Marvin

You should go to the Megaprojects YouTube channel to see what else you could make a comparison with. 😉

Speaking for myself, I always treat other people's religion or lack thereof very seriously. I would never, ever denigrate Jesus, Muhammed, Moses, etc. As a Sikh, it is a sin for me to do so. Please accept my apologies for any offence which I may have caused. It was not my intention.

"The Jesus" is a reference to "The Big Lebowski." The character was played by John Turturro. I was trying to lighten things up, but I guess it fell flat.

Why not The Jesus? John Turturro would be cool.

If there were a board emoji for a face palm, this would we one place where I would use it. He is not Bobby Orr putting up +128 in 1970-1.

He said "very good forwards", not OK forwards." While I am at it, I don't think having "a" centrepiece of an Eichel trade is a good idea. I would rather there be more balance in the return because it could become very toxic for that anointed one. Ask yourself how differently Tim Connolly would have been treated had he come here outside of the Mike Peca trade. I'd rather have a balanced 4 piece return.

You really need both the guy who takes it (to score more goals) and the guy who dishes it out (to yield fewer goals). Otherwise, you have perimeter players on offence and no one to clear the crease on defence.

There is no one solution because there is more than one reason for all the losing. You can blame an overall lack of talent. We have not had enough talent since the prelude to The Tank. Unless the Eichel trade produces a few "now" pieces or GMKA makes a couple of trades, the team is unlikely to ice 4 complete NHL lines with 3 pairs of NHL defencive pairs and 2 NHL goaltenders yet again. Talent matters. You can blame culture. Losing has been acceptable because of The Tank. Because The Tank created an expectation of losing, when an untimely goal against happens, players often sagged and played like, "here we go again." (GMJB could have broken the cycle by moving picks for players after the 10 game winning streak, but he chose to undermine it instead, which just added insult to injury.) Culture matters. You can blame the GMs and Coaches. The continual turnover has made the organisation chaotic. One GM grossly overpaid for talent while the next one undersold talent. Neither of the last 2 GMs could assemble enough talent to ice a complete, competent NHL line-up and the current one is repeating this mistake. What talent we had was often ill-fitting, miscast, or did not mesh. Management matters. The results of undermining good play during The Tank seasons were extremely pernicious. Practises became less disciplined. Lazy bench changes somehow became acceptable. Sloppy play was routine. This acceptance of mediocrity has been part of the culture. Coaching matters. IMHO, dismissing any one of these causes will lead you to an incomplete picture of the reason for the drought. Although the original sin is The Tank and how complete the teardown was, more than enough time has elapsed since then for the team to have pulled itself out of the basement.

You lived up to your name. Welcome to the board.

Not a fan of 5'9" Mike Peca, are you?

Because of the injury, I expect we will get more conditional magic beans than people here want and fewer concrete pieces as a result.

One under-rated note about this hire: like Matt Ellis and Adam Mair, he had success in Buffalo. We need more people associated with the team and interact with the players who expect the Buffalo Sabres and Rochester Americans to be good. That attitude in and of itself is a positive.

I believe there is a morals clause that allows San Jose to void his contract.

welcome back to the board.

welcome back to the board.

Welcome to the board.

Boneless wings AND seltzer? That's hitting below the belt.

What is the Sabres' current cap hit without Eichel? If it is low enough, I wonder if KA is trying to make a return of current salary in an Eichel deal acceptable to Pegula because it would be needed to reach the cap floor. No pure cap dumps, mind you, but maybe an overpaid contract or two.

Your explanation is why I think part of any Eichel trade will have conditional picks and a reclamation project. These mitigate both sides' risks in a trade.

You ought to know by now...

I think Eichel holds out of training camp and into the regular season. He has an injury which has not responded to treatment. He has no reason to risk anything, so why would he play anything but shinny? I think he WANTS the trade to be ROR on steroids.

Welcome to the board.

No, you are basically correct from the Sabres' viewpoint. And welcome back to the board.

Correct. He definitely got a lot of shifts at forward early on. I think by 1982-3, he was firmly on defence.

That was my point. After the big, rugged defence we had had for years, we were overly critical of Housley for his entire time in Buffalo -- no matter what he did right, his flaws represented what we lost and respected. More recently, Tim Connolly represented the Mike Peca trade in the same way.