GDT - The Snarks (hey, Taro) @ The Mighty Sabres of Buffalo - November 27, 2018 - 7:00 PM (EST) - 8:00 PM (NS time)

[shrader]

Did they ever get back the linesman who was injured? It’s no excuse but it could definitely play a role in potential missed calls. 

[MJS]

1 hour ago, Ottosmagic13 said:

I don't know if that was a soft goal. Unfortunate for sure but he saw the play behind the net and picked a post, unfortunately it was the wrong one and he couldn't get back fast enough. Pick the right post or get some help from the d slowing that player down and he makes that save.

The soft goals that lehner let in were almost always soft wristers or snap shots from a guy coming down the wing. Our D guy would play the pass and leave Lehner for the shot and whoops back of the net. 

Now 100% I agree with the mentality, not just with the net minders but with the team. That 2nd Sharks goal would have instantly visibly demoralized the team. This year and especially on this stretch they seem to get...fiesty is the best word I can come up with. They know they can score and they did generate 2-3 chances when the game was 2-2. 

Cardiac kids for sure.

The ironic thing is that he did get back to the correct post. He had his skate against the post, but the puck slid through the small gap below the blade. Pretty bad luck, if you ask me.

[Randall Flagg]

8 hours ago, Marions Piazza said:

I remember reading that RoR quietly asked for a trade at the deadline. I also read that the team was a bit divided, some players followed RoR and others were with Jack. Then there was the end of season comments etc. 

I don't feel that Lehner wasn;'t being blammed, in fact, i remember a lot of female dogging about Lehner and his inability to stop a shootout goal and give up bad softies etc. In my limited time on this forum, I have seen comments like "this is a thread about RoR, go talk about Lehner in the Lehner thread" etc.

I've read that ROR never requested a trade, and so until there's hard proof he did I would assume otherwise. No names that have ever broken anything have said that this happened -there isn't hard proof right now, unless I missed it. And even then, if you can find me that evidence, you have to connect that to actively bringing down the team off the ice on a day to day basis, because he was their best overall player on it all season long. I've also heard nothing of the next thing you say, except for off-the-cuff comments from Jack about what good buddies he and ROR are and how it sucked to have to lose the guy. They were put out there by his own desire, he wasn't asked to say anything and feel pressured into giving a nice response. 

The type of evidence I'm talking about are things we could easily find. It's possible to get them. We do know that Lehner created intense locker room malaise, because of the things that have come out since then. Of course, none of that is his fault. But his situation is absolutely killer. I really don't like the phrase "cancer" to describe any human being, but Lehner was a locker room cancer. Matt Duchene didn't come to training camp last year, and refused to speak to anyone in the organization while playing for weeks before they traded him. That is a locker room cancer. That's stuff we see. Players that bully, that create drama, that sleep with their teammates' wives, that encourage doing stuff that goes against team success, those players are locker room cancers. The only thing I've ever heard that I can come even close to grounding in reality about ROR off the ice is one locker room quote on cleanout day, and of course the TH incident before he ever played a game.

As somebody who has given his life to one single thing for the last six years, I can say that "losing love for something" when the grinding is bad is as common as catching a cold, ie, I've done it 24 times in those six years. There are days that physics destroys me and I actively hate it and regret ever trying. That to me isn't indicative of anything cancerous: it's indicative of something somebody would say to spice up the 90th interview they had to give while being a premiere piece on a bad team, whose badness was anything but his fault. Looking for stuff like that in repetitive postgame interviews and  citing "vortices of sadness" (Vogl, 2018) is about as far away from actual hockey analysis or just plain reason as anything ever discussed here. I've read one rumor from one poster about him having depression and it being a cloud in the locker room, and I've read the same thing about Kyle. Kyle is here and the guys are somehow surviving - you can't tell me with a straight face that there aren't one or two cases of severe depression on every NHL team. 

Until we know that ROR is doing stuff the way that we know Lehner almost died, there's no evidence for it other than Sabres twitter and media going utter f###ing ballistic over a meaningless quote and then employing light-years of projection on top of it in effort to try and deal with just how bad we were last year.

8 hours ago, ... said:

 

 

You see, that's the disconnect here. 

This board has a habit of projecting with me on this topic. I'm the guy that only cares about stats and doesn't believe in locker room stuff and culture, except that's completely untrue. 
When I say I'm over the ROR trade, I mean this: Given the bulk of the offseason moves, I would in a vacuum never mention the ROR trade again just because I'm focused on our team now, even though I still think it was gone about poorly and personally wouldn't have made the decision to trade him. You can read through my post history and any time I've talked about ROR since early July, not just in a mild passing comment of which he is not the focus, has been in response to what I believe to be the worst takes I've read on this board in a while. 

Those takes are NOT what you and others would assume they are, based on remarks I've received as a high-volume-poster who didn't like the trade: I don't think people who wanted to trade ROR or think it was a good thing for the locker room have bad takes. It's completely reasonable to follow this chain of logic, which most people do: Our team loses, it's a problem, it's all they know, and we need to get the stink out. We need to trade a core piece. Sometimes you just have to do that. ROR is the oldest one and has a big cap hit, with which we can use to open space to make improvements necessary to fill his hole (hint hint, Skinner is the way to do it). So peace out ROR. And a fresh locker room will do our team good. 

It's not the decision I would have made, but it is based in reason as a way to inject freshness to a team that needed it. The reason I wouldn't have done it began being chronicled months before you ever came back here - ROR's usage last season as our second best offensive piece on a team that couldn't score was Ovie-under-Oates level incompetent, and it led to severe depreciation of an asset.If you aren't convinced of this, I'll leave you with two notes: ROR had more d-zone starts (often with the 4th line wings of the worst depth in the league) per ice time played than any player to ever play 1000 minutes or more, and this season, without that usage, ROR has already passed his ES goal total from last year in like 60 fewer games.  Coupled with a money-driven deadline, it killed many of us to see our second best player let go in that situation. I know we "whined" and "were haters" and all that good stuff, but I have yet to be swayed that this is good asset management, and mopey-ROR memes won't do it. 

Anyway, when I step in and sound like I'm not over the ROR trade, it's because I'm reading the BAD takes: That we have proof he's a locker room cancer, that this overcame his on-ice value and is a reason the team was bad, that the team is better because of his absence and not because of improved everything-else (not the same thing as saying a new locker room doesn't do good), and the best part, the implication that the Blues' woes are directly correlated to ROR's presence there. I don't know how to nicely say it, but that's the worst take I've read in my hockey forum life, and I have seen it here more than once since the trade(not saying anyone is presently promoting it). It's even more present on the hfboards doohickie mentions: It proudly casts aside the rigor of actually trying to understand and parse the incredible nuances of hockey teams, often to the faces of the fans that follow that team as religiously as we follow ours. So yeah, I'm going to post when I see things that aren't supported by evidence and get let go by everyone. It's in my nature. You'd have worn out that GIF in 2 weeks during the Bylsma years.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the hfboard experience: I believe Doohickie is accurately describing what he experienced. Venturing to other forums over there is risky business. Sabres fans themselves are actually notorious for being worse about it than others over there. For example: In the Dahlin thread this summer, I dared to question a comment that Dahlin was "the best prospect to enter the NHL since Wayne Gretzky." That comment went 4 days without being spoken towards, and it got some likes. I couldn't help myself. "That is a fairly ridiculous take" or something of the sort. I was bombarded by fans of the same team as me, and referred to as a "Dahlin hater" and "miserable" person MONTHS after that exchange (and one where I said that his floor, his worst case scenario, isn't Erik Karlsson, the best defenseman of a 20 year stretch of hockey). That is what going to hfboards is like. 

But the Blues fans aren't reacting in a vacuum either. On the main boards, I've read a lot of Blues-Sabres interactions concerning the trade. They often go like this:
Thread title: "Your team's MVP" or "Grade your team's players"
Literally every Blues fan: "ROR and Parayko", "ROR and Perron." "ROR." and then "ROR: A+, Everyone else, D" etc. Amidst a myriad of fans posting their favorites and least favorites 
Sabres fan, quoting Blues fan: "LMFAO you guys got hosed. ROR is on your team and you're losing. WHAT A SURPRISE. Eat this ten game win streak" "lol you all are just bitter. You have a cancer and a loser and that's why you're losing." 
They're responding to Doohickie with lots of this fresh in their memories. It's farcical, absurd, and embarrassing, and I've seen it happen fairly often. 

9 hours ago, darksabre said:

He was tho. And so were Lehner and Kane. Look at how much Jack has blossomed as a leader with those 3 dopes out of the way? 

 

9 hours ago, nfreeman said:

The evidence is that JB and Howie -- the guys who were best situated to evaluate ROR -- got a good, long look at him and decided to get rid of him.

This might be the physical scientist in me speaking, but consider me unimpressed and unconvinced. 

[Randall Flagg]

6 hours ago, Taro T said:

O'Reilly has been on teams with some seriously bad goaltending.  That seems to be the biggest issue with his teams. 

But not having his perspective in a leadership role could definitely have a role in it being fun to come to the rink.  They've been smiling since before this very well received though unexpected streak started.

The UFA swap between the Blues and the Sabres is tangibly what everyone desperately wants the ROR trade to be for some reason I've not yet figured out, and am starting to chalk up to the fact that Buffalo fans love to dislike guys their teams trade. 

ROR gone -> improved locker room is actually Carter Hutton's leadership + Robin Lehner gone -> improved locker room
ROR gone -> improved game results is actually Carter Hutton here, Chad Johnson elsewhere -> improved game results
ROR to St. Louis -> St. Louis now bad is actually "best season from a blues center maybe ever, somehow making Rob Sanford an NHL player" not overcoming league-worst goaltending and JBo, Pietrangelo, Steen, Schenn etc. playing u t t e r garbage hockey

It's one thing to add in off-ice leadership factors, which I've done since the beginning with what we know. It's another universe to actively and proudly shut off all interest in analyzing hockey. 

[Randall Flagg]

6 hours ago, TrueBlueGED said:

Uh, Berglund has been pretty awful and is regularly a healthy scratch or playing 8 minutes. He's signed for 3 years after this season. Sobotka has been a nice surprise, but no way do you get a victory dance on this one. 

I'm happy for the depth Berglund and Sobotka provided. Though I think Bergy is better than Vlad because Bergy has been a key piece to one of our most useful lines, whereas Sobotka gets tanked and can't generate anything unless he's paired with (and not doing much to help offensively) Reinhart. I expect and would push for our internal and external roster movements over the next 8 months to make Sobotka an odd man out and not a regular piece for next year's team. 

As far as trade analysis goes, it was well documented that Doug wanted to dump those guys for a year before we traded for them, so they could have been added for something tiny without the trade. So for me, the ROR trade is 100% about Tage, the first, the second. Though what we got is secondary to what we did with ROR while he was here and the circumstances around the trade.

[Robviously]

I'm glad the GDT about our 10th win in a row, tying the longest streak in team history, has turned into a battle to defend ROR's honor.  

[bg17]

9 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

 

This might be the physical scientist in me speaking, but consider me unimpressed and unconvinced. 

Is it also the physical scientist in you that has you believing that Pegs pushed the trade over the objections of Housley and Botterill?

[Randall Flagg]

6 hours ago, Kruppstahl said:

It may be true that ROR was a "locker room cancer" or something like that, and I'm not really disputing that or agreeing with it, one way or the other.

But I do wonder what that is supposed to mean, in reality.  I.E., let's assume ROR was a negative influence on this team.  How?  What was he doing?  Like was he picking sides in the locker room and dividing the room into "his guys" and the guys he doesn't like, and trying to pit players against each other, or what?

ROR seemed like a decent enough small town Canadian boy to me.  What was he doing that was so bad!?

Just curious. 

I've asked for anything tangible surrounding this narrative since July and have gotten three different milquetoast interview quotes as a response, FWIW. However, not buying into the line of thinking is equivalent to not believing in the human element of humans, so be careful!

 

[Randall Flagg]

6 hours ago, Doohickie said:

That's evidence that they felt a trade was warranted; it doesn't point to why it was warranted.  It could have been little more than a cap management move to them.

As far as I can tell, Jason loved ROR and felt the need to change the room was more important for the team than keeping ROR. And that he likes Tage Thompson, and had to work with an external clock. That is reasonable and fits all available evidence, even if it's not what I'd have done. I'd leave it there forever, except for the cancer and "har har blues bad ROR blues ROR bad" comments that make me seem obsessed. 

[Hoss]

We all see our own narratives on the ROR trade but you can’t just say “St. Louis wanted to get rid of Berglund and Sobotka so whatever they do here is irrelevant.” Our GM added them and built a roster that had them in the lineup. It matters what they do and so far that return is very good.

[Randall Flagg]

6 hours ago, Hoss said:

Sobotka has been legitimately good in all situations and his contract is a breeze. He earned his way to a shift in OT last night and ended up being on for the winner.

 

Without Sam Reinhart, Vlad Sobotka is on the ice for nearly double the amount of shots/chances against as he is shots/chances for, something that is only approached by Tage Thompson - no other Sabre comes close to metrics as bad as Vlad's without Sam, despite three other forwards getting more defensive usage than he does, and four other forwards getting tougher opposition. His on-ice effects are those of tank-depth. If you don't dig stats, the reason for this is easy to flesh out - I put a whole video together on it over the course of several weeks this summer.

In summary, his low-event-ness only follows him in the offensive zone. He doesn't have the shot suppression abilities of Zemgus/Berglund because he doesn't close as well on his opponents, and doesn't have the strength they do to maintain board battles as well (there's a reason 22-10-28 can tilt the ice the way they do despite severely limited hands/stickhandling). Furthermore, in the offensive zone he cannot sustainably get open or move the puck to areas where it can be dangerous and useful. This is why Reinhart helps him. Sobotka's primary ability as a "board battle survivor" can be leveraged elsewhere by a player like Sam who knows how to take those pucks and do something with them, but without Sam, none of our other bottom/middle sixers are great in situations where their teammate is engaged in a board battle and not cleanly winning with regularity. Rewatch the SJ game, there was a rush Vlad had where he was open in the top of the zone but was quickly swallowed whole. His shot on the net from a point where Jack or Tage can take dangerous shots and where Casey/Sam can make nifty feeds to teammates was so weak it never got to the goalie. His breakaways and odd man rushes that have dissolved (he can score if somebody is carrying and feeding him, see Erod/Kyle/Sam in Vegas and Montreal, but don't let him be the carrier), or the rare instance he gets the puck near the hash marks and promptly loses it or delivers a muffin that would make 14-15 Reinhart proud, are examples of this. 

This is not to totally trash Vlad, who has a role on this current roster. He makes a great pair with ERod on a very good PK. After Phil dissolved the ROR role for good when we were 3-4-0, Vlad hasn't been in danger of being in positions important enough to tank the team's chances while he's on the ice the way players with similar metrics on bad Sabres teams last year were. Before that, Vlad was getting top 2/3 ES minutes of all Sabres forwards in heavy defensive contexts and we had members quitting on the season. But Phil learned something and as a result Vlad can remain top 12 in my heart this year. 

But he has not been legitimately good in all situations. He has been a legitimate depth improvement to a guy like Jordan Nolan or Benoit Pouliot, no more, and no less, and we have the ammunition and prospects available to make him a nonfactor on a great Sabres team next year, and should leverage that ability. 

[Robviously]

7 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

As far as I can tell, Jason loved ROR and felt the need to change the room was more important for the team than keeping ROR. And that he likes Tage Thompson, and had to work with an external clock. That is reasonable and fits all available evidence, even if it's not what I'd have done. I'd leave it there forever, except for the cancer and "har har blues bad ROR blues ROR bad" comments that make me seem obsessed. 

You are the one making you seem obsessed.  Spoiler Alert: Sabres fans are enjoying watching ROR's team struggle after he forced the trade with his locker room comments at clean-out day.  This is a Sabres message board so you're going to see a lot of that.  So your options are to either ignore it and let your fellow fans have their fun, or run around trying to rapid-fire respond to every anti-ROR comment you don't like.

You think Botterill "loved" ROR but thought it was better to go into this season with a 19 year old with six games of NHL experience as his #2 center?  That's the most plausible explanation for what happened?  The fact that the Sabres decided they *had to* deal him when they did speaks volumes, and definitely not in ROR's favor.  And that's two teams now that have decided they'd be better off trading ROR for a grab bag of picks, prospects, and depth players. 

[nfreeman]

@Randall Flagg -- First, Pronger and Chara in their primes were both better than Karlsson.

Second, as to ROR:  while I respect your perspective, I think you've created a bit of a tautology when you insist on hard evidence for the "locker room cancer" theory, and seemingly conclude that the lack thereof means that that theory is false.  We will almost certainly not get any hard evidence anytime soon, and probably not ever, as to the reasons JB traded him (or for the reasons he traded Kane or for that matter made any other move).

All we have is circumstantial evidence, including:

- He forced his way out of Colorado despite having quite a few dynamic, talented, young teammates.

- He openly stated that all of the losing he was enduring here had made him lose his love of the game.

- Numerous professional sportswriters on the Sabres beat reported that there were problems in the locker room and that ROR was a bummer to be around.

- He's now on his 3rd team at age 27 despite being an apparently good player who's never been a free agent.

- JB and Howie took his measure and decided to move him for a prospect, a couple of draft picks and some spare parts.

- The Sabres got dramatically better when he left and the Blues got dramatically worse when he joined.

Are there, as you've ably pointed out, multiple moving pieces at play here that impair the probative value of this "evidence", especially the last 2 items?  Of course.

But let's not pretend that the concerns about ROR are from outer space, or that his value, or any player's value, can be measured solely by on-ice production.

[Randall Flagg]

5 hours ago, shrader said:

There have been comments throughout the season about how Housley wants guys to play specific roles.  It does look like guys like Berglund and Sobotka, and for that matter Girgensons and Larsson, fit well into the exact roles Phil has in mind.  They may have been expected to be more in previous years, but right now, they're providing exactly what the team needs for a balanced roster.  Berglund isn't paid to play that role, but it's far from a backbreaking salary.

The biggest improvement of this team IMO is that Phil went from pretty bad at this incredibly important thing to it being his best, er, trait/ability, in one offseason. You can survive goofy lines, goofy challenges, or other goofy coach things if you are good at this and Phil has been giving us a lot of good things on top of it. 

[Randall Flagg]

2 hours ago, Mustache of God said:

I just re-watched the OT and I'm not sure if it was mentioned up-thread, but the Sabres got a huge break from the refs on the OT winner. The last rush San Jose had prior the the GWG, San Jose passed the puck and the player was off-sides by a mile (at the 3:40 mark, even RJ noticed), total blown call by the refs. Had they whistled that play dead the sequence for Skinner would never had materialized.

The refs were blowing calls all game though, so at least they're consistent. Nice to see one go our way though. 

Go Sabres. I want this streak alive for December 4th.

They also got a "break" in that, continuing the theme of the night, the refs didn't care that Thornton was hooking the living daylights out of Skinner before Skinner came free to score. Had they been real refs and not hosers, the play would have been dead when Jones poke-checked it to Skinner.

[Weave]

7 minutes ago, nfreeman said:

He forced his way out of Colorado despite having quite a few dynamic, talented, young teammates.

 

 

Only nitpick I have is, his leaving  Colorado was contract related.  Nothing more.

[Randall Flagg]

5 minutes ago, Robviously said:

You are the one making you seem obsessed.  Spoiler Alert: Sabres fans are enjoying watching ROR's team struggle after he forced the trade with his locker room comments at clean-out day.  This is a Sabres message board so you're going to see a lot of that.  So your options are to either ignore it and let your fellow fans have their fun, or run around trying to rapid-fire respond to every anti-ROR comment you don't like.

You think Botterill "loved" ROR but thought it was better to go into this season with a 19 year old with six games of NHL experience as his #2 center?  That's the most plausible explanation for what happened?  The fact that the Sabres decided they *had to* deal him when they did speaks volumes, and definitely not in ROR's favor.  And that's two teams now that have decided they'd be better off trading ROR for a grab bag of picks, prospects, and depth players. 

And what I'm saying, is that the bold is a laughable take and I can't help but comment when I see posts with a similar theme. 

Judging by repeatedly mentioning ROR and Jack over the course of a year as being so critical to having a good team, having two strong centers, often leaving his name in place at the expense of core pieces like Reinhart, yes, I think Botterill loved one of the best two-way-centers in the game, and had a tough choice when he decided that the contract, age, and locker room condition of the team made it worth the immediate downgrade of the position. And I can even happily say that he's right, as long as he knew a Skinner-esque trade was coming to add another top six forward. 

The Avs had the worst non-expansion-team season ever soon after trading ROR. I'm not letting the architects of that team teach me something that, in all other NHL situations, have been fleshed out on much firmer ground r.e. what players are cancers and what aren't.

[shrader]

Colorado has consistently been one of the strangest teams you’ll ever see. They suck for years, then suddenly blow up for a division title, then immediately return to sucking. It makes no sense. 

 

Maybe they've finally broken that trend. 

Edited November 29, 2018 by shrader

[Randall Flagg]

12 minutes ago, nfreeman said:

@Randall Flagg -- First, Pronger and Chara in their primes were both better than Karlsson.

Second, as to ROR:  while I respect your perspective, I think you've created a bit of a tautology when you insist on hard evidence for the "locker room cancer" theory, and seemingly conclude that the lack thereof means that that theory is false.  We will almost certainly not get any hard evidence anytime soon, and probably not ever, as to the reasons JB traded him (or for the reasons he traded Kane or for that matter made any other move).

All we have is circumstantial evidence, including:

- He forced his way out of Colorado despite having quite a few dynamic, talented, young teammates.

- He openly stated that all of the losing he was enduring here had made him lose his love of the game.

- Numerous professional sportswriters on the Sabres beat reported that there were problems in the locker room and that ROR was a bummer to be around.

- He's now on his 3rd team at age 27 despite being an apparently good player who's never been a free agent.

- JB and Howie took his measure and decided to move him for a prospect, a couple of draft picks and some spare parts.

- The Sabres got dramatically better when he left and the Blues got dramatically worse when he joined.

Are there, as you've ably pointed out, multiple moving pieces at play here that impair the probative value of this "evidence", especially the last 2 items?  Of course.

But let's not pretend that the concerns about ROR are from outer space, or that his value, or any player's value, can be measured solely by on-ice production.

It is not tautology to still be waiting for proof of claims that ROR is a locker room cancer, and to proceed as if message board speculation with a clear source that I don't read as being anything remotely related to cancerous undertakings doesn't constitute such proof in my attempts to understand a situation in a league where locker room cancers exist and almost always have actual trails of evidence. 

And let's not pretend that every time I stick my head in to the ROR discussion that precedes my involvement, the tone of the conversation has anything to do with your last bold and isn't just surface level nonsense using solely the second bold as the main sticking point. There's plenty of room for discussion of "immeasurables" and when I make long posts I'm not addressing those. 

Edited November 29, 2018 by Randall Flagg

[Randall Flagg]

20 minutes ago, Hoss said:

We all see our own narratives on the ROR trade but you can’t just say “St. Louis wanted to get rid of Berglund and Sobotka so whatever they do here is irrelevant.” Our GM added them and built a roster that had them in the lineup. It matters what they do and so far that return is very good.

What I'm saying is that they have zero trade value and so any value-driven analysis of the ROR trade, they may as well not be there. It's not saying that Botterill doesn't get credit for them as depth additions, it's saying that when you sum up trade value, it's the same whether they're there or not, and the sticking point I had with the trade is that ROR's value could have been higher than what that sum is had Jason and Phil done/been allowed to do things differently (read: play ROR better, not have to trade by the stroke of midnight on xxx day, giving Doug the leverage of simply sitting there and smiling until Jason has to say okay) 

[Robviously]

5 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

And what I'm saying, is that the bold is a laughable take and I can't help but comment when I see posts with a similar theme. 

Judging by repeatedly mentioning ROR and Jack over the course of a year as being so critical to having a good team, having two strong centers, often leaving his name in place at the expense of core pieces like Reinhart, yes, I think Botterill loved one of the best two-way-centers in the game, and had a tough choice when he decided that the contract, age, and locker room condition of the team made it worth the immediate downgrade of the position. And I can even happily say that he's right, as long as he knew a Skinner-esque trade was coming to add another top six forward. 

The Avs had the worst non-expansion-team season ever soon after trading ROR. I'm not letting the architects of that team teach me something that, in all other NHL situations, have been fleshed out on much firmer ground r.e. what players are cancers and what aren't.

That take is laughable but thinking the GM "loved" him but wanted to go into this season (possibly a make or break for him as GM) with a 19 year old as his no.2 center makes a lot of sense?

The "I lost my love for the game" speech wasn't made in a  moment of frustration after a loss.  He had time to think about what he wanted to say to reporters that day and planned it.  And it was obviously intended to get him a fresh start while still trying to make it look like he's the good guy here.  (His whole schtick is tired, honestly.  He's forced his way off two teams but every time he opens his mouth all he wants you to know is how no one cares more than he does.  This is the guy who signed the biggest contract in Sabres history and then got drunk and drove into Tim Horton's.  Hero.)

And now we're saying Botterill did it because he "knew" a Skinner-esque trade would also happen later.  Yes, such plausible scientific explanations here.

[Randall Flagg]

14 minutes ago, Robviously said:

That take is laughable but thinking the GM "loved" him but wanted to go into this season (possibly a make or break for him as GM) with a 19 year old as his no.2 center makes a lot of sense?

I dunno, Botts sure had loads of confidence in Casey's ability to play NHL center. I'm sure he's still aware it's our biggest weakness, but if we're now judging interviews as legitimate sources to project astounding character and sociological claims from, then sure, Botts' summer interviews concerning Casey and the 2C position indicate he was happy with it.

The "I lost my love for the game" speech wasn't made in a  moment of frustration after a loss.  He had time to think about what he wanted to say to reporters that day and planned it.  And it was obviously intended to get him a fresh start while still trying to make it look like he's the good guy here.  (His whole schtick is tired, honestly.  He's forced his way off two teams but every time he opens his mouth all he wants you to know is how no one cares more than he does.  This is the guy who signed the biggest contract in Sabres history and then got drunk and drove into Tim Horton's.  Hero.)

"I lost my love for the game at times" is how ROR describes what literally everyone else was feeling going through the grind of last season. It's something that anyone can relate to when they've been pushed to a point like that in something they've given their whole life to. It's nothing. The guy was defeated on that team like so many others were. Drawing meaningful hockey and culture conclusions from soundbites about "needing to be better" is not something I have any interest in, especially with the likes of people who can not even watch St. Louis Blues hockey and insinuate they know exactly what's wrong with the their team. Not to say that's you, but that's certainly a take that will draw me into these discussions. Do work. Watch hockey. I've already said ad nauseum that the hopelessness such a "love for the game" quote could be a window into is certainly a part of a decision process that can draw from other factors and decide that moving player x might be good for the team even if player x is good. The claims I argue against go about fifteen steps further than that and retreat to "lol defending ROR's honor" as soon as a discussion of St. Louis Blues goaltending and ROR's linemates, and a request for the mechanism by which an attitude can drain all of the positive effects of a 97 point pace, ice-tilting center and then keep sapping from other players around him until the team is bad is made. Not even proof that's what happening, but just how it might occur. 

 And now we're saying Botterill did it because he "knew" a Skinner-esque trade would also happen later.  Yes, such plausible scientific explanations here.

You don't think it's reasonable that Botterill decided "welp, I traded away a top six player and should probably look to add one?" I mean, such message board dimwits as myself could see that it was necessary, I can't imagine that thought process wasn't taken by the GM that actually performed said trade.

 

Edited November 29, 2018 by Randall Flagg

[dudacek]

@Randall Flagg why so certain Armstrong was trying to give away Berglund and Sobotka for a year?

Isnt the evidence of that about as substantial as “ROR” is a cancer?

[Derrico]

So.....10 in a row eh?  Good friggen lord.......

[Randall Flagg]

1 minute ago, dudacek said:

@Randall Flagg why so certain Armstrong was trying to give away Berglund and Sobotka for a year?

Isnt the evidence of that about as substantial as “ROR” is a cancer?

I don't recall tweets from Friedmann and Dreger several times over the course of a year about how Jack and Sam abruptly quit the joke they were in the midst of as Snook enters the room, fearfully glancing over their shoulders. 

I do remember tweets from Friedmann and Dreger several times over the course of a year about how Doug Armstrong is trying to dump the contracts, first of Berglund ( that one probably ran a year and a half) and then for Sobotka. 

If that helps explain where I'm coming from.