Pimlach

When does this ever happen? I hope they play to win. I want to finish strong. They have a good shot to win this on the road. After all, they have less pressure on the road.

Everybody that posts here should read this. Thanks for posting it. I know I’m not crazy after all.

Granato himself should have told the team to knock it off. If the veterans guided them to the wrong decision, and they did, then they are the wrong veterans, and this should have been overturned by the coach. The younger players just learned the wrong lesson and got away with the wrong behavior. If nothing else Adams should have ended all this salute bull crap as soon as he knew about it. There should have been no story outside the locker room. This is dysfunctional.

Some very good observations and comments. Some bad ones too To be clear, I have no hatred towards this group. I even defend them - Power, Cozens, EJ, Zemgus, etc - it’s documented all over here. I don’t boo, never have, but I don’t hear any boos that aren’t deserved either. I was ok with being a loyal Sabres fan and just accepting another losing season when all of a sudden the Harrington article hits the BN. The Secret Veteran interview rubs me wrong, why secret? The veteran leaders side with the young millionaires who don’t like the coach being booed. In Boston, the fans are right when they boo, their coach and their captain just said so. Yet in Buffalo it’s different. It hurts their feelings to hear boos, that’s what our coach and captain have to say about it. Look at the standings. What do Boston fans have to complain about? Marchand said they have the right to cheer or boo. Such a progressive city, people exercising freedoms and all that stuff. Granato tells us that the players feelings are hurt, and some signed extensions. I have a hard time understanding why a coach of a professional sports team would tell us that. Do they want to void the contracts now? Are they not men? Are they not professional hockey players? Is the fan base supposed to carry guilt now? Should we feel bad? I wish I didn’t know about any of this. I thought the franchise was heading up. I just commented on off years happening in a rebuild (see Detroit last year). Now I’m not sure about the direction of this team any more.

Some “give you the chills” harmonica by Lee Oskar. War - City Country City

No doubt Adams is here because he was a known commodity, he carries out orders, he listens, and I am sure he is very smart too. He was not on an NHL GM path, and yet he became one suddenly. Up until this year his teams showed slow but steady progress, He has a stockpile of prospects from trading away some very good assets He jumped the gun locking up a few kids and that could become a big problem, or he could look like genius someday. He settled for very poor goaltending in the past and now he is fortunate that UPL might actually be good. If his own acquisition (Levi) develops then Adams could look like a genius again. We are all waiting for him to ship out dead weight and use some assets, especially his prospects cache, to reshape and improve the roster and produce a strong team. This reluctance is driving the fan base crazy. Granato is there because Adams wants him there.

You jump the gun by thinking a player said the city was a dump, but extensions came up so … Winning. The Bills have a very good Coach and GM, and they have a franchise player. If the Sabres had that then this isn’t a conversation. The fact that booing hurts them so much that they talk about it to the coach amazes me. They are men. The season after the Sabres lost the SC to Philly they had a down year. The fans booed a little, first time in 6 seasons that the Sabres heard boos, and it was very little for a game or too. Peter McNab said something about it to a reporter. Imlach was pissed. He shut him up. They had dog houses back then. McNab was traded before the next season. Times change.

The Bills get Cart Blanche funding and Beane knows how to push out the cap $$ out into the future The Sabres are on a budget. This was explained in the Covid era when the family sold off failing parts of their businesses, and tightened the purse strings in an effort to achieve long term viability and maintain the family lifestyle (their words). The Sabres were put on a budget, and also had major layoffs. Boterill resigned rather than comply with “efficient and economical “ policies. PSE eventually dissolved and the Bills and Sabres are separate again, Sabres are still on budget. Bills spend to full cap.

I think he could thrive if healthy and on a better line. Tuch is fine but Skinner is lost and not doing anything. I am still not sure that he isn't better at wing if he played with Mitts at center.

Let’s keep the harp blowing going.

Move on and learn.

You think most of the team is better this year except Tage and Cozens? Power, Samuelsson, Skinner, VO, Tuch, Okposo, Krebs, Dahlin and Levi - All of them have played consistently worse than they did last year. Quinn is excused by injury and his contribution is sorely missed. Thats 12 players that declined and most of them are targeted as Core Players and stars. Mitts, Joker, Girgensons, and maybe Comrie are about the same as last year. Other than Mitts that is not much. Peterka, UPL, and Greenway are clearly better than last year. We added a better 3rd pair rotation (Clifton/ EJ/RJ) than last year and Benson has been helpful most of the time. Jost and Robinson are a not applicable

Just like a coin flip: Good luck for the Bills => McDermott and Beane and Josh Allen Bad Luck for the Sabres => No Coach, No GM, No Savior The Bills success has little to do with Pegula and much more to do with how the NFL operates. The NFL is a league that does things to increase parity, and to help the best future head coaches and future FO staff become known and available to other teams. The NFL is fed by one draft pool that is much better scouted and much better understood. NHL drafts players that are very young. They have different rules for Jr Hockey, different rules for NCAA, and different rules for Europe/Russia. Its harder and slower to re-build in hockey team.

Protest? What is this, Lord of the Flies? Their protest will start with anger and choice words, no doubt some comments about it not being fair. Then hopefully it dawns on them that this happens all the time in hockey and that they had a major role in their coach getting fired. After that they better grow from it and move on.

This is a great post. You are one of the best posters here so don't worry about it. I find myself getting too riled by all that has happened this year and that probably comes off as negative too. Especially frustrating when I can see it coming, and then watch it happen, and observe the organization say and do nothing. I had high hopes, I should have known that standing pat plus all those young players that just had career years was a recipe for a decline this season. I just posted in another thread that I think the slow roll rebuild is going to continue for awhile. That said, lots of rebuilds have a good year, followed by regression, and then make a jump. I just hope we have enough internal leadership, and enough accountability, to make it happen finally.

I think Pegula and Adams are going to continue to slow roll this rebuild using their own internally developed prospects almost exclusively. No more spending to the cap until they break through with their current core No more big free agent signings or major trades No more coaching changes when the next coach is going to be similarly hamstrung like the current No money to spend on the Arena until the Stadium progresses

The leaders missed a golden opportunity to lead and teach. That includes the coach and the GM.

And the irony of that statement is we still don't have a 4C that plays that role better.

Well this thread is specifically about Girgensons and I will never support an idea such as waiving a player that is tradeable, just to avoid getting a "Bjork" or a 7th round pick. Moving on from Girgensons and Okposo is not a stroke of genius by Schmoe. Everyone here already knows their time is up, and it was probably up last year. To my thinking Schmoe is just making an attack on a player that doesn't deserve it, and any message that comes from waiving Girgensons just screams to the rest of the league - "look at the Sabres, they are still idiots". If we want to talk rationally, without all the message sending bravado, then yes - It is time to move on from Skinner and Okposo and Girgensons. They will not be part of whatever fixes this mess. This team is not going to the playoffs. If they can't trade Z and KO at the deadline then you simply do not re-sign them. The Sabre cannot afford to treat these players like crap, and then say we are trying to fix the culture.

I can get behind moving Okposo and Z. Especially Okposo’s comments about not saluting. He blew a leadership opportunity right then and there. I specifically said add vets with tread on their tires. Young vets.

Maybe so. But then there is Torts. We lost because we sucked. We won because we had balls. 😅

I watched the postgame interview as well. Donnie is simply part psychologist and part hockey coach. No matter the question, he never talks about hockey tactics or X's and O's, never specific matchups, etc. He really is better as a coach of a player, more so than a team. He can help a player, but he struggles to get players to be consistent in a team format. Every Granato interview is a discussion on sports psychology with no real answers to anything.

The only way you send the message “country club is closing” is by closing it. Trading a player like Z is probably a good business decision, and it could be done as such. But it is not sending that message. You don’t make examples out of the wrong people and the easy targets. You want to close the country club - then Adam’s and DG should take the steps to close whatever this distraction is. I’m not sure exactly what the country club is, but the players should be doing nothing but work when they come to work. I do agree with that. You want them to play the right way - get a coaching staff that teaches it and demands it. It sure is not the way they play today. Girgensons is not the reason they play wrong Waiving Z and getting nothing for him isn’t going to change a damn thing accept to raise more eyebrows around the NHL. It’s another sign of dysfunction. He will get picked up, and he will be in a better place, and he gets all his money from the Sabres too. McDermott shut down the Rex Ryan country club. He got rid of the games, the video bull$hit and the TVs - all of it gone. Work is for work. He put up signs and he sent messages. He was and still is consistent. He brought in competent coaches and they made the players better, and they won, and they liked it. After awhile winning became a habit and now players want to play for the Bills McD also owned the 17 year drought. He said he wasn’t here for it, but once he took the job he owned it, because he said “it’s still there and the only way to end it is to own it”. Meaning he challenged them and they rose to it. None of players were there for 17 years either, but they listened. They ended it his first year with Tyrod Taylor and Nathan Peterman at QB. Lessons to be learned are right here. But they are ignored by the owner. Back to the Sabres - Based on this whole fan salute issue, it is clear that the vets on the team don’t own the drought, the coaches don’t own it, and the GM doesn’t own it. No wonder it continues and the team is in decline again. The kids should be challenged to own it and end it, but they are told by leadership that they don’t. This bad leadership is killing an opportunity for these kids to do something big and connect to the fan base, the opposite is happening Two teams with opposite approaches and owned by the same clueless guy. Ironic. The Sabres have sent messages like this before - We shipped out ROR, Risto, Eichel, Reinhart, Montour, Ulmark … they are all thriving now. The Sabres FO didn’t fix a thing other than get rid of the guys smart enough to want to leave. So go ahead and trade Z and KO, it’s really is time. I don’t see a problem. But don’t expect that will fix anything significant because the problems run so much deeper. The Sabres are run by amateurs right now. The owner is oblivious to it all.

Agree. And for the record, Rick Martin was not treated with respect when he was traded. One of the nicest guys you can meet, and a Buffalo lifer, but he was treated very poorly before he was traded away. Great guy too. So far in the Pegula era we have very few wins, no playoff games, no respect around the league, no success at anything, a dark dump of an arena , no new hero’s, and down the road probably no alumni that will give a damm.