PerreaultForever

Not following them too closely I can't speak in depth on Boston other than to say they all seem to want to be there, many take hometown discounts, they all try hard, they all pull in the same direction. The culture is strong, the team is strong, they get the most out of what they have. How exactly they do it I have no idea, hence why i say we should hire a Boston guy as our guy and let him bring it here. Look at Vancouver. Their run and character seems to be now building the same way. Boston guy in charge. Right now, wouldn't you rather we had that other 50 year old team as ours? I will say one thing for sure about Boston. They have nights to honour their veteran stars and they spell their alumni names right.Maybe it's that simple?

Maybe my point was lost in the overall paragraphs. My point is we add a piece we lose a different piece we don't get better. We added Kane as that goal scorer and ROR as 2C then we ditched Kane and added Skinner (both flawed but in hindsight I think I'd rather have kept the cheaper option who doesn't score all that much less) so we still need a 2C. For some reason we can't seem to put the pieces together in Buffalo even when we bring people in they seem to drop off and disappoint or lose their love........maybe after multiple failures you have to look back and think maybe they weren't cancers on the team, maybe there's mold in the walls.

Not so black and white. What kind of shots? Where did the shots come from? Things like that. ALL STATS are tools, they are additional info, but they need to be looked at together and many many factors need to be considered. None are meaningless, and none are all informative. Perfect example stats people hate to talk about. Leafs had a huge possession and zone time advantage against the Leafs and lost, go figure. (3 on 3 OT stats should be separated from game stats as should playoff OT stats, they are indeed different)

People say that, it feels good, but would you prefer we had Lawson Crouse instead of Jack Eichel? Okay, we might have got a better player. It was a really really really good draft. A smarter GM would have loaded up on first round picks. I imagine the Bruins would still be playing if they'd used their 3 picks on Barzal, Connor and Chabot instead of Zboril, DeBrusk and Senyshyn (or DeBrusk and 2 of the others). If you look back at the 2013-14 roster it's not very good. It's not good in 2014-15 and not all that different. It's slightly better in 2015-16 and after that it's just a whole lot of shuffling and juggling and still no playoffs. I do not believe the problem rests with the tank but rather with 2011 and the new ownership. Maybe it started when they foolishly threw all that money at Leino and Ehrhoff demonstrating to agents all over that they were chumps or maybe it was that fancy new carpet and locker room designed to "attract players to Buffalo" but maybe just spoiled the ones there and made it into a lazy country club. I dunno, I can only guess, but it wasn't the tank, it was a collossal shift that came from the top.

I think it safe to say you can always name one success and one failure and so on but overall, in terms of aggregate numbers, we have either drafted poorly or developed poorly or more likely both. A decade of futility proves it. Several times we are supposed to have had a full cupboard of prospects and not many of them amounted to anything. Now, despite the failure, the cupboard is considered fairly empty. JBot's hand was only forced (in all instances) because the team allows it, the culture allows it. The ill planned desperation rather than following a proper building plan. There are also no consequences in this organization for bad behaviour, be it fortnite playing or partying or whatever. No leadership, no accountability, it's a losing culture. Having grown up on a Sabres team in the 70s that was very different from that in all ways its very very frustrating. As for the successes, 2 of those blossomed outside this organization and who's to say Larsson (a very average player) wouldn't have been better developed elsewhere? Ullmark, I give you that cause they kept him in the minors so he might be ok. Not convinced he's a #1 or will ever be consistent, but it's possible. Borgen etc, well lets talk about them when they make the NHL. We tanked, but also traded away draft picks and players like Armia. The tank was ok, the rebuild was rushed and flawed.

No no no, there's more to it than that and you assess other factors. I don't really feel like going on and on for paragraphs about the value of +/- I only objected to your assessment of it as meaningless. Flawed maybe, incomplete certainly, but far from meaningless. otherwise ya, I'm insane. I'm insane from watching and listening to the same excuses and the same fake optimism and the same cyclical nature of explaining Sabres failures and the solution. None of it is new. We get the same stuff in a rotating fashion time after time and there's only one constant. The Pegulas bought a toy, played with it and broke it. and now they want you to believe we still have lots of talent and are oh so close and all we need is just one thing and be patient and really, the new toy they're flogging is a bag of broken glass like that old SNL sketch. So ya, 2C, that'll fix everything. Go find him. Sign him up.

That's the problem, exactly. We do not develop players properly, period.

Repeat offender. No big deal really. Pretty usual usual.

+/- is no more useless than any other stat. It has limitations, like any other stat, but it's far from useless. The comment sarcastically or snidely made a point about Reinhart being shown by analytics people to make Jack better. What that argument doesn't address is that top line players are top line players and the analysis will always show that. It's meaningless unless you can place a different top line player in the same spot and compare them. +/- doesn't tell you that Eichel sucks, but it does tell you that our top line doesn't match up well to other top lines they play against even strength. There is a team component that affects +/- absolutely, but again, it's far from meaningless. If you see a + player (with significant minutes) on a - team, that is a guy you might want to target in trade or free agency. As for the last, yes, that is now the current blame all and catch all and nobody disagrees - we need a 2C - but in looking at a decade of futility you have to acknowledge we HAD a 2C and traded him away for a pile of crap. It's always one thing after another in a rotating fashion. It's not just one thing, it's a broken franchise.

https://theathletic.com/522117/2018/09/13/islanders-goalie-robin-lehner-opens-up-about-his-addiction-and-bipolar-diagnosis-i-could-not-stand-being-alone-in-my-brain/ Did he throw the organization under the bus though? I don't think so, they were "supportive" but also chose to "move on." The question that remains for the organization would be why did they not recognize there was a problem earlier and why didn't they deal with it? I'd suspect it's a failure of locker room leadership. Peers watching a team mate drink and abuse drugs, go through manic phases and nobody realizes this guy needs help and support? The guy is bipolar. It's a real mental issue, not just a lifestyle choice. Somebody should have picked up on something, but they didn't, hence saying the organization has no fault in this is incorrect imo.

you're not 'calling me out" you're just choosing to be argumentative because you disagree with my opinion. That's fine with me, but don't pretend yours is any better than mine. Maybe you should also consider that over his 8 years in Carolina he was a -96, and despite his one good season here is a -22 in Buffalo. Also consider that we are paying a guy who averages less than 50 points a year (and is a defensive liability) 9 million a year (or whatever the exact ridiculous number is) and ask if that is good value. That's the real issue on Skinner, not my opinions or yours.

It's called not believing in analytics as a sole way of understanding hockey.

pretty much sure everybody on here states their opinions, it's kind of what sports boards are for. have a nice day.

and if he does this we can spend the season talking about how Olofsson's having an off year and how badly him and Johanson get pushed around and dominated in tough games. Krueger recognized that a one line hockey team cannot succeed. Is it his fault we don't have enough talent to be a two line team? We didn't win with Skinner on the top line either.

The phrase I used was "not sure." It's not a label, it's more of a question mark. You look at Skinner and see an off year and huge potential. I see a talented hockey player but a bit of a prima donna with possible attitude problems. Half full half empty, we will see who is right. I prefer if it's you.

Lehner's going to win the Conn Smyth. Wait for it.

Domi fired his agent and says he never asked to be traded. Make of that what you will.

I'm not questioning Skinner's ability, but I'm not sure about his motivation. I don't think it's any accident that his best ever season came in his contract year and now he has a sealed deal for the rest of his career so does he care? He strikes me as a guy who plays how he wants to and when he wants to. I'm not sure what we're going to get here on in. I suspect we'll get 20+ from him mostly but 30+ not so sure.

Rumour has Dudley possibly ending up in Florida. So much for that dream of mine.

Those are some of the question marks for sure, but arguably inexperienced enough to also be worse. It's impossible to know for sure. The mix was new every year under JBot too but it always ended up being a shuffling of chairs on the titanic. We need to add real talent, not just shuffle existing pieces and add a handful of cast offs. Dahlin should be better based on a typical D man learning curve but Skinner? Wishful and hopeful. Hope you are right but the assumption he will rebound is just that, a hopeful assumption.

I thought it was right after signing the big contract but I might have that memory wrong. Point is we brought him in as a key piece when he was like that. We also had party animal Kane raping the pillaging the town (allegedly) and well, in recent years there's more stories and rumours in that direction than in the dedicated athlete direction. Lehner came into that mix.

I would be reluctant to give up first round picks in any deal because I am far from convinced there is a deal that will guarantee a turn around and there is a much greater chance we will be even worse than this season.

I don't disagree with this, 2C is what we need, but maybe it's just a different way to get one. I am not convinced anybody's just going to want to cap dump good 2Cs without trading something of real value back to them.

maybe the question we need to ask is why he was that way when here and how he became different after leaving. Coincidence? Or maybe the culture here is simply not good. I don't have an answer to that but it does make me wonder. (I don't think O'Reilly has crashed into a Tim's in St. Louis either has he?)

Demko was amazing but yes, that was a hell of a save. Lehner was very good. Did I just type that? Yikes.