JohnC

What you saw in this game is not what I saw. That’s okay. As you point out, how they play in the next 4-6 games will be more telling than one game.

One of the main reasons that Zito has been successful is that he has surrounded himself with a top notch senior consulting staff who know hockey and are unafraid to express their opinions to the GM. That’s a tribute to Zito for being receptive to different voices in the room and to bounce around challenging opinions in the room. That’s a sign of having a secure ego and wise head.

He had a history of lingering injuries that affected his play. But that is not to say that the criticism that he got wasn’t warranted, because it was.

You play half of your games on the road. As it stands, the Sabres are the worst road team in the league with a 1-5-2 record. (Recognize that this is a small sample size.) I don't want to be overly negative because it is fatiguing be so. But the reality is that when you don't win games that you should, like Calgary and St. Louis, that it is a damaging blow for a team that has a small margin of error. I would love to be wrong and see the Sabres go on a 10-game win and non-losing streak. But the odds are heavily stacked against it happening. The Sabres don't need to worry about the big picture. Their attention should be on the game-to-game results. Tomorrow, a good Carolina team comes in. The home team needs to come away with a win. That's where their and our attention should be on.

The Sabres have the worst road record in the league. Their record on the road is 1-5-2. So extended win streaks will be an enormous accomplishment for a team that seems incapable of having sustained success. When you play a team like Calgary that played the previous night, and come away being flat and losing, you are creating a steeper mountain to climb. I'm not deliberately trying to be negative but face the reality that this team is contending with.

I'm not going to over-interpret beating Chicago coming off of a back-to-back. But just focusing on this game in isolation it can't be questioned that the Sabres played well, and more importantly played hard throughout. The game against Calgary was disappointing not so much because of the outcome but more for the pitiful effort. So let's give credit when warranted and not manufacture criticism when not merited. Just some quick thoughts on the game: In general, I was happy with the effort. Maybe the Zucker return was a factor in this team playing harder because of his mature presence. It's likely that Benson will play in the next game and soon Norris will be back. So we should get a better sense of what this team is capable of. Tage and his line played as if they cared and were determined to be a driving line. Then why did they play so lacklusterly against Calgary? This up and down play bothers me a lot. Quinn played well. He's certainly not a physical player but in this game he at least tried to body up. Having Zucker on the line appears to have given him a boost. His pass to Zucker for a score may have been the best pass in the game. Quinn needs to shoot more and utilize his biggest asset. Samuelsson played really well. What a pleasant surprise! What's even more impressive about his elevated play is that he is our most consistent defenseman on the unit. And on top of that he has scored more goals than most of us thought he was capable of. The lessoned to be learned is that when you shoot on net you have a chance to get it in. UPL was solid. The Sabres overwhelmed Chicago. But let's put things in perspective: this rebuilding team is six points ahead of us in the standing. I was worried when Byram skated off the ice with his arm dangling. Relieved to see him back. When he's on his game and involved in the offense it presents an added dimension to it. Doan is a terrific addition. He has a hardy style of play and is more offensively skilled than I first thought. What does this dominating win mean? I'm not sure. It will mean more if we play well against Carolina, a good and tough team.

Was the owner the person who required that Jarmo be hired? Or did the owner tell the GM that he needed veteran help around him resulting in KA bringing in Jarmo? Or did KA go to the owner and tell him that he would like to add Jarmo to his staff? Just curious.

Three goalies on the roster are unwieldy. Any way you partial out the workload you end up negatively affecting one of them. It's a tough juggling act for any HC. Maybe showcasing UPL might be a factor? In general, our roster construction is misaligned.

No doubt that the increased costs for the new stadium was a concern. But he significantly addressed it by selling minority shares for his franchise and he also used PSL revenue to defray much of the cost. The NFL Bills are a big money-maker and wll be more so with the new stadium in operation. The silent owner has failed with the Sabres because from a hockey standpoint he is inept.

I understand your reasoning, and it makes a lot of sense. However, I take the opposite view that not getting a deal done is another setback in a cycle of setbacks. The Sabres are an incongruent roster that doesn't need another iteration of obliteration as it needs some judicious moves to better balance out the roster. The loss of Tuch will not advance this team, it will set it back. It's more likely than not that the return will be mostly futures rather than immediate help. No matter where one positions oneself on the issue, the prospective transaction requires a GM who can make a move that upgrades the roster. When your GM is a dullard that caliber of move is outside of his limited talents. Our organization is staffed with mediocre talents. Until that central issue is addressed, this franchise will continue on with its meandering path. The stark reality that few people are mentioning is that Tuch might not want to be here. He might just ride out his contract and then pursue his best options. If that happens, then a return on any trade will be very much diminished. If he takes that route it will be another indication that our better players want out of this fading franchise in order to salvage their careers.

The owner can spend as much or as little as he wants. The owner can hire whoever he wants. He can have a hands off or hands on approach to ownership. He can care or not. Those issues are all his prerogatives. In business, profitability is the measure of success or failure. In the sports endeavor, it is easy to measure success or failure. Your record is the basis for making a judgment. It shouldn't be a surprise that when you hire incompetents and then don't hold them accountable, the end result is predictable. When you continue to fail and then continue doing what you are doing, you don't have to be a clairvoyant to guess what the outcome will be. Isn't a generation of this foolishness originating from the owner's box enough? Excuses no longer resonate with me.

After seeing the replay, I was confident that the goal would stand. It didn't. Whether it was a good call or not isn't the troubling issue for me. This is a mentally fragile team, and the self-policing player leadership is missing. To my unschooled eyes, there was little intensity and sense of urgency throughout the game. We have a number of young players who are being given an opportunity to play due to injuries. One would think that they would have seized on that opportunity. They didn't. I have been a supporter of Quinn. In this game he was invisible. Tuch is in his contract year, and whether it is with the Sabres or for another team you would have thought that he would want to showcase his talent and worth. He seemed disinterested. Tage has recently played with some anger and pep. This was a good opportunity for him to show the coach that he should be our #1 center. Compared to the previous number of periods, he seemed to have coasted along acting as if this was a preseason game where one played knowing that your role was locked in. This lackadaisical attitude permeates the roster. Sure there are interludes when the team shows that it is capable of keeping up with the upper-tier teams. But the unappealing truth is that this team resides at the bottom of the heap because it deserves to be there. There is little organizational accountability because our owner has created a system where it is not upheld. When your owner is an invisible presence, it shouldn't be a surprise that the franchise turns out to be an inconsequential and irrelevant NHL franchise.

I’m not sure if the owner even cares. His actions or rather his inactions indicate an apathetic owner. It’s futile to argue where this silent owner’s head is actually at. The indisputable fact is that he presides over a flawed and failed franchise. And this shiiiit has been going on for a generation.

His decisions have been repetitively bad. Just because they have been bad for different reasons doesn't alter the fact that they have been bad decisions. The one consistent theme that has applied to most of his decisions is that he has made bumbling poor decisions in who he has hired to run the hockey operation. There are multiple ways to fail. But when all is said and done, failing is failing.