Remember when the Sabres won "Best franchise in sport" honor?

[will]

i don't think i will ever understand why you, promo, are so adamant about sticking with players that don't win stanley cups for buffalo. signing these folks that buffalo has let go or traded away, and wow...you end up with a team like tampa bay had this season. three fat contracts to their three best players after winning the cup (hey, they actually won!), and they're finishing at the bottom of the standings, forced to trade the face of their franchise at the deadline (well, he was before vinny came along).

 

the belief that danny, chris, or brian would take a 5 for 5 contract at any point in the past two season is b.s. posturing by their agents, so please don't try to sell that angle. and the "lack of committment" cries are also bullocks. the sabres answered the bell when edmonton went fishing for vanek, the player with probably the most raw talent this franchise has seen since mogilny got smuggled into town. extensions have been passed out to roy and hecht, both of whom have provided a measure of leadership and tenacity that is clearly needed on such a young team (top 3 scorers all 24 or less!). an extension is probably forthcoming to Pomminstein this summer, and hopefully sekera. but to call this a clown show is just ridiculous.

 

it ain't easy putting a winner together, and after two years of coming close, the sabres are taking one step back to hopefully take two forward. you'll tell me i'm drinking the kool-aide, which sounds ridiculous, but hey...i was super sad last july, too. however, i'm all for it if it keeps the young core together for a long time to come, something signing drury, briere, and campbell would most assuredly prevented.

[PromoTheRobot]

i don't think i will ever understand why you, promo, are so adamant about sticking with players that don't win stanley cups for buffalo. signing these folks that buffalo has let go or traded away, and wow...you end up with a team like tampa bay had this season. three fat contracts to their three best players after winning the cup (hey, they actually won!), and they're finishing at the bottom of the standings, forced to trade the face of their franchise at the deadline (well, he was before vinny came along).

 

the belief that danny, chris, or brian would take a 5 for 5 contract at any point in the past two season is b.s. posturing by their agents, so please don't try to sell that angle. and the "lack of committment" cries are also bullocks. the sabres answered the bell when edmonton went fishing for vanek, the player with probably the most raw talent this franchise has seen since mogilny got smuggled into town. extensions have been passed out to roy and hecht, both of whom have provided a measure of leadership and tenacity that is clearly needed on such a young team (top 3 scorers all 24 or less!). an extension is probably forthcoming to Pomminstein this summer, and hopefully sekera. but to call this a clown show is just ridiculous.

 

it ain't easy putting a winner together, and after two years of coming close, the sabres are taking one step back to hopefully take two forward. you'll tell me i'm drinking the kool-aide, which sounds ridiculous, but hey...i was super sad last july, too. however, i'm all for it if it keeps the young core together for a long time to come, something signing drury, briere, and campbell would most assuredly prevented.

If you recall the Sabres took eventual cup winner Carolina the full 7 games. They had 5 D-men injured. That was too much to overcome. So I don't see how that was the fault of Drury and Briere for not winning the cup. Also you can't keep reshuffling the deck every year and expect to win. It sounds like you want to cast off players if they don't win a cup in 2-3 years. All I know the Sabres were good enough to win the cup, and now they are in disarray. You're free to believe Larry Quinn has a plan to build a winner by cutting scouting and payroll. But Larry already effed this team once before. What's going to be different now?

 

PTR

[Bmwolf21]

No offense or disrespect to anyone who has posted above, but putting aside who is to blame, what FO mistakes were made, whatever - this team is going to finish with between 84-92 points. That means their production will be down between 21-29 points from last year, and they will likely be one or two points out of a playoff berth in a league where over 1/2 of the teams make the postseason. If we were Phoneix, Chicago, LA , I'd agree that missing the playoffs isn't such a bad thing. But there is no way anyone can convince me that missing the playoffs coming off back-to-back ECF appearances is simply a step back. It's failure, plain and simple.

 

We convinced ourselves that our core is made up of good, young, skilled players who have a lot of playoff experience, that our D is pretty good, that Lindy's all-out attacking system means the forwards and D can leave leave the goalie and one defenseman on an island and we'll still win games 7-5. Guess we're not as good offensively (don't give me that overinflated "goals for" stat) our young guys aren't as mentally tough from two deep playoff runs as we thought, a majority of our defense and forwards act like playing south of the red line is beneath them, and we still struggle with focus, consistency and intensity.

 

Sitting on the outside looking in, especially after the last two years - well I don't want to look to next year or look for silver linings.

 

Either way, this is really going to be a fun offseason, especially around here. :rolleyes:

[X. Benedict]

If you recall the Sabres took eventual cup winner Carolina the full 7 games. They had 5 D-men injured. That was too much to overcome. So I don't see how that was the fault of Drury and Briere for not winning the cup. Also you can't keep reshuffling the deck every year and expect to win.

It seems to me that everyone in contention this year has had some major shuffles in the past two years.

 

But last year the defense was relatively healthy in the playoffs. The forwards really did struggle when defenses packed in it.

And the PP was stinko ....around 12%( ?)

 

Was there a leadership void? Did they just not try hard?

 

I don't happen to think there is a leadership void now, or that they haven't tried hard.

If anything, I think they really got in trouble this year when they tried to do too much.

 

If you told me at the beginning of the season that the Defense would end up with Sekera-Weber-Paetsch-and Pratt I really

would have been thinking 70 points rather than 95 (which I thought they would end up with). The disappointing thing about missing the playoffs is that the East is really not strong and anybody could win.

[tom webster]

i don't think i will ever understand why you, promo, are so adamant about sticking with players that don't win stanley cups for buffalo. signing these folks that buffalo has let go or traded away, and wow...you end up with a team like tampa bay had this season. three fat contracts to their three best players after winning the cup (hey, they actually won!), and they're finishing at the bottom of the standings, forced to trade the face of their franchise at the deadline (well, he was before vinny came along).

the belief that danny, chris, or brian would take a 5 for 5 contract at any point in the past two season is b.s. posturing by their agents, so please don't try to sell that angle. and the "lack of committment" cries are also bullocks. the sabres answered the bell when edmonton went fishing for vanek, the player with probably the most raw talent this franchise has seen since mogilny got smuggled into town. extensions have been passed out to roy and hecht, both of whom have provided a measure of leadership and tenacity that is clearly needed on such a young team (top 3 scorers all 24 or less!). an extension is probably forthcoming to Pomminstein this summer, and hopefully sekera. but to call this a clown show is just ridiculous.

 

it ain't easy putting a winner together, and after two years of coming close, the sabres are taking one step back to hopefully take two forward. you'll tell me i'm drinking the kool-aide, which sounds ridiculous, but hey...i was super sad last july, too. however, i'm all for it if it keeps the young core together for a long time to come, something signing drury, briere, and campbell would most assuredly prevented.

 

You take out those two sentences and its actually not a bad post. The continuous references to Tampa is a joke. First they won the Cup and have made the playoffs every year since till now. Their problem wasn't the three contracts, it was the poor drafting and bad choice on goaltender. Besides, no rational fan was really hoping for them to give 40% of the capo to three players. About 30% would have sufficed.

The last line has been proven wrong by a vast array of posts. There were a myriad of ways to afford the right players.