EM88

This has been brought up before: Despite all the high draft picks, the team is lacking a truly exciting, get the fans out of their seat, elite talent. Tage Thompson can be that at times, but not all the time. With all their top 5 picks, They had 2 guys that are now superstars at forward they traded away in Eichel and Reinhart. With the other 2 picks you got Dahlin who can be/is great, but not as exciting as an elite forward, and Power who we are still waiting on. There have been plenty of teams that have had multiple top 5 picks overall picks when they were bad, such as Pittsburgh, Chicago, New Jersey, Edmonton, and others. Most ended up with a superstar, or multiple game changing superstars up front. Malkin, Crosby, Patrick Kane, Hischier, Hughes, McDavid, and others. Maybe Dahlin in the long run will make this team better. But a failing of this organization is with 4 top 2 picks, they didn't end up with one forward they kept that is both exciting and game changing on this roster.

It is not optimal. However, I do not think it is a disaster. A USA-Finland final will be tuned in by almost as many hardcore hockey fans than if it was Canada, and many of the casual fans that tune in will just want to see the USA win.

If you are 53, it is likely that, if the team remains in Buffalo, that the Sabres will have a new owner before you are gone. Is that looking on the bright side?

I think the only pressure that Adams will respond to will be from Pegula. If Pegula wants him to make a deal, he will make a deal. The question therefore becomes, is the fan and media pressure getting to Pegula?

To be fair, is it not the point of this thread to post things like he posted? To tell them to 'let em be' and to say someone sounds like a grumpy hater, is that not the same in spirit as telling one to not complain about things in the complaint thread?

Michelle Obama Celebrates 'Galentine's Day' with Her Friends https://people.com/politics/michelle-obama-celebrates-galentines-day-parks-and-rec/

Lets not forget about ad revenue. How much money does the NHL make from their regional network suscribers or their national contract that is on Cable TV? I would be interested to find out how much revenue that is per game. Then let us suppose many of the games were available on a free app. No cable subscription. No pricey app. Just a free game and your revenue per game is what you can sell in ads. I would think giving the game away for free with many more viewers might not be all that far behind the other revenue generated per game. So take that 2nd free option where you get the ad revenue. Maybe charge a small fee for the app, like $10 per month. Project how many more fans you will have on the long term going to games and buying merch. I would think in the long run the 2nd model may not be all that bad. The owners want that guaranteed income generated the old fashioned way. They also seem to not want to give away their product for free. It may generate more revenue long term but some of those crusty old owners do not want anyone to get over on them and get their product without paying something. Cable companies and networks are nothing but a way to distribute your game. The need for them is less now than it was before put more games on the NHL network and make games free on streaming. Oh, and make sure its easy to take those games streaming on a pc or phone or tablet and cast them to a full sized tv. Why not cut out the middle-man cable company/network totally? The cable companies and networks have to make money off the games, why not take that profit, keep it for yourself, or keep some of it for yourself and use the other to grow your fan base by making your games more available?

Most sides of this argument make good points. I tend to agree with the above more than not. Terry Pegula can both care too much and not enough. How is that? He can put the franchise on auto-run much of the time, but on the few occasions he does show up, he wants to 'catch up' and gets too involved at those times. Kevyn Adams might be the day to day issue with the team, but that can also fall at the feet of Terry Pegula. It is possible, in my opinion likely, that Pegula can have made a bad hire or hires to run his hockey department and is letting them make bad decisions, all the while the reason he did make that bad hire is that he did not want to pay top dollar for a higher priced hockey department while he was still paying many members or previous staff. As far as conspiracy theories go, often times the best way to defend our point of view, or conspiracy theory, is to call an opposing point of view to your own a conspiracy theory. In my short time posting on this forum, I do find that behavior happens a lot on this forum when people disagree.

If a trade were available involving Dylan Cozens for a player of similar skill and production to McLeod, that would make the team better than it is now. Not because McLeod type players are game changes, but rather a player like him brings only a fraction of the negatives that Dylan Cozens does. If you take raw emotion out of the equation, then Adams is not a bad person to be making roster moves. The last big trade he made looks darn good right now, in the Mittlestadt for Byram move. Offseason acquisitions have been hit and miss like most teams, but there are some good ones in there. A handful of other posters point out that the issue with Adams is he does not make enough moves. It is not that he makes bad moves. His record does seem to show if he makes a move with Cozens there is probably an equal chance it will or will not be a good move for the team in the long run. The indictment of Adams is that move has not been made yet, and that indictment will be justified even further if no move is made with him at all. When people say they do not want Adams making a move because he is bad at moves, that criticism is misplaced to me. It is not the quality of the moves he makes, it is the lack of moves or waiting too long to make those moves.

What are the raw skills anyway? He is an above average skater as far as speed. But yet he can be clumsy on his skates in traffic. His shot looks good, maybe his release, but it is pretty inaccurate and he's not blasting 100mph shots. He is 6'3" tall, but well under 200 lbs. He is willing to hit, but he's not laying out people and lets not even talk about his fighting. He does not stick handle well, losing the puck in traffic quite a bit. He does not have the willingness or the ability to block shots. He does not sense open linemates and certainly is not a master of stick to stick passes. Many people on this board talk about his raw skill and talent, even those who don't like him cite his raw talent. But other than 1 or two areas out of many (above average straight line speed and 6'3 tall), where is the excess of raw talent he has that is just waiting to be harnessed?

It does not make any sense to change or remove letters mid season. What end does it serve? If the players in question are that much of an issue, bench them, trade them. Make the letter moves in the offseason.

At times companies and ad companies get too cute with their commercials. I guess their strategy works. For me a good commercial is one that opens with telling me what I am watching the commercial for, tells me the benefits of the product, and then ends reminding me what the product is for. Every so often I will watch a commercial and I have no idea what it is for. Even if the finally tell us at the very end of the commercial what the product is, it is not as effective. If I commercial starts to air and they keep the product a mystery, then the whole time I watch it I am not 'taking in' the commercial, instead I'm thinking for the first 28 seconds of it, what is this for? For me the worst are the drug company ads. I feel like I see them so much that I can hum, if not recite the jingles from them. And no, I am not going to go to my doctor and tell him the medication I want because I saw an advertisement for it. Gambling site ads are a close 2nd.

Dahlin and Byram are a great combo together. If Power is staying here, then they need to find a really good veteran to pair him with. That leaves your 3rd pair. 3rd pair is your 3rd pair, you do the best you can with it. Clifton, Samuelsson, Jokiharju, Bryson, or whoever you bring in or up will be fine for their 14-16 minutes per game as long as the top 2 pairs are playing how you need them.. The Dahlin and Byrum pairing is really good. Just find the partner for Power now.

Winnipeg crosses some lines that other cities do not. It is a sliding scale, there might be times in players mind that one thing can push their thoughts on an area over the line from a yes to a no. Buffalo is viewed as having cold winters, high taxes, and not a lot of culture and nightlife. But compared to some cities, the winters aren't that much worse, the low-ish cost of living and housing makes up for the high taxes, and you are very close to Toronto for the nightlife. So the winning and losing culture has a big impact on how much a younger player wants to be here. For those living there who like things like culture, events, concerts, night life, I think Winnipeg is the farthest from any metro area of over 1 million people. With Winnipeg being as small as it is, it does not have a lot of those things itself. Even Calgary and Edmonton are almost double the size of Winnipeg. Also the weather. I hear it is by far the coldest city to live in of anywhere in the NHL including Edmonton and Calgary, although Edmonton is close. You have a wife and kids and sure, you get to leave on road trips. But for them staying home its not optimal. Winnipeg has plenty of days in the winter with daytime high temperatures around 0F and it can get down to -20 or -30 below. Look at next week there. Monday and Tuesday are supposed to have daytime high temps of -5F and lows at -25F.

I think he is good, but not great, without Dahlin. He can eat minutes. Is that a function that he isn't that special, or that outside of Dahlin whoever he is paired with is not that good? He is skilled. With Dahlin they make a great pairing. How much is that worth? How much you pay him is one of the top questions of the offseason. It is not just Dahlin carrying Bryam either. When I watch them play I see Dahlin having his best games when paired with Byram. They seem to bring out the best in each other.

I would try it out one time. It looks like its just a slight evolution of a movie theater. What would the cost of the event be? If its in the range of a movie maybe. If its any more, probably not worth it.

I am not sure if it would make much of a difference since many of the assistants are the same and the front office is the same. We know Ruff and co. do not have the team in a good position now. So I will vote for Granato. What we have is not good, and I cannot prove the negative so that is my choice.

I agree with others that its primarily the losing keeping players from here. The Bills become good and have a franchise player like Josh Allen and all of a sudden it is a bit easier to get guys than it was when you had a playoff drought. For every thing about high taxes, there is the affordable housing. For every bit of bad weather, there is the fact it is not worse and many times better than places like Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and a lot of other norther cities. It is the losing. This team makes the playoffs 2 years in a row and wins at least one round, and Buffalo will likely quickly move up that list.

Its a win. If they do win their last game before the break, it will be interesting to see the mood around the team by the fans.

Go after one of the stars of the other team. When a lesser player takes out one of your stars and your response is to go after that lesser player, it is not the smartest solution.

If the cap increase is larger than many in the league expected, then it should make teams up against the cap now more able to sign free agents than they expected, or not allow as many guys to go as they may have needed to. For the Sabres, that should slightly make the pickings a bit leaner at the trade deadline. At least in theory, but in all honesty I do not think it will impact them all that much. It does make the Power, Dahlin, Thompson, and Cozens contracts look a little less bad, but will likely make Byram and Peterka more costly. It will balance, providing Pegula is willing to spend close to the cap.

I had previously read projections for the cap increases in the next few years and they were considerably less than this. Who does this help? Teams that are right in their cup run window now, but are also up hard against the cap and might have a hard time adding pieces otherwise. This is a gift to many teams, but mostly to Vegas and Toronto in my opinion.

There is a serious case to be made, with stats and simple observation to back up that case, that removing Cozens from the team makes it better. That is not even counting feeing up that $7 million in cap space and what you can do with it.

This team needs moves. I do not think there are many people thinking Adams is calling the shots by himself. Any moves made are done with input of the scouts, the rest of the hockey department, and Terry Pegula. In addition as mentioned above by some others, the trades the team has made under Adams have not been all disasters. This team needs a change. It needs a change now. Waiting for a GM change to make roster moves would be another mistake.

I do believe on this forum some of us are so frustrated with this team that we pick players who we think are not playing as well as we want, and then qualities are assigned to them that are not true. In the Elias Pettersson thread something close to this has happened. There are a lot of posters saying they are not interested in Pettersson because he is a perimeter player floater. Neither of those are close to being true. In reality Pettersson goes to the net, hustles back, even blocks shots. But I guess since he is a European and does not lay out bodychecks that are on the highlight reel so some think he is a floater and perimeter player? I do agree with you that some of the logic that is posted on this forum has me shaking my head.