GASabresIUFAN

Let’s say for arguments sake that the Kraken want the 1st overall pick for PR and other reasons and want Owen Power to be their anchor D man for the next decade. Is there a deal to be had here? I think there is especially if the Sabres want Beniers or a different D. Why not trade down to 2nd and have Sea take KO off our hands in the expansion draft?

Again nice player but not a need and not the BPA (whatever that is).

With the graduation of Mitts and Cozens to the NHL, please name our top Center prospect? We have goalies, we have D and we have two top flight wingers in JJP and Quinn. Beniers reminds me of one player in the NHL and his name is Patrice Bergeron. Powers is a fine player but with Dahlin, Joker, Bryson, Samuelson, Borgen and Laaksonen and Johnson coming we have plenty of young D to work with. This draft is deep with D and a good one should be available in the second Rd. Grab the next Bergeron and we can say good bye to tank 1.0 and get on with a proper rebuild and a great young spine of Mitts, Cozens and Beniers.

That’s a hard pass. Next!

He should be our pick period

Never ever.

Not sure. The hockey organization doesn’t seem to be lacking resources

@JohnC Why do you ignore Hall’s part in the contract? We all agree that KA is in over his head and that the organization sucks. However that doesn't absolve Hall of his obligations under that contract to give maximum effort for this franchise. He didn’t. Contrast Hall’s play to Sam Reinhart. Reinhart, who is also an FA and likely wants to go elsewhere, gave maximum effort even after the streak and had arguably his best season of his career. Had Hall played to Sam’s level of professionalism maybe things would have been different and we would gave received more then 2 goals from this jerk. Someone up thread said Hall was a team first guy. Lol. He is one poster child for me first players. He never showed team leadership in any stop in the NHL. Even in his MVP year, he was a solo act.

Better owner. The Jacobs family, from Buffalo, allows the pros to run the franchise. Jerry stays back and his money.

Jack is a 10% career shooter. Under RK’s first year, Jack shot a career best 15.9%. His career best prior was 10.2%. This wasn't coaching it was puck luck. This past season Jack crumbled to 3.3%. Jack’s career year (and VO’s fine rookie campaign) helped disguise the negative affect RK had on most of the other forwards. Sheary, Erod, Vesey, Skinner, and KO all had career worst seasons. Even Samson fell 15 points. The only thing that kept Sam nearly on track was also a career high 15.2% shooting % that season. RK should get no kudos for Jack’s career other then being behind the bench when it happened. Now imagine what Jack could have done with a competent coach behind the bench. As to Dahlin. He is a great player searching for the right coach and D partner.

Yes the Hall and Eakin signings are an indictment of KA and the organization itself. There was also no excuse for waiting weeks to fire RK.

@JohnC you are completely missing the point. As I said our incompetent GM agreed to Hall’s terms. That proves his incompetence. It’s certainly ok got Hall to ask for the sky and moon. Hall said all the right things when he came here such as he wanted to make us better, be a Sabres longterm and be part of the solution. His play and comments after leaving prove otherwise. He had no intention of being here longterm. He was using us as a stepping stone. You may enjoy being used, but I certainly don’t. @dudacek said above Hall is a perfect guy to hate on. And no he didn’t want to sign here for the longterm. Saying you want a longterm deal but making the terms outrageous behind closes doors is just a PR stunt.

Signing Hall and a goalie is a nice theory but it would have taken significantly more skill then KA has. He overpaid for Eakin, Girgensons and even Thompson and those deals when added to Hall’s eliminated any cap for a goalie. Had he committed to part of the youth movement (Asplund, Mitts and Cozens) to start the year and given Lazar the 4C gig instead of spending 4 mill on Girgensons and Eakin, and then demoted Hutton to the A, he may have been able find the cap for Hall and a goalie. PS. I said signing Hall was his biggest blunder, but maybe not upgrading Hutton was even bigger.

Hall is full of crap. He came here because it was his biggest $ offer and he hoped Jack would pad his stats like Jack did for Skinner and get him a Skinner type FA deal. He and his agent also convinced our rookie and incompetent GM to give him a full NMC so that he could weasel his way to Boston, which is where he really wanted to go this past off-season, if things didn’t work out. He had no intention of being part of the solution here. I’ll be rooting against Bos every game this playoffs. Go Islanders

Eakin however is not KAs biggest blunder, Hall was. He signed him to appease Jack and RK despite having VO and Skinner as top 6 LWs. He then gave him an above market $ contract plus a full NMC that tied his hands at the deadline. Hall clearly didn’t want to be here and we were his method to maximize his wallet and then get himself to Boston. He, along with RK and Kozlov, are among my most disliked Sabres of all time. Ultimately signing him didn’t help the offense. The money wasted on his contract used up KAs cap space to sign a goalie and we got virtually nothing for him in trade for our trouble.

Reinhart showed this season that he is going to be a pro on the ice regardless of circumstance. He arguably played the best hockey of his career on a team going no where, at a new position, with a new HC mid season, without Jack and shepherding a bunch of kids. I've said many times that I'm ok with moving one of Jack or Sam, but not both, but I think both is a distinct possibility. I'm also not sure which of the two to keep if I had a choice. Jack is easier to keep because he has a contract and no leverage but his future NMC and bad attitude. Sam has significant leverage because he can play out his final year and be a UFA. KA can also try to bring both back and see how things go. If they go poorly again, both can still be moved at the deadline. After reading @dudacek and others thoughts I'm leaning toward trading Jack if we can get a buy in from Sam. I maybe in the minority but I liked the spine of Sam, Mitts and Cozens and think they'll even be better next season. I'm offering Sam 7year and 50 mill with a limited NMC after two years and the C, if he turns in down, trade him and tell Jack he's staying put and to grow up.

They did re-sign Girgensons and his injury changed the dynamics as well. The rationale of improving offensive depth by bringing in Eakin as a replacement over Larsson made sense on paper. However I think it easily argued that nothing KA did as a rookie GM worked and RK is responsible for a significant part of that issue. Hall was terrible and KA got fleeced when he traded him because of the high cap figure and the NMC that KA gave him. Hall was a RK acolyte. Staal was worse. Reider was bad, Sheahan a nothing, He dumped Kahun, Larsson and Lazar none of which were good decisions, but signing Eakin was simply awful in the end. Honestly it wouldn't have mattered what KA did. RK as the coach would have sunk any team. I'm curious if there is a Lazar vs Larsson comparison.

Tank fatigue. A two year tank was ok because it had hope for better players and a future, but after a decade of mismanagement coupled another terrible team was the last straw. I also wonder if the Bills success is part of the disgust with the Sabres.

That's also untrue. For example Pronman in the Athletic had us with the 5th best group 22 and younger to start the season.

LOL, what did they expect? I'm surprised it wasn't greater. My guess is that late season play improved even worse numbers.

You keep saying that, but that simply isn't true any longer. Jbot, for all his faults, did draft well. He also added Thompson, R2 and Jokiharju. By the end of last season he already had 7 prospects on the Sabres. Most look like solid players and many have star potential like Cozens, Dahlin, Mitts, UPL and R2. He also has more on the way. Laaksonen (AHL all-star), Weissbach, Rousek, Portillo and Huglen are legit prospects. Add late bloomers like Asplund, Murray and Borgen and we have organizational depth for the first time in a decade. The 23 and under crowd that played for the Sabres last season include Dahlin, Mitts, Thompson, Asplund, Cozens, Bryson, Jokiharju, R2, UPL, Samuelsson, and Murray. That's a fair amount of talent, depth and cap bargains. Mitts, Asplund, and R2 all played at a 20 goal pace last season and Thompson nearly so.

I’d take the deal in a second

I do see many forward for D trades in the group especially when you add Johanson for Jones.

I called him a cap casualty, but cap dump is more appropriate. Thanks for posting the comparables. Do you know is there is a hockey trade type comparable? Ryan Johanson for Seth Jones is the closest hockey trade I remember.

What exactly have we built? A large pile of stinking garbage. I do think there is hope from the organizational depth that exist for the first time in a decade, but sadly Jack and Samson don't see it that way. F-'em.