Marvin

You just triggered something in my head. Ow, that hurts. What if Botterill's plan last year was for Eichel to be between Sheary and Vesey with Johansson, Rodrigues, Skinner, Reinhart, Olofsson, and Mittlestadt filling in the top 9 while a guy from a trade for an RD and, ugh, Sobotka filling in? Jack runs his line while the other 6 figure something out. That seems ill-conceived, but it looks a lot like what the Pens do with Crosby and Malkin. My head hurts some more.

Surely part of Murray's job was to find this out and either nip it in the bud of not trade for him in the first place. And here is why I opposed the tank and then the premature trades to accelerate the rebuild. We did not need to have good play rewarded with a trade while, by negative inference, bad play was punished with a place in Buffalo. (According to Gionta, Foligno, Zemgus, and Larry, that was how players joked about it on the bench.) We have not had organisational depth nor good ensemble play starting with the tank year -- regardless of the GM and Coach. I believe that high expectations, ensemble play, good centers, chemistry on defence, gritty depth, and good goaltending can make a team a Cup threat for years. The tank violated the first two. The aftermath with our GM's has been violating those two and at least two of the other four each season.

I agree on the speed of the horn. Same here. Ties were fine. Agreed on the goaltending. Adams does have supporters around the league, but not as many as Botterill and Murray. Maybe that is a good thing. But for now, yeah, people are licking their chops at a potential ROR-type return for Jack and Rasmus.

One of my sisters does neurologic research. I have not been able to watch the NFL much because of the crap they pulled with CTE. I am temporarily OK with them for this year, but because my reasons would be considered political, I will omit them here. My info on the Pegulas, albeit 3rd hand, is that they are worth a LOT more than they were when they bought the Sabres, but are far less liquid in the short term for reasons that PA would correctly rant about. What I have heard jives with what Gabrielor and JohnC have said. Honestly, with the numbers I have heard on how much the money the Sabres lost the last few years and the potential of no arena revenue for the next season, I think it is prudent business to restructure and try to innovate, regardless of his net worth. IMHO, the Pegulas felt that the money they shelled out for the scouting staff has been wasted on bad pick handling and mediocre picks. They also seemed to think that the team was top-heavy in administration. Given how good our some of the amateur scouts here and on HfBoards have been with the Sabres, I think that video scouting can clearly work, except that it is a different skill from in-person scouting. Let us hope they hit on the correct formulation.

To buttress this argument: Fans of both the Sens and Pens were upset about the Sabres "stealing their guy" who was being groomed to be their next GM. In NHL circles, Murray and Botterill apparently were both highly regarded hockey minds who would be good GMs. Both times, people around the NHL gave advice on whom to consider (LaFontaine with Murray; the Pegulas with Botterill) The Pegulas' business history is that they like to find up-and-comers whom they trust to run various parts of the business and keep them around a while. Unfortunately, that means that they have sometimes failed because of The Peter Principle, as apparently with Murray and Botterill. Obviously, the failures were less catastrophic for his gas business than it has been for the Sabres. That also means that expecting them to bring in a veteran to be GM is a forlorn hope. This drives me crazy. We can hope that he hit the jackpot with Adams.

How dare you question their existence? ?

My biggest problem with the turd burger, aside from its existence, was that it had a different colour on the front and back. That could create a slight hesitation when playing that could hurt team performance even more than the lack of talent on the ice.

Just too many. But a few that seem to have been missed: Frank Gorshin Steve Martin Garry Shandling Lenny Bruce Redd Foxx Lily Tomlin Don Adams

I would argue that the only reason that Murray's surrendering of picks in the ROR and Kane trades may not seem egregious is because the over-over-payments were asinine to begin with, were ill-timed in addition, and smacked of trying to make Bylsma look good because of the Mike Babcock spurning. But at least I understood why he targetted whom he did and what direction he had. I got no such feeling of direction from Botterill. His appear worse than they might otherwise seem because they seemed aimless and did not help at all. And he had the gift of the Skinner trade to help out his numbers.

I still will make the point. I am miffed that he knows so little about us that he would even claim something that outrageous.

When I was at The Other School in Michigan, there was a bar near the Chevy plant which had a Bouncer and a Barmaid from Buffalo as well as several expats who would go there. The first time I went in there was in 1992 during the Sabres' regular season. Once I had found out that there were expats on the staff, I went in late one evening and asked them to bring the cooks out to my table. We explained to them how to make wings properly. They made use a few orders with some variations on what we liked and we told them our consensus. Sure enough, I went there a few weeks later (game 5 of the series against Boston) and over a dozen Buffalo expats were there because word got around that they made wings properly. Since most of us lived in East Lansing, they opened a second location near MSU in 1993 and moved the Buffalo people to it. We expats invaded. Word even got around to the students that the bar had proper wings. Expats came in from up to 3 hours away to watch Sabres and Bills games just to get wings. They told me in 1996 on my last visit to the bar before graduation that they figured we would invade like we did. This weekend, I am protesting Governor Cuomo saying that wings are not a real meal by going to a bar, getting a single order plus carrots, celery, and a potato, and symbolically telling him to get stuffed.

From what I heard, Botterill had several problems with analytics: 1. For the statistics that are generally regarded as useful, he over-valued some and under-valued others. 2. He had his own extra analyses that he wanted done. Some may have been useful whereas others were head-scratchers. 3.If he zeroed in on someone, he would over-emphasise the positive analytics for that player and under-emphasis the negative analytics. If any one of these is true (IMHO, #1 is immediately obvious given the imbalance in skills among the defencemen and the lack of centres; #3 is immediately obvious given the Frolik and Simmonds trades and that he allegedly pushed for Tage Thompson over better prospects in the ROR trade), then we have a misuse of statistics. I think I might put this into the Analytics group. A thread on how teams and people misuse statistics would be useful. Also, unless you are a numbers person, it is easy to get snowed in by a blizzard of digits, decimal places, and plus and minus signs. You can fall into the numbers verifying preconceived notions of player quality versus learning what the numbers are telling you.

I have heard that they would make a decision and then cherry pick data to justify the decision (or lack thereof) ex post facto.

That's the one!

From the wing fest, some of the best "different" flavours come from out-of-town or even in town at an ethic place. In town, I have had Korean, Indian curry, and Thai Peanut Sauce wings that are just out of this world. For out of town, one of the best came from fricking Grand Forks, North Dakota. There was a place from Houston, Texas that had superb Texas Barbecue wings. Another from New Mexico had a delectable Tex-Mex. If you live out of town, I suggest that if you know what flavours are done well locally, then get wings like that. It would be hard to go wrong. Here, we can rely on standard mild-medium-hot-suicide combos as a fall-back; think of this fall-back as how you should look at wings where you live. I can't imagine Cajun wings in New Orleans or Cuban-sauced wings in Miami being anything other than excellent.

I really miss Rooties. They won the first 2 years at WingFest until they closed from the indoor smoking ban -- business went down 15%. In NT, try Dome Stadium.

Damn, do I miss The Pop Shoppe.

Maybe I am underestimating the money generated locally. But I still think that none of the teams will stay in their bubbles completely and that a COVID-19 spike is a certitude.

These are the kinds of normal moves I am looking for. I would love to ice a real NHL line-up for the first time in almost a decade.

You have to explain this to me. If they stay in their bubbles, there is virtually no commercial benefit aside from some food and the teams in the bubbles. If there is a significant commercial benefit, then it will come from the teams ignoring their bubbles. Then we get to be a COVID-19 hot spot for a few months again. Is this trade worth it? It's high-risk, low reward.

Oh, man. Some of my favourite memories of the Sabres' first couple of years are of Eddie the Entertainer. Note the back cover, @LabattBlue. Favourite Eddie Shack story: Rudy Pilous, coach of the Chicago Black Hawks, was getting annoyed at Shack in a game in Chicago Stadium and started taunting him. At one point, he yelled "Shack! You illiterate loser!" Later in the game, Shack scored and then skated over in front of Pilous. He raised his arms, and sarcastically proclaimed, "SCORE! S-C-O-A-R! SCORE!"

It's worse than you think: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/23/child-care-crisis-pandemic-economy-impact-women-380412

If you think you are getting Lindholm at that contract, that looks like what it would take at the very least.

True. It's just an hilarious coincidence.

The problem with hockey sticks is that EVERY team which had a hockey stick in its logo was one of the 50 worst teams in NHL history at some point in their history. That, in an of itself, is enough of a reason to avoid hockey stick logos.