Archie Lee

You aren’t serious, are you?

I think we would all take Logan Thompson and his career .912 save %.

I totally agree. If DeBoer or Bednar became available and were interested in coming to Buffalo? Sure. Maybe Sullivan. I don't have any interest in Tortorella. I'm not a big Laviolette fan. At this point, Gallant seems to be out of the coaching picture. Knoblauch might be on the bubble in Edmonton. 40 year old Washington Assistant, Mitch Love, might be my first choice: Todd Nelson, from what I understand, has resisted offers to return to the NHL as an assistant, because he is committed to being a head coach. The man just wins at all the levels he has coached. He is 55.

Agreed totally. We need a new head coach. Ruff has had two seasons with a better than DeLuca .500 record in his last 11 as a head coach. He hasn’t coached a team to 3 straight years in the playoffs, for a quarter century. He is not the coach you hire to bring structure to a team. He is yesterday’s man. If an established head coach with a recent track record of sustained success is not available, and they likely won’t be, then Carle would be a good choice. Others: Washington assistant Mitch Love and Hershey coach Todd Nelson.

Yeah, Adams is not good at his job. According to Adams and/or his head coach, he has assembled a group of players who are over-confident, don't take accountability, and don't take off-season workouts seriously enough. At some point, maybe the players just recognized that accountability is a one-way street with the Sabres. A leadership change at the GM position, is the most needed move for the coming off-season.

I’m not opposed to trading a prospect or two. Since we are overflowing with forwards who are legitimately in the NHL now (14 by my count), I would prefer we package 2-3 of our current NHL players for that difference maker. And, no, I don’t mean we can package Lafferty and Malenstyn for a top 6 forward. If we are not prepared to move on from a Quinn, a Kulich, or a Benson, then we are really just running another young team back and again hoping for internal development to carry us there. If we are going to trade our way to being better next season, and not simply be passive and wait for internal growth, then we need to bring in talented players and be willing to move on from some young roster players. The beauty of this is that it still leaves us a strong prospect pool. A good GM can manage these waves. There would be nothing wrong with the Sabres having Östlund or Rosen or Novikov playing an important role at some point next year. Contending NHL teams have such players on their team all the time (see: Knies, Lundell, Samoskevich, Sanderson, Grieg, Jarvis, Jackson Blake, Nemec, just from Eastern playoff teams). What you can’t have and be successful is all 3 on the roster plus Kulich and Benson and Power and Levi…etc.. Layering these young players onto the roster and moving some out at the appropriate time for veterans is the answer. Adams’s big error, in my view, was not being willing to move out any of the kids from the first wave to make the NHL (Peterka, Quinn, Benson, Kulich). It might pay off long-term, but he needlessly squandered 2-3 years when they could have been in the playoffs.

I see this as the flaw in having so many young players and not being willing to block them, or trade them until you know what you have (acknowledging they moved on from Savoie). The thing is, it is possible that Quinn will stay hot and becomes what we wanted/hoped/needed. We just can't rely on it. And his value has likely shrunk.

My math has the Rangers coming in at about $10 million under the cap with K. Miller and Cuyle as RFA's. They would likely need to move out a contract to get Byram signed. Schneider and Cuyle for Byram and Quinn?

Again, I'm not eager to trade Power. But, doesn't your statement make the assumption that we don't get a comparable player in return? There is always risk in a trade, but aside from one or two posters who think we will be better if we just dump Power, nobody is suggesting we trade him for less than fair value.

Anybody paying attention to the last 13-14 years of Ruff’s career, knew there was no reason to think he would make a difference.

On track to be a top pairing, 22-25 minute a game, 50-60 point, d-man. What we drafted.

I agree he is on track. I’m not worried about Power. I’m not dumping him. Trading him would not be an addition by subtraction move. But, I’m not sure why it would be absurd to trade him for a player who helps us be a better team? Not for a rental, not for a prospect, not for picks, not for a 35 year old, but for a 24-27 year-old legit top 6 centre with 4-5 years of team control.

It certainly is not a game being played with playoff level intensity. Wilson probably would like to start something with a Sabre to spark the Caps, but when he looks at the Sabre bench he sees nobody he can go after and retain his credibility as a tough guy.

Not a lot of self-awareness on Ruff's part. His teams have now missed the playoffs in 7 of his last 10 seasons as a head coach and he has a .471 winning % in that stretch. He is the man who was brought in to ensure structure and accountability, yet in those years where his team missed the playoffs their average league position for goals against has been 26th. At this point, Ruff is disrespecting the game as much as any player.

To the bolded: that seems right, but I have a hard time identifying a 50-60 point centre that I think a team would trade for Byram.