", but there's a common denominator that's been there since the beginning of this putrid stretch. again, screw you, @PASabreFan