GDT: Colorado at Buffalo, Feb. 4, 2020, 7:08 p.m. ET (MSG)

[CallawaySabres]

4 center ice tickets in Section 117 for tomorrow night... $30 per if anyone wants....

[nucci]

26 minutes ago, WildCard said:

I don't think it was lucky. Beane was trying to be hired by other teams, he wasn't some shot in the dark.

considering all his previous hires with Bills and Sabres, I'm going to call it lucky

[Randall Flagg]

26 minutes ago, Ruff Around The Edges said:

We saw this with the Buffalo Bills for almost 2 decades that we are seeing right now with the Buffalo Sabres. Here are the various blames/excuses many of us have made:

We blamed coaches.
We blamed GM's (at this point I MISS Darcy Regier, and I can't believe I said that!)
We blamed the players.
We blamed the system.
We blamed the facilities, we need a new arena, that will fix it all!
We blamed the market they play in. Nobody wants to play here blah blah blah.
We blamed Russ Brandon. Once that snake is gone we will take off!
We blamed the owner (Rigas, Golisano)
Terry comes in as the 'savior' we all needed.
We blame Kim Pegula.
We blame P$E.
Hell, some of us have even blamed Jack Eichel. He is whiny, he is selfish
And my ultimate favorite whine/excuse: The players don't CARE. Here is a newsflash: Athletes care a LOT more then most realize.

There have been SO many changes I have lost count. Where is this coming from? Change the GM and it is fixed? No. Change the coach? No. Kruger is the issue? No he isn't.

Guys and gals, as a fan of this team since the early 80's I am lost. Lost as to what will truly fix this mess.

Raising the white flag.

 

 

1.) The Bills stretch went on longer than this one, but this one is worse in quality than the Bills' stretch so far. The Sabres are dead last in the league in wins if you add up the last ten years!! (I am not doing the work on the first few years of the drought, but they were 8th worst from 2007-2016)

2.) What will truly fix this mess is relatively easy to find, in principle. This roster was never going to be capable of more points than around what they're pacing for now - so build a roster that is capable of more points! It's not that hard, since at least 2/3rds of the league can do it better than us any given year, so find a GM that can do that, so we can finally kickstart the process of growing, learning, developing into serious cup contenders.

[WildCard]

3 minutes ago, nucci said:

considering all his previous hires with Bills and Sabres, I'm going to call it lucky

99% of owners are lucky then

[Kruppstahl]

33 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

1.) The Bills stretch went on longer than this one, but this one is worse in quality than the Bills' stretch so far. The Sabres are dead last in the league in wins if you add up the last ten years!! (I am not doing the work on the first few years of the drought, but they were 8th worst from 2007-2016)

2.) What will truly fix this mess is relatively easy to find, in principle. This roster was never going to be capable of more points than around what they're pacing for now - so build a roster that is capable of more points! It's not that hard, since at least 2/3rds of the league can do it better than us any given year, so find a GM that can do that, so we can finally kickstart the process of growing, learning, developing into serious cup contenders.

Your Point #2 hits on the problem in my opinion.  Botterill's personal taste in hockey players is not very good.  Joker was a good find and add, as was Skinner (though he's being horribly misused right now).  The rest has been terrible.  The ROR deal was maybe the worst in franchise history.

I would love to sit around watching some of the deep round playoff series with Botterill, have a few beers, and talk hockey and what makes a winning team deep in the playoffs.

I get the impression Botterill is clueless, which is funny considering he is an NHL GM.

 

 

[Randall Flagg]

I just read on tweeter that the Avalanche have 20 million dollars of cap space, while we have roughly 22 thousand dollars of cap space.

[LGR4GM]

9 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

I just read on tweeter that the Avalanche have 20 million dollars of cap space, while we have roughly 22 thousand dollars of cap space.

Our gm sucks. Vesey, Sheary, Hunwick, Frolik, Erod, and Sobotka are all cap crap that Botts bought. 

17.325 million tied up in a group of players with a combined... 35 total points. Well ***** done Botterill. 

Edited February 5, 2020 by LGR4GM

[Ruff Around The Edges]

2 hours ago, darksabre said:

Your first mistake is thinking that Buffalo tanked "correctly". They did not. They didn't have a farm system with some depth players ready to make the jump, they didn't keep any of the vets that you need during a tank recovery. Now they're playing catch-up because they didn't set themselves up for success. 

I do agree with you, what I was eluding to was going for McDavid or Eichel, that part was done right. The issue was we had the GM's reversed. We probably needed a JBot when Eichel was drafted and then a GMTM after that. probably should have tanked again the following year in the hopes of landing Matthews or Laine. 

7 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Our gm sucks. Vesey, Sheary, Hunwick, Frolik, Erod, and Sobotka are all cap crap that Botts bought. 

17.325 million tied up in a group of players with a combined... 35 total points. Well ***** done Botterill. 

This really speaks volumes right here.

Fire JBot, and please NO more Pittsburgh guys in the organization (Bylsma and JBot were big misses)

[jad1]

12 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Our gm sucks. Vesey, Sheary, Hunwick, Frolik, Erod, and Sobotka are all cap crap that Botts bought. 

17.325 million tied up in a group of players with a combined... 35 total points. Well ***** done Botterill. 

And when Krueger scratches Bogosian and Miller on the same night, the team is stuffing $8 million of cap space into the press box.

[LGR4GM]

7 minutes ago, jad1 said:

And when Krueger scratches Bogosian and Miller on the same night, the team is stuffing $8 million of cap space into the press box.

The math works out to... 9.018 million for both those scratches. 

Or 26.343 million in wasted cap space for all of them

Or 32.32% of the cap is being used up by that

 

 

Edited February 5, 2020 by LGR4GM

[#freejame]

3 hours ago, Randall Flagg said:

Right? I hear all of our coaches and GMs talking about how we're building a lightning fast team with fast wingers who can score at ES. I was excited before I realized this meant "speedsters" that can't outskate anyone in today's NHL

Already having nightmares that part of the 'needed turnover' this offseason will be letting Z & Larry go under the guise that we all need to move on from each other and that it'll be easy/trivial to replace their impact, and then signing Josefson-level 4th liners that get cratered and thus only get used 6 minutes per game, back where we were with our 2013-2017 fourth lines

The issue with keeping Larry and Z is we’ll likely have $11m ties up in our fourth line when we need to be closer to $5m on the fourth. 

[Randall Flagg]

Colorado Avalanche 2016-2017
Record: 22 - 56 - 4, 48 points
Goals: 165
Goals Against: 276 ( - 111)
Landeskog (18G, 33 PTS) - MacKinnon (15G, 53 PTS) - Rantanen (20G, 38 PTS)
Comeau (8G, 20 PTS) - Duchene (18G, 41 PTS) - Bourque (12G, 18 PTS)
Iginla (8G, 18 PTS) - Grigorenko (10 G, 23 PTS) - Andrighetto (5G, 16 PTS)
Nieto (7, 11) - Soderberg (6, 14) - Martinsen (3, 7)
Others: John Mitchell (65 games, 3 goals, 7 points) JT Compher (21 games, 3 goals 5 points) Jost (6 games, 1 goal, 1 pioint) McLeod (28 games, 1 goal, 0 points)

Beauchemin (36 years old, 13 points in 81 games) - Johnson (17 points in 46 games)
Tyutin (13 points in 69 games) - Barrie (38 points in 74 games)
Zadorov - Barberio
Goloubef, Gelinas, Wiercioch as other defensemen to skate significant minutes
Goalies:

Top prospects: Mikko Rantanen, Tyson Jost, JT Compher, Calvin Pickard, Nicolas Meloche, Chris Bigras, Rocco Grimaldi, Andrei Mironov, AJ Greer

Buffalo Sabres 2017-2018
Record: 25-45-12, 62 points
Goals: 195
Goals against: 278 (-83)
Evander Kane (20 G, 40 PTS) - Jack Eichel (25 G, 64 PTS) - Sam Reinhart (25 G, 50 PTS)
Jason Pominville ( 13 G, 34 PTS) - ROR (24 G, 61 PTS) - Kyle Okposo (15 G, 44 PTS)
Benoit Pouliot (13 G, 19 PTS) - Johan Larsson (4G, 17 PTS) - Evan Rodrigues (7G, 25 PTS)
Zemgus (7, 15) -Wilson (6, 14) - Nolan (4, 8 ) 
Others: Baptiste (33 games, 4 goals, 6 pts) Bailey (12, 3, 4) Josefson (39, 2, 4) Griffith (21, 2, 3)

Scandella (22 points in 82 games) - Ristolainen (41 in 73)
McCabe (12 in 53) - Antipin (10 in 47)
Beaulieu (9 in 59) - Nelson (8 in 37)
Guhle, Falk, Gorges, Bogosian also played.

Top prospects: Casey Mittelstadt, Victor Olofsson, Alex Nylander, Brendan Guhle, Rasmus Asplund, Cliff Pu, UPL, BBF

 

After the season listed, Colorado made the playoffs and lost in the first round. Then the year after, they made the playoffs and won a round. We had last year, and then this year, for comparison. I don't think it's a stretch to say that these franchises were, within a season, in very similar circumstances, with the same GMs they have now. I think it's quite clear that Jason just did a bad job trying to fix a bad team
 

Edited February 5, 2020 by Randall Flagg

[matter2003]

Avalanche are just a bad matchup for the Sabres...they have gotten smacked 6-1 twice in a row at home by them