Marvin

Welcome to the board! Now, GMKA has to do the hard part: not falling in love with his talent so that he can make intelligent changes to the roster and the prospect pipeline. For the moment, he seems far too enamoured with it.

I am sure there are hockey trades to be made where the Sabres send out some youth for a gritty, if over-priced, veteran and a project. Most rebuilding teams fill in their roster with gritty vets throughout their line-ups that they intend to sell at the deadline. You can target a bit higher up their rosters with good prospects and/or picks.

That's why I said "victory required." 😉 Seriously, what we are seeing with these two teams is the advantage of "blocking the kids." The kids in Detroit have to force their way onto the NHL roster; they are broken in with multiple veterans to show them the way. In Buffalo, they are rushed to the NHL and are forced to take their lumps along with the rest of the team.

Victory Required.

Just musing. Can anyone else remember the last time the Sabres scored a PPG? SHG?

First, welcome back to the board. Second, I can't believe that I am getting there too.

IMHO, Benson should be in Juniors, so 8 for me.

I did not say that the goaltending is decent. I said that the league is regressing towards where Buffalo is and that now the Sabres are not far from average. BFD. Hooray. Yippee. If we were scoring like last year, maybe I would look at it with a less jaundiced eye. Nah; as my uname indicates, that's not me. This is how many years running that goalkeeping has been subpar? I am desperate enough to see what Robin Lehner is doing, for Pete's sake. (Love is understanding / You know that this is true / Love is understanding / It's in ev'ry thing we do...) I am sick and tired of the team deflating after a bad goal. I am fed up with the continuing mental breakdowns in our defencive zone --particularly among the forwards. I am frustrated that I fall asleep to yet another loss with my long COVID. In the 1970's, I fell asleep to a lot of wins. Boy, do I miss that. The rest of the league is mediocre enough that if GMKA put a little more stock in "now", we could ascend pretty fast. Otherwise, the guys have to be thinking in the back of their heads that it is another wasted year. Once that happens, it will be plunge-arama down the league standings rather than a gradual slide.

So what? I'm still a rock star. I've got my rock moves. And I don't need you. And guess what... Oh, sorry. This is how I have been coping since The Tank.

As appealing as that dream sounds, I can't imagine Carolina being so foolish to let him go. I hate him, but he has that team playing hockey the right way

I think that I can see Granato's defencive system. I see players blowing assignments, losing positioning, being positionally unaware, or being situationally clueless. I see forwards exiting the zone too soon and leaving the defence out to dry. There are problems at the other end of the ice too aside from the lack of scoring. I see forwards get caught deep far too often when the opposition breaks out. When some of our forwards are caught deep, they are too slow to get back on defence before the opposition gets off a shot. As @PromoTheRobot said in another thread, they are confused on defence and they seem to not know how to crank up the offence while being aware of their defencive assignments, so they do neither defence nor offence well.

This is what I think.

Actually, league-wide goalkeeping has regressed to the point that we are not far from average. Having said that... The problem with the ensemble defence is an overall lack of positional discipline and situational awareness. Those can be corrected, but they take time.

Has GMKA ever heard of a sideways trade between two teams that need to shake things up? Think back to the Vladimir Tsyplakov trade for something like a 7th round pick, when the 1999-2000 Sabres looked a lot like this after Hasek went down. That helped shake up that team that led to a mad run to The Hole in the Goal. Something like a trade for a faceoff specialist who plays hockey better than Cody Eakin or for a gritty winger. Preferably both.

Welcome to the board!

Miserable wallowing.

Does drinking a small cup of brandy count as lifting spirits?

Yes, the Conference Finals. The Sabres committed mistake after mistake only to get bailed out by Hasek time and again. Frankly, I had forgotten how embarrassing that game should have been had Shannon not got the GWG in the 3rd. Honestly, the difference in the forward play in the defencive zone from the 1998 playoffs to the 1999 playoffs was pretty wide. Obviously, adding Stu Barnes and Rhett Warrener helped a lot too. I agree with you that this team, particularly the forwards, are often hilariously inept in the defensive zone. It is better than last year, but that is damning it with faint praise.

We have to face some facts. 1. Until GMKA is willing to move one of his prizes prospects, there will be no significant help coming in via trade. 2. Until GMKA is willing to overpay on term and dollars, significant help is not coming in FA. 3. If HCDG has not been as good developing Quinn and Peterka when they were thrust onto the roster 1 year too early, GMKA would not have been so blase about promoting other prospects over signing cheaper veterans. 4. Until HCDG benches a sacred cow for an entire period, there is unlikely to be a lot of accountability on the roster. 5. It seems that the only way many of these players will learn ensemble defence is if HCDG really pushes it hard over the transition offence. It is not a good sign that Jeff Skinner is one of the more responsible back-checkers of the forwards. 6. We now have concrete evidence that you need solid veterans to block the youngsters until they force their way onto the team in training camp. Now, per my uname, I am feeling very depressed. I have this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.

To be fair to Granato, Ruff had Hasek to cover up all of his mistakes. One description of the 1997-8 Buffalo Sabres from that season was "hilariously inept." Game 5 of the Washington series was on YouTube if you want to see how bad it could get.

To me, there are a lot of little problems that contribute to this issue. Last year, we were incredibly lucky with injuries to the forwards. That masked the depth issues that we are seeing this year. @PerreaultForever was the loudest on the need for forwards this off-season and his reasoning has been accurate. Much of the team is a bit too young and/or inexperienced at the NHL level to be consistent. This team can be defencively responsible and can be tough to play against, but the youth is not able to do both consistently. Also, I imagine that the coach is having a hard time getting things to work in practice given how the games sometimes go. There are too few players like Girgensons and Greenway who are physical with the opposition -- and several of us wish that there were more like them. With the injuries, that bottom 6 is just way too soft. I am still trying to figure out where the scoring went. As you can see, we have some set of problems from the make-up of the team from the GM to the coaching of the team to the players

I was in the last row of the highest deck behind 1st base at the Skydome with the guy who got me the ticket. He got interviewed by The Christian Science Monitor after the subway ride back to my car and appeared in an article that Monday. I sat in section D-2, Row 4, Seats 3 and 4 with a friend to the Houston Comeback. In the video on YouTube, on Andre Reed's 3rd TD, you see her orange hunting cap in the stands at something like the 5 yard line. Memorably, at halftime, Sherry wasn't worried because, "the Oilers always choke it away." People were reaching out to touch her head at the end of the game.

I am bringing a stamp. Could someone cancel me? My wife is a survivor of parental abuse, rape, and physical abuse by the guy she was dating before me. We deal with her PTSD all too frequently. She has told me how often she was beaten into recanting charges of abuse filed by school counselors. I personally was accused of sexual misconduct by a student where the eyewitness testimony of 8 people at the chess club attesting to my innocence was not enough to drop the case. I have that permanent blotch on my record that I have to explain every time it comes up. It is one of the primary reasons that I will not teach anymore. Please take the accusations and defences seriously and wait for the facts.

Mustache wearing.

Is he modest enough and self-aware enough to do this?