Tim Murray was a complete disaster for the Buffalo Sabres

[TrueBlueGED]

19 minutes ago, dudacek said:

Not interested in litigating the ROR trade again.

For those who are, Botterill traded him for Patrik Berglund, Vlad Sobotka, Tage Thompson, Colin Miller and Ryan Johnson.

No, he didn't. What the trade turned into with assets isn't the same thing as what it was. This line of reasoning also implicitly assumes we wouldn't have gotten Miller without trading ROR. It's probably a stretch to think we couldn't have gotten it done any other way. There's also the not so minor detail of time and flushing away a season in part due to one of the worst center situations in the league. 

Edited July 22, 2019 by TrueBlueGED

[dudacek]

1 hour ago, TrueBlueGED said:

No, he didn't. What the trade turned into with assets isn't the same thing as what it was. This line of reasoning also implicitly assumes we wouldn't have gotten Miller without trading ROR. It's probably a stretch to think we couldn't have gotten it done any other way. There's also the not so minor detail of time and flushing away a season in part due to one of the worst center situations in the league. 

Yes, he did.

Not considering what the assets acquired were used for is a very shortsighted way of seeing things. The environment dictated by the CBA dictates that a very small percentage of trades are of the Johansen/Jones player for player variety. In lieu of that GMs acquire assets - most typically cap space, prospects and draft picks that they then flip into things they can use on ice.

It very much matters how and when a GM uses those assets. I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence.

Edited July 22, 2019 by dudacek

[Randall Flagg]

6 minutes ago, dudacek said:

Yes, he did.

Not considering what the assets acquired were used for is a very shortsighted way of seeing things. The environment dictated by the CBA dictates that a very small percentage of trades are of the Johansen/Jones player for player variety. In lieu of that GMs acquire assets - most typically cap space, prospects and draft picks that they then flip into things they can use on ice.

It very much matters how and when a GM uses those assets. I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence.

No it's not. People don't think we're doomed forever because it was a bad trade. They just see that Jason Botterill traded Ryan O'Reilly for 2018 Vlad Sobotka, 2018 Patrik Berglund, 2018 Tage Thompson, and those picks. That is the move they criticize, and even if he turned those pieces into Wayne Gretzky, it doesn't change the evaluation of the move that happened, which is what people are doing when they still bring up the trade: Evaluating the move that was made. 

Jason can be forgiven for a bad trade like every NHL GM to ever exist, and if he earns it, the fans will give it to him. This includes further manipulation of the pieces he got in the trade.

It will not change the fact that he made that move when he did for what he did. And everyone sees that, and implicitly balances it all when talking about things like individual moves, or a GM's tenure as a whole.

Edited July 22, 2019 by Randall Flagg

[GASabresIUFAN]

4 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

No it's not. People don't think we're doomed forever because it was a bad trade. They just see that Jason Botterill traded Ryan O'Reilly for 2018 Vlad Sobotka, 2018 Patrik Berglund, 2018 Tage Thompson, and those picks. That is the move they criticize, and even if he turned those pieces into Wayne Gretzky, it doesn't change the evaluation of the move that happened, which is what people are doing when they still bring up the trade: Evaluating the move that was made. 

Jason can be forgiven for a bad trade like every NHL GM to ever exist, and if he earns it, the fans will give it to him. This includes further manipulation of the pieces he got in the trade.

It will not change the fact that he made that move when he did for what he did. And everyone sees that, and implicitly balances it all when talking about things like individual moves, or a GM's tenure as a whole.

I disagree.  I think there are people here who think we are doomed forever because ROR was traded. I would hope most people realize that The 1st used Johnson and the 2nd were for the future.  I think most of us are happy that Jbot turned a long-term asset  (the 2nd) into a solid D that can be here for years to come in Miller.  Only Sobotka and Berglund were truly expected to be current depth players when the deal was made and it was hoped Thompson would be a Roster player in 2018 and a significant piece for the long-term.  Thompson’s long-term is still intact as he is only 21.  

Your acting like this deal happened in a vacuum and can only be evaluated on what happened last year. As we have seen with the Kane/Bogo - Myers/Stamford deal, the real long-term effects of a deal are years down the line.  As I said before, no Braves fan regrets trading Doyle Alexander for then prospect John Smoltz.  If moving out ROR gives us three long-term roster players (Miller, Johnson and Thompson) and cleared the way for a winning spine of Eichel, Cozens and Mitts, I think most people would be content with the trade in the end.

 

[Scottysabres]

Hey, did I mention I really think, like really, really, really, double dog dare ya really, think that Tim Murray was a disaster as the GM of the Buffalo Sabres?

Ok, well, I really think he was...…………...

Carry on...…………..

[Randall Flagg]

49 minutes ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

I disagree.  I think there are people here who think we are doomed forever because ROR was traded. I would hope most people realize that The 1st used Johnson and the 2nd were for the future.  I think most of us are happy that Jbot turned a long-term asset  (the 2nd) into a solid D that can be here for years to come in Miller.  Only Sobotka and Berglund were truly expected to be current depth players when the deal was made and it was hoped Thompson would be a Roster player in 2018 and a significant piece for the long-term.  Thompson’s long-term is still intact as he is only 21.  

Your acting like this deal happened in a vacuum and can only be evaluated on what happened last year. As we have seen with the Kane/Bogo - Myers/Stamford deal, the real long-term effects of a deal are years down the line.  As I said before, no Braves fan regrets trading Doyle Alexander for then prospect John Smoltz.  If moving out ROR gives us three long-term roster players (Miller, Johnson and Thompson) and cleared the way for a winning spine of Eichel, Cozens and Mitts, I think most people would be content with the trade in the end.

 

Show me the posts. 

And no I'm not - I'm perfectly capable of evaluating both the GM's entire tenure, and individual moves within it, while being generally cognizant of where the thing I'm looking at fits in the whole puzzle. If there's something in my posts that suggests otherwise, let me know and I'll change my mannerisms appropriately. 

 

[GASabresIUFAN]

1 hour ago, Randall Flagg said:

 They just see that Jason Botterill traded Ryan O'Reilly for 2018 Vlad Sobotka, 2018 Patrik Berglund, 2018 Tage Thompson, and those picks. That is the move they criticize, and even if he turned those pieces into Wayne Gretzky, it doesn't change the evaluation of the move that happened, which is what people are doing when they still bring up the trade: Evaluating the move that was made. 

 

It seems pretty clear that you are limiting the trade evaluation to 2018 only.  You say it doesn't matter is they acquire Gretzky with the proceeds that it won't change the evaluation.  That is totally incorrect.

For example: If Jbot trades Risto to WPG to get Ehlers and then trades Ehlers for Tyler Johnson are you really going to only evaluate the deal on Risto for Ehlers? 

[Pimlach]

8 hours ago, shrader said:

He had such an incredible season that they even named him rookie of the year??

Opps!  Not Calder Trophy, Conn Smythe.   My mistake.   

Edited July 22, 2019 by Pimlach

[Taro T]

3 hours ago, TrueBlueGED said:

No, he didn't. What the trade turned into with assets isn't the same thing as what it was. This line of reasoning also implicitly assumes we wouldn't have gotten Miller without trading ROR. It's probably a stretch to think we couldn't have gotten it done any other way. There's also the not so minor detail of time and flushing away a season in part due to one of the worst center situations in the league.

Ya know, the bolded got me thinking.  Of the various assets teams had, nearly all are fungible (players can be traded, picks can be traded, cash by definition is fungible, and even cap space is to a degree) but only 1 asset is completely perishable (2, if you include Pominville's ability to skate ? ) - cap space available to be spent in an individual season.  Once the season is over, teams don't get unspent cap back.

I'm wondering if a team, who's owner claims he doesn't care about how much cash goes out the door in an individual season, could after rosters are no longer limited to 23 active players make a trade (for even a 7th rounder) taking on a player that has a larger salary than cap hit that is essentially worthless on the ice which eats up more cap space than the contract nominally indicates it would take up. 

This would burn available cap, but with the IR rules and the fact there are no more trades to be made, the cap isn't that critical at that point.

As an example, should a team have accumulated $2MM in banked cap space, the team could probably afford to burn $1MM of that with no issues.  The trade deadline hits with ~1/8th of the season remaining, so that $1MM of cap could be spent on a player(s) with ~$8MM of full season cap hit.

Would a team like Carolina or Arizona that has cash flow issues be willing to give up a 6th round pick in a year or 2 to save some actual out of pocket cash?  If they would, could that extra 6th be used to package with a 4th to move into the 3rd round?

Not sure if it could be done, especially if the team is tight on the cap.  But in seasons where there is some cap room, the team could could covert an expiring asset into a perpetual one.  (How many times have we seen where somebody traces out a trade tree to show that a player that retired 30 years ago is still bringing value to a team due to a series of trades through the years?)

Teams trade cap space at the draft (e.g. Datsyuk to AZ); why not do it at the deadline?

Probably better suited for the random thread, but, whatever. ?

Edited July 22, 2019 by Taro T

[dudacek]

1 hour ago, Randall Flagg said:

No it's not. People don't think we're doomed forever because it was a bad trade. They just see that Jason Botterill traded Ryan O'Reilly for 2018 Vlad Sobotka, 2018 Patrik Berglund, 2018 Tage Thompson, and those picks. That is the move they criticize, and even if he turned those pieces into Wayne Gretzky, it doesn't change the evaluation of the move that happened, which is what people are doing when they still bring up the trade: Evaluating the move that was made. 

Jason can be forgiven for a bad trade like every NHL GM to ever exist, and if he earns it, the fans will give it to him. This includes further manipulation of the pieces he got in the trade.

It will not change the fact that he made that move when he did for what he did. And everyone sees that, and implicitly balances it all when talking about things like individual moves, or a GM's tenure as a whole.

You seem to be dismissing the idea that the picks may have been acquired with the intent to flip them.

To a lot of people, picks implies players we won't see for three years, if at all. To me (and, I believe, to most GMs) picks are currency.

I had no idea what Jason intended to do with those picks until he used them. If his intent was to acquire three young players who would help us down the road, that made it worse in my mind than if his intent was to flip those picks for players who fit with our long-term core, and our long-term cap space.

I am disappointed the first-rounder wasn't flipped for a quality player like Montour, happier the 2nd was leveraged into Colin Miller. 

It still would have been a bad trade had it been O'Reilly for JT Miller, Colin Miller and Tage Thompson but it would have been better because part of why that trade was bad was because of the pus-filled hole it left at 2C for a team that should have been ready for the playoffs.

 

Edited July 22, 2019 by dudacek

[triumph_communes]

31 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Ya know, the bolded got me thinking.  Of the various assets teams had, nearly all are fungible (players can be traded, picks can be traded, cash by definition is fungible, and even cap space is to a degree) but only 1 asset is completely perishable (2, if you include Pominville's ability to skate ? ) - cap space available to be spent in an individual season.  Once the season is over, teams don't get unspent cap back.

I'm wondering if a team, who's owner claims he doesn't care about how much cash goes out the door in an individual season, could after rosters are no longer limited to 23 active players make a trade (for even a 7th rounder) taking on a player that has a larger salary than cap hit that is essentially worthless on the ice which eats up more cap space than the contract nominally indicates it would take up. 

This would burn available cap, but with the IR rules and the fact there are no more trades to be made, the cap isn't that critical at that point.

As an example, should a team have accumulated $2MM in banked cap space, the team could probably afford to burn $1MM of that with no issues.  The trade deadline hits with ~1/8th of the season remaining, so that $1MM of cap could be spent on a player(s) with ~$8MM of full season cap hit.

Would a team like Carolina or Arizona that has cash flow issues be willing to give up a 6th round pick in a year or 2 to save some actual out of pocket cash?  If they would, could that extra 6th be used to package with a 4th to move into the 3rd round?

Not sure if it could be done, especially if the team is tight on the cap.  But in seasons where there is some cap room, the team could could covert an expiring asset into a perpetual one.  (How many times have we seen where somebody traces out a trade tree to show that a player that retired 30 years ago is still bringing value to a team due to a series of trades through the years?)

Teams trade cap space at the draft (e.g. Datsyuk to AZ); why not do it at the deadline?

Probably better suited for the random thread, but, whatever. ?

 

The Chicago/Ottawa trade was just Ottawa selling cap space for actual salary remaining to be paid, since the Chicago contract was half in bonuses that paid out prior to the trade.

[Taro T]

45 minutes ago, triumph_communes said:

 

The Chicago/Ottawa trade was just Ottawa selling cap space for actual salary remaining to be paid, since the Chicago contract was half in bonuses that paid out prior to the trade.

Right.  Teams do this in the off-season; my suggestion was to do it at the deadline as well if you have an owner that puts a higher priority on LT winning than ST profit AND you expect to have cap that won't be spent before it vanishes into the ether in league day 188.

[nfreeman]

Interesting debate here.  I totally agree with @GASabresIUFAN and @dudacek that the assets ultimately acquired are critical to the analysis, but I also totally agree with @TrueBlueGED and @Randall Flagg that the time value of the assets are critical as well — so IMHO TT and Johnson need to be really freaking good to make up for the intervening period during which ROR is really good while they are non-factors.  

[triumph_communes]

9 hours ago, nfreeman said:

Interesting debate here.  I totally agree with @GASabresIUFAN and @dudacek that the assets ultimately acquired are critical to the analysis, but I also totally agree with @TrueBlueGED and @Randall Flagg that the time value of the assets are critical as well — so IMHO TT and Johnson need to be really freaking good to make up for the intervening period during which ROR is really good while they are non-factors.  

Last season was a test on Housley.  He couldn't outcoach the aura of ROR, so they got rid of ROR.  The following season if Housley failed, we had plenty of ammo for the next coach to build a different team for him.  We all saw how it played out.  Tage being in the NHL not AHL was a Housley decision ultimately, as Botterill has stated many times.  Montour was added to help Housley.

Time value of assets needs to be taken into the context of the season played and the (real) goal of that season.  The deadline moves would've been entirely different last season if Housley was a good coach.  He wasn't.  Remember, Botterill originally wanted to hire Krueger in the first place, not Housley, but Krueger wouldn't breach his contract.  The two year Housley experiment was to see if an untested, but 'hot' coach had what it takes.

Edited July 23, 2019 by triumph_communes

[kas23]

This thread is a showcase of human condition. A topic that has already been beaten to death and people are still jumping on the grave. 

[shrader]

9 hours ago, nfreeman said:

Interesting debate here.  I totally agree with @GASabresIUFAN and @dudacek that the assets ultimately acquired are critical to the analysis, but I also totally agree with @TrueBlueGED and @Randall Flagg that the time value of the assets are critical as well — so IMHO TT and Johnson need to be really freaking good to make up for the intervening period during which ROR is really good while they are non-factors.  

It's kind of a weird stance to take, saying that you can't take into account future moves, particularly when a trade heavily revolves around draft picks.  That is by definition a move that is made with future plans in mind.  Now if you were to turn around and trade one of the players in a year or two, I'm fine with not viewing that as a positive towards the initial trade.

[Drunkard]

15 hours ago, Scottysabres said:

Hey, did I mention I really think, like really, really, really, double dog dare ya really, think that Tim Murray was a disaster as the GM of the Buffalo Sabres?

Ok, well, I really think he was...…………...

Carry on...…………..

And Murray is still better than Botterill.

[nfreeman]

1 hour ago, triumph_communes said:

Last season was a test on Housley.  He couldn't outcoach the aura of ROR, so they got rid of ROR.  The following season if Housley failed, we had plenty of ammo for the next coach to build a different team for him.  We all saw how it played out.  Tage being in the NHL not AHL was a Housley decision ultimately, as Botterill has stated many times.  Montour was added to help Housley.

Time value of assets needs to be taken into the context of the season played and the (real) goal of that season.  The deadline moves would've been entirely different last season if Housley was a good coach.  He wasn't.  Remember, Botterill originally wanted to hire Krueger in the first place, not Housley, but Krueger wouldn't breach his contract.  The two year Housley experiment was to see if an untested, but 'hot' coach had what it takes.

Got a link for the bolded?  I don't recall seeing this.

As for acquiring Montour -- I don't think it was to help Howie.  That trade occurred at the end of February, after the Sabres had already fallen off the table.

[#freejame]

49 minutes ago, nfreeman said:

Got a link for the bolded?  I don't recall seeing this.

As for acquiring Montour -- I don't think it was to help Howie.  That trade occurred at the end of February, after the Sabres had already fallen off the table.

I don’t have a link for you, but I also remember Botts saying this regarding player decisions. Hopefully someone can provide proof. 

[Stoner]

2 hours ago, kas23 said:

This thread is a showcase of human condition. A topic that has already been beaten to death and people are still jumping on the grave. 

Thank you. Folks should come join me in beating some live horses.

[nfreeman]

9 minutes ago, #freejame said:

I don’t have a link for you, but I also remember Botts saying this regarding player decisions. Hopefully someone can provide proof. 

Thanks.  I recall JB saying this about healthy scratches, but not about who goes down to Rochester.  But I certainly could've missed it.

[GASabresIUFAN]

1 hour ago, nfreeman said:

Got a link for the bolded?  I don't recall seeing this.

As for acquiring Montour -- I don't think it was to help Howie.  That trade occurred at the end of February, after the Sabres had already fallen off the table.

Agree.  That trade was clearly about how Jbot wants our defense group to play long-term and improving overall talent on defense.  If he wanted to help PH, he would have made a significant move when Berglund walked.

 

 

 

[Taro T]

5 minutes ago, nfreeman said:

Thanks.  I recall JB saying this about healthy scratches, but not about who goes down to Rochester.  But I certainly could've missed it.

Have only heard a handful of Botterill interviews, but always came away with the impression that the 2 consulted each other but Botterill chose who the 23 on the roster were & Housley then chose who dressed and how the lines were assembled.

[Thorner]

On 7/22/2019 at 3:35 PM, Randall Flagg said:

No it's not. People don't think we're doomed forever because it was a bad trade. They just see that Jason Botterill traded Ryan O'Reilly for 2018 Vlad Sobotka, 2018 Patrik Berglund, 2018 Tage Thompson, and those picks. That is the move they criticize, and even if he turned those pieces into Wayne Gretzky, it doesn't change the evaluation of the move that happened, which is what people are doing when they still bring up the trade: Evaluating the move that was made. 

Jason can be forgiven for a bad trade like every NHL GM to ever exist, and if he earns it, the fans will give it to him. This includes further manipulation of the pieces he got in the trade.

It will not change the fact that he made that move when he did for what he did. And everyone sees that, and implicitly balances it all when talking about things like individual moves, or a GM's tenure as a whole.

 

[OhMyDahlin]

On 7/17/2019 at 5:36 PM, Scottysabres said:

I don't disagree freester, but he hasn't burned through picks and prospect capital like Murray did. Not yet anyways.

Botterill traded a 3rd round pick for Beaulieu, and then traded him for a 6th round pick. He gave a 3rd round pick, Ennis and Foligno for Scandella and Pominville. He traded a 4th round pick for Sheary and Hunwick's contract. He traded a 5th round pick for Scott Wilson. The O'Reilly and Kane trades were absolutely horrendous.

He's been rebuilding the team and has had only 18 draft picks in 3 years, even after trading players like O'Reilly and Kane...that's pretty bad.

Murray had 25 picks in 3 years, on top of getting guys like Ryan O'Reilly, Evander Kane, and Robin Lehner. He traded Brayden McNabb, Luke Adam, Brendan Lemiuex, Joel Armia, Dan Catenacci, Jerome Gauthier-Leduc, Nikita Zadorov, JT Compher and Mikhail Grigorenko. Not exactly great prospects, none even close to O'Reilly and/or Kane.

 

Botterill has been no better than Murray was...the team is still as bad as it was.

(The only thing that looks better under Botterill is drafting, but that's more on the scouting staff than it is on the GM.)