Robviously

Huh? We drafted him less than a year ago and this season he graduated to the top league in Finland. He was always going to be a project and we have his rights for a long time. Way too early to tell with him.

You can separate TM from the Tank pretty easily when you consider it was never his plan; he didn't put it into motion. The plan changed when TM showed up and we started targeting guys like Lehner, Bogo, Kane, Kulikov, Moulson (round 2), Okposo, etc. Unless you're saying TM spent years executing Darcy's vision, which is nuts. Darcy built some of the best teams in Sabres history and he might have been able to pull this off if the Pegulas hadn't gotten cold feet. If nothing else, he'd have never overpaid for players he'd fallen in love with in multiple deals. Disingenuous is saying you're upset about what the Tank did to our team culture while ignoring the fact that our team culture was utter trash before the Tank. We were miserable watching those teams play and they deserved to be blown up. There's a reason no one was upset when the dismantling started. Compare that to the Page 1 reactions in the threads when many of Murray's moves were announced.

Bouchard and Hughes are in the 5-8 range, but Zadina is a top 3 pick and Boqvist is probably 4/5, right?

The Tank didn't fail. Tim Murray failed. The team bottoming out is why we have probably our two best players - Eichel and Reinhart. And since only ~4 guys are left on the team since the end of the 2013 season, that means the rest of the roster is Tim Murray's doing. And it's utter trash. Regarding all the negative effects to the team culture and what "nuking" the team meant, I'm copy/pasting something from a few months back: The roster deserved to be nuked. Is everyone forgetting how much we hated the teams we had in the years leading up to the Tank? Because I remember this message board back then and we HATED those teams. We were terrible to start every season and then there'd we'd string together some meaningless wins to end the season. Exactly 0% of the end of season momentum would carry into the following season and we'd be out of the playoffs again. And again and again. Those teams were awful, and awful to watch. We lost nothing by destroying them to Tank. And the year after the Tank we had 81 points, so basically no lingering effects from that disaster of a season. It's just that the team Murray built also sucked, and we're still trying to fix that. Tearing down and rebuilding works in pretty much every sport. The Astros and Cubs won the last 2 World Series. They weren't *trying* to lose but trading all your assets for future assets is basically the same thing. You're giving up everything right now to get a lot more later. Inter-temporal trades work.

The former. By a lot.

Good call. Deleting.

I think the expectations probably hurt it for me. It was a good movie -- a solid B -- and really fun (which is underrated), but I didn't think it was something we'll end up putting alongside The Dark Knight on the big list of comic book movies, aside from the positive effects of finally getting some diversity in these movies.

What an utterly dreary lineup that is. Even with Mittelstadt adding some speed and excitement, that looks like basically the same underachieving team as this year. Here's hoping JB makes a big hockey trade. Or two. And if not a flashy trade, at least move out guys like Girgensons and Larsson who have seemingly been in Buffalo forever, and adding nothing. The Sabres should also be in on college free agents in a big way, both because JB likes college players and because we're a pretty good fit for these guys (i.e. they can play in the NHL right away with significant minutes and we have other young players we're building around).

Yep. There's no doubt they signed Nylander too soon and he's struggled with that. Chalk it up to GMTM's ZFG strategy.

His contract in the SHL is up after this season and it's the perfect time to sign him and bring him to North America though.

No.

Yeah, but remember how much fun everyone was having when "ZFG" was a thing?

So now we know who we're cheering for this year. Yippee.

Gosh, that's not the Mike Harrington *I* know....

I do agree with this last part. I was hoping for anything to make me more optimistic about next season, or even more to be excited about at the draft. We didn't get anything really. The team is in really bad shape. And we basically need Mittelstadt to be as amazing as we're all hoping and/or some draft lottery luck to feel like we're going anywhere in the near term. Or for GMJB to be a wizard in trades this summer. And all of those feel like stretches. It's a depressing day.

The small return on Kane, the fact that there wasn't any interest in Lehner, and the Sabres still being stuck with Bogo and Moulson just illustrates how disastrous Murray was as GM. GMJB has his work cut out for him. Hopefully we can make some hockey trades this summer and get some lottery luck because we're in the middle of nowhere right now.

Because it's 10am.

He should just report that he will be traded and for as much as people expect now, just to make sure he's reporting every possible outcome.

Great win....now trade everyone!

That pass by Reinhart tho

I'll ignore how racist and homophobic your reply is and just stick to hockey.... :P Regarding the bold, Jeremy White posted a chart this morning on Twitter that showed the Sabres were literally the least entertaining team in the league when you measure total scoring opportunities (for and against). Just getting this team back to being fast and fun to watch would be a huge step up. Roster turnovers can work wonders. Adding dynamic skaters like Guhle and Mittelstadt could dramatically alter how the team looks. Replacing Lehner with someone optimistic and confident like Ullmark would work wonders too. I do think the Sabres are less than the sum of their parts right now and changing things up to find the right chemistry could work.

Everyone who disagrees with me is racist. And a nazi. And you have blood on your hands. (Am I doing this right?)

But I'm not saying that. I'm saying we *could* be. There's a lot of roster turnover coming. And teams can turnaround fast. I literally led with "Not necessarily?" We're currently 1 point away from being the first NHL team to ever finish in 31st place. Is there really no chance we'll be better off next season? As for Kane, I was excited when we got him. I even bought a t-shirt. His stats are good, not great. I do value talent more than intangibles but I'm also open to the idea that he's less valuable to a team than his stats indicate.

That's why I wrote the rest of my post. We're losing a good 2nd line winger, but in the big scheme of things we could still be OK next year. And I do think it's conspicuous that Kane has never been on a playoff team. Is he a guy you can actually build around? Maybe he still could be but I'm fine trying something new versus giving him a 7 or 8 year deal.

Smart. If you're doing a rebuild, go all in. He's a guy a contending team would want to add.