GASabresIUFAN

The play last night on the game winning goal kind of sealed it for me. He is clearly a high motor player that the Sabres need more of. Cozens doesn't make that play.

Doesn't that apply to Tage (and most other NHLers)? Tage played all of 17 games in 2019/20 and spent the rest of the year on IR He was injured some in 2020-21 He missed 11 games last season to injury and missed games this season as well. Norris is on pace to play 74 games this season. Hopefully this is the beginning of a healthy trend for him.

I agree.

I already like Norris better than Cozens.

I actually don’t care if Granato was better. It doesn’t matter. The Sabres are 14 straight tears outside of the playoffs. Why is anyone arguing about which failure was better? In NJ the GM brought in Marino, Haula, and Vanacek among others to a young roster with Ruff as coach. They miraculously went from a 60 point team to an 110 point team. The next season, the key defenders got hurt and Vanacek regressed without the good D and they missed the playoffs and Ruff got fired. It’s not the coach, it’s the roster.

It's was the basically the same team and guess what who cares. Did Granato get them to the playoffs? No. Was the defense good under Granato? No. Was offense any good outside the season when 5 guys had career years? No. Again, the coaches don't make a difference unless they have the right players to coach. The Sabres have only one blueliner who plays adequate to good defense and his name is Dahlin. The rest are crap. No coach succeeds with the steaming smelly pile of crap that is our D group. Y'all are arguing over which lousy crappy coaching staff smelled worse. IMHO fire them all and start again, I really don't care who coaches this team. Until we have a properly constructed roster it really doesn't matter who "coaches" them. To quote Bill Murray in Meatballs: "It just doesn't matter!"

The Sabres need 2 top 4 stay at home D. A LHD works with Dahlin as he prefers to play RD anyway. We then need a RHD stay at home D to play with Byram or Power as one of them is likely to be traded this offseason to save cap space and to remove one expensive piss poor blueliner who can't play defense.

The Sabres are 14 years and counting. I believe the Bills were 17 years between playoff appearances (2000-2017). Anyway! I don't think the trade told us anything this board didn't already know. We all know in our hearts Adams will be returning as GM for next season. We all hope he'll be fired along with the terrible coaching staff, but that's unlikely to happen. Adams has a contract and TP loathes paying two GMs or coaches at once anymore. So we have to pray the Adams somehow gets a clue and fixes the holes on the roster he created.

Even with the improvements under Granato, the defense and goaltending were terrible and the team never got over the hump and made the playoffs. Even in Granato’s best year, the team still had a negative differential despite finished 3rd in the NHL in goals scored. In fact they allowed 300 goals that season. The team’s offense has rebounded under Lindy this year going from 23rd to 12th overall in the NHL. Unfortunately, GA has backslide worse from 11th best to 28th allowing 3.5 goals a game. I remarked last season that the underlying stats such as HDCA were still terrible despite the improved GA and this season with UPL back to playing like he did in 22/23, the GA has increased significantly but the underlying terrible D stats remain about the same. The terrible defense is on Adams and Adams alone. He built the roster and he hired and kept Wilford as the D coach. Until someone fixes the defense, no HC is going to succeed in Buffalo.

A real GM would keep Dahlin and one of Byram or Power and flush the rest. Truthfully, all but Dahlin stink, but KA invested to much in Power and Byram. I suspect both will return. IMHO Power will never even become even adequate defensively and he should be dealt.

No coach, as we have seen, gets a positive result from this terrible lineup. Did Lindy fail to move the needle on this group? Sure, but Scotty Bowman couldn’t win with the defense Adams gave Lindy. I’m all for clearing the coaching staff and starting again for the 40th time, but until the roster is fixed, no coach is winning in Buffalo.

We did get the better player when healthy. He is a better scorer, he’s better defensively, he’s better in the FO circle and plays both special teams. Cozens was a disaster on the PP, struggled defensively and didn’t kill penalties. Cozens is also an 8% shooter. The only reason Norris was available was his injury history.

Besides Cozens, Samuelsson, Power and ultimately Benson who should have gone back to Jrs and then to the AHL to physically develop and frankly to save his ELC.

Makes the strategy of not blocking prospects look pretty stupid. Kulich spent 100 games in the AHL, maybe a bunch of others should have as well.

I just watched the entire video. The media members failed to ask the right questions. Adams admitted that Power needs a partner and the defense stinks. If he "knows" these things, why didn't the media members ask the follow up questions of that these issues are nothing new and why haven't they been addressed previously and what are you going to do about fixing them now? I thought I disliked Adams before watching this video, but I loath him now. He is so smug. The losing is on me he says and he needs to be better, yet he consistently does nothing but tinker with the bottom of the roster or trade one flawed player for another. None of his moves have actually made the team better. How does this clown still have a job.

...and he didn't know that last off-season, the prior deadline or the off-season before that? Is he just recognizing the need now? I always thought Mike Milbury or Craig Button were the worst GM'sin hockey history, but Adams is taking the cake.

As to the OP, Cozens is a career 8% shooter. His contract year 30 goal season was the exception when he shot nearly 15%. We have to face the reality that he just isn’t that good. Truthfully many of the guys from that “great” 2019 Canadian draft class aren’t thriving in the NHL. Dach, Cozens, Byram, Krebs, and Newhook haven’t found success in the NHL as people expected. Later picks like Harley and McMichael are outperforming their higher rated peers. Too many Sabres on that list.

No idea and Adams doesn’t either. Any legit plan would begin by firing Adams and his merry band of failures including all the coaches. They have driven the franchise into the ground, mutilated the development of most of the young players. Enough! If we had a real GM the plan would start with fixing the defense. To turn this ship around we need to move on from one of Power or Byram. Neither can play defense at all and we don’t need two $8 mill D men who only play 50% of their position. That money would be better spent on two top 4 defensive D who can play with Dahlin and the either Power or Byram. They’d cover up the young D mistakes while allowing them some extra freedom to be offensive D. You re-sign JJP, Byram (if kept), and McLeod to bridge deals (3-4 years) as they all have issues in their games that need to develop. McLeod probably gets replaced my Helenius in a few years. Quinn gets a 1-2 year prove it deal or traded to add the necessary D. I’d also buyout Samuelsson to help finance the new defenseman. The next question is what to do with the goaltending? My answer for now is one more year of UPL and Levi as the backup with a new coach and a better D group. We don’t need superstar goaltending to reach the playoffs. We need average goaltending to go with our good offense. I think one of the issues for UPL is he thinks he has to stand on his head each night to keep the team in the game and he’s sadly correct. I think a better defense will bring out the better UPL. We know he has better play in him. While this plan uses with what’s here, the question is identifying and acquiring the right 2 defensemen to make this plan work. Given our 14 years at the bottom, our terrible management (which is likely to return), high taxes and lack of palm trees, getting FAs for those roles will be close to impossible. Sadly I also don’t trust Adams to find the right players or make the right trades even if he could identify the right players.

He has been paroled from hockey prison.

4-0. Sorry I missed it.

For what? He is completely useless in the defensive zone. He is often out of position, doesn’t clear the crease, and is a giveaway machine. This is his 3rd NHL season and he hasn’t improve at all defensively. In fact, I’d argue he is worse this year than last. Honestly, I doubt he’ll ever be even adequate defensively or will ever play to his contract cost.

I named him Howdy Doody.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6175461/2025/03/08/nhl-trade-deadline-2025-team-grades/ “Buffalo Sabres: B There’s now a clearer vision of what the Sabres could look like in 2025-26, and it’s a different vision than the one general manager Kevyn Adams had two seasons ago when he signed Dylan Cozens to a seven-year contract worth more than $7 million per year. Adams said earlier this season he was willing to listen to trade offers for core players, and he followed through with one of his boldest moves during his tenure. Adams wanted to make his roster better with player-for-player trades that could shake up the mix of a roster that has underachieved for two straight seasons. Whether he accomplished that remains to be seen. The Sabres added Josh Norris, who can be a prolific scorer when he’s healthy. This deadline is just the beginning, but it’s also the clearest sign yet that Adams is altering his plan and trying to change the identity of this team on the fly. — Matthew Fairburn”

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6183737/2025/03/07/nhl-trade-grades-senators-sabres-dylan-cozens/ “Corey Pronman: Dylan Cozens is an extremely talented player who has underperformed after signing his big extension. There are a lot of reasons to think the 2019 No. 7 pick will bounce back though.” “Josh Norris is a very good all-around center. He’s a strong skater who competes hard off the puck and has legit offensive skills. He’s shown he can be an effective two-way center when healthy, with very good puck hands, vision and finishing abilities.” “Senators grade: A- Sabres grade: C+” ”James Mirtle: The even bigger red flag for Norris has been his inability to drive offense at even strength. Over the past three seasons, Cozens is a respectable 97th in five-on-five points per 60 (1.97), putting him ahead of players like Nazem Kadri and Brock Boeser despite not always having great wingers to play with in Buffalo.“ “Norris, meanwhile, has managed only 1.31 points per 60 in that span, putting him 369th – basically in bottom-six territory – despite playing significant minutes with Ottawa’s top players.” “Senators grade: A Sabres grade: C-“

Video of trade call.