11 years and counting…

[LabattBlue]

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/33690130/buffalo-sabres-eliminated-nhl-playoff-contention-record-11th-straight-season

😞😞😞

[Marvin]

27 minutes ago, LabattBlue said:

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/33690130/buffalo-sabres-eliminated-nhl-playoff-contention-record-11th-straight-season

😞😞😞

The years we missed the playoffs before The Tank:

1970-1, 1971-2, 1973-4 1985-6, 1986-7, 1995-6, 2001-2, 2002-3, 2003-4, 2007-8, 2008-9.

We have DOUBLED our playoff misses since Darcy allowed losing to become acceptable in 2011-2.  Then we tried to lose for a few years and then losing became a bad habit like smoking.

[WildCard]

Better than 16 though 

[Pimlach]

sad.  

Prior to the tank, in our first 40 years we had the 4th best win percentage in the NHL.   Most hockey fans would never think that.   

Never tank again.  Never play to lose.  If you cant play to win, then go home and sit on your mothers lap.

What a ridiculous idea that was sold to Pegula.  

[LGR4GM]

51 minutes ago, Marvin, Sabres Fan said:

The years we missed the playoffs before The Tank:

1970-1, 1971-2, 1973-4 1985-6, 1986-7, 1995-6, 2001-2, 2002-3, 2003-4, 2007-8, 2008-9.

We have DOUBLED our playoff misses since Darcy allowed losing to become acceptable in 2011-2.  Then we tried to lose for a few years and then losing became a bad habit like smoking.

No we lost because we spent years drafting like trash and adding bad players to a talentless team. Stop using this as an excuse for a team horribly built and managed that has had major holes since 2007.

2 minutes ago, Pimlach said:

sad.  

Prior to the tank, in our first 40 years we had the 4th best win percentage in the NHL.   Most hockey fans would never think that.   

Never tank again.  Never play to lose.  If you cant play to win, then go home and sit on your mothers lap.

What a ridiculous idea that was sold to Pegula.  

Eyeroll. 

[LGR4GM]

It is infuriating reading this revisionist history that the Sabres were not garbage before 2014. At that point they hadn't won a playoff round in 7 years and were trending down but it's easier to say "oh it was just the tank" no the tank was a symptom of a team that had poor drafting and attempted to juice the system. Obviously it failed but we're not better now because we suddenly decided to win, we're better now because we suddenly decided to draft better and add players of talent. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by LGR4GM

[Pimlach]

17 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

No we lost because we spent years drafting like trash and adding bad players to a talentless team. Stop using this as an excuse for a team horribly built and managed that has had major holes since 2007.

Eyeroll. 

(Eyeroll back with a frown and headshake)

Poorly managed is pretty much the whole answer.  From the top down.  I will never support a strategy of losing for a better lottery pick.  They did that twice.   The other two last place teams just plain stunk.  

Edited April 8, 2022 by Pimlach

[JohnC]

1 hour ago, Pimlach said:

(Eyeroll back with a frown and headshake)

Poorly managed is pretty much the whole answer.  From the top down.  I will never supports a strategy of losing for a better lottery pick.  They did that twice.   The other two last place teams just plain stunk.  

As you indicated, the first priority was getting the organization and its staffing in order. Just like with the Bills, when the organization was overhauled and staffed with competent people who were all aligned from top to bottom, the prospects for this franchise went dramatically up. There is an organizational coherency now that is obvious to all. That's why most of us are optimistic now!  

[Marvin]

You asked for it.

1 hour ago, LGR4GM said:

It is infuriating reading this revisionist history that the Sabres were not garbage before 2014. At that point they hadn't won a playoff round in 7 years and were trending down but it's easier to say "oh it was just the tank" no the tank was a symptom of a team that had poor drafting and attempted to juice the system. Obviously it failed but we're not better now because we suddenly decided to win, we're better now because we suddenly decided to draft better and add players of talent. 

Did anything I write imply that the Sabres were drafting well, badly, or anywhere in between?  Did I write anything about the quality of player development?  What sentence refers to scouting?  What phrase refers to roster construction?  Stop putting words and ideas into my text which are not there and cannot be properly inferred.

Since you chose to impugn my intelligence, here is what I really think so that you are absolutely, positively, completely clear about my thoughts.

Looking at the data from 2005-2012, the Sabres drafting has much fewer hits on drafting than was average over the league in that time.  The players they did draft almost uniformly underperformed in Buffalo.  A scant few of these performed up to par after leaving.  Several were rushed to the NHL and did not improve as much as I would have expected.  Very few players were impact players in Rochester, let alone Buffalo.  This indicates sub-mediocre scouting, drafting, development, and talent evaluation.

Even the Sabres playoff teams after Black Sunday had problems.  Aside from the glaring hole in top 9 C, the team often got badly outplayed.   I remember numerous games where Ryan Miller stole points when the team got outshot 35+ to 25-.   An injury to one of Vanek, Miller, Pominville, Hecht, and Connolly could send them into mediocrity and below until they were healthy.  Injuries to more than one sent the team into a tailspin.  But when healthy, they were pretty good -- which is why Boston targetted Vanek in the 2010 playoffs, Philadelphia targetted Connolly in the 2011 playoffs, and Lucic targetted Miller in 2011-2.

IMHO, the ONLY part of the above which is relevant to me is the causes and effects of a lack of talent in a submediocre development pipeline.  That was my diagnosis of the problems with the Sabres at the time.  Now, I will expound on why I opposed The Tank and preferred a normal rebuild like 1995-6 and 2021-2.

A system so bereft of young talent and missing solid player development can't afford a tank where you ice a team consisting mostly of AHL Tweeners and the bottom end of the bottom end of NHL players because the team will lack depth and has no foundation on which to build.  Rochester has not won a playoff round since 2004-5 and was mediocre for many years, so there was no cushion there.  And then the players were mostly AHL cast-offs complemented by the rewards of lousy scouting and drafting.

The negative effects of The Tank infected the locker room.  (Make a good play and players joke that you are trying to get traded.  So the subconscious message is if you aren't traded, you clearly stink.  Masterful psychology.)  Then the management got some bad players for a young team, mishandled several veterans who brought the proper attitudes, had no one left in Buffalo who had had success here, traded away assets like they were candy, drafted rather poorly, being unable to bring in solid defencemen, and brought in a coach who was notorious for being terrible at developing youth.  That was followed with prematurely dismantling the rebuild with one God-Awful trade and then compounding the offence with terrible decisions with the bottom 6 forwards with a coach who thought he could be a dictator like Scotty Bowman followed by a coach who makes Ted Nolan look like a strategic, nitty-gritty genius.

Therefore, I criticise The Tank because: philosophically, I don't believe in trying to lose (yes, that is vastly different this season -- the GM never undermined the coaches and players and put an emphasis on culture and talent development); I don't like the psychology for the players left; I did not like the instability it brought to the locker room, which made it far too easy for Kane and Bogosian to infect it; it was a flawed analysis of the situation at hand, whence it went after a solution to the wrong problem AND it was a try for a quick fix for what were endemic, systemic problems.

I view the 11 years of garbage as the just desserts for The Tank.  It was the wrong thing to do because was not the correct solution to the actual problems at hand at the time.  And the lack of a deep talent pipeline after the current crop shows that there is STILL work to do to fix those problems.

[John Tucker]

2 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

It is infuriating reading this revisionist history that the Sabres were not garbage before 2014. At that point they hadn't won a playoff round in 7 years and were trending down but it's easier to say "oh it was just the tank" no the tank was a symptom of a team that had poor drafting and attempted to juice the system. Obviously it failed but we're not better now because we suddenly decided to win, we're better now because we suddenly decided to draft better and add players of talent. 

So we chose not to draft well??

[Marvin]

1 minute ago, John Tucker said:

So we chose not to draft well??

Welcome back!

It only seemed that way.  I think.

[John Tucker]

2 hours ago, Pimlach said:

(Eyeroll back with a frown and headshake)

Poorly managed is pretty much the whole answer.  From the top down.  I will never supports a strategy of losing for a better lottery pick.  They did that twice.   The other two last place teams just plain stunk.  

Unfortunately though, it worked out really, really well for Chicago and Pittsburgh (twice)

[Weave]

2 hours ago, Pimlach said:

sad.  

Prior to the tank, in our first 40 years we had the 4th best win percentage in the NHL.   Most hockey fans would never think that.   

Never tank again.  Never play to lose.  If you cant play to win, then go home and sit on your mothers lap.

What a ridiculous idea that was sold to Pegula.  

5 minutes ago, John Tucker said:

Unfortunately though, it worked out really, really well for Chicago and Pittsburgh (twice)

Except Pittsburgh only tanked once and Chicago never lost on purpose.

[John Tucker]

2 minutes ago, Weave said:

Except Pittsburgh only tanked once and Chicago never lost on purpose.

Call it what you want, but Pittsburgh dropped anchor for Lemieux and Crosby and Chicago pulled a wink, wink, nod, nod tank

[Weave]

4 minutes ago, John Tucker said:

Call it what you want, but Pittsburgh dropped anchor for Lemieux and Crosby and Chicago pulled a wink, wink, nod, nod tank

Crosby was drafted immediately after a lockout season.  It was not possible for Pittsburgh to know to ***** the bed the season before.  True story, Buffalo ahd the same odds to get the 1st OAL pick as Pittsburgh.  One other team too if I remember correctly.  And Chicago was being run by an old man that didn't want to pay veterans so he traded them when their contracts came up.  He ran the team into the ground being a cheapskate.  His son turned that team around when he decided to..... wait for it.... try too win.

It's all real easy to find this info if you look a little.

[John Tucker]

Just now, Weave said:

Crosby was drafted immediately after a lockout season.  It was not possible for Pittsburgh to know to ***** the bed the season before.  True story, Buffalo ahd the same odds to get the 1st OAL pick as Pittsburgh.  One other team too if I remember correctly.  And Chicago was being run by an old man that didn't want to pay veterans so he traded them when their contracts came up.  He ran the team into the ground being a cheapskate.  His son turned that team around when he decided to..... wait for it.... try too win.

It's all real easy to find this info if you look a little.

Now I remember why I enjoyed not being on this site... The constant douchebaggery here is overwhelming

[Weave]

3 minutes ago, John Tucker said:

Now I remember why I enjoyed not being on this site... The constant douchebaggery here is overwhelming

I apologize.  I shouldn't have gone to condescending.  I reacted to a tired, old argument that was debunked many times.  You didn't deserve it.

[LGR4GM]

24 minutes ago, John Tucker said:

So we chose not to draft well??

I'd say we tanked to take the error out of our poor drafting. 

[SDS]

49 minutes ago, Marvin, Sabres Fan said:

You asked for it.

Did anything I write imply that the Sabres were drafting well, badly, or anywhere in between?  Did I write anything about the quality of player development?  What sentence refers to scouting?  What phrase refers to roster construction?  Stop putting words and ideas into my text which are not there and cannot be properly inferred.

Since you chose to impugn my intelligence, here is what I really think so that you are absolutely, positively, completely clear about my thoughts.

Looking at the data from 2005-2012, the Sabres drafting has much fewer hits on drafting than was average over the league in that time.  The players they did draft almost uniformly underperformed in Buffalo.  A scant few of these performed up to par after leaving.  Several were rushed to the NHL and did not improve as much as I would have expected.  Very few players were impact players in Rochester, let alone Buffalo.  This indicates sub-mediocre scouting, drafting, development, and talent evaluation.

Even the Sabres playoff teams after Black Sunday had problems.  Aside from the glaring hole in top 9 C, the team often got badly outplayed.   I remember numerous games where Ryan Miller stole points when the team got outshot 35+ to 25-.   An injury to one of Vanek, Miller, Pominville, Hecht, and Connolly could send them into mediocrity and below until they were healthy.  Injuries to more than one sent the team into a tailspin.  But when healthy, they were pretty good -- which is why Boston targetted Vanek in the 2010 playoffs, Philadelphia targetted Connolly in the 2011 playoffs, and Lucic targetted Miller in 2011-2.

IMHO, the ONLY part of the above which is relevant to me is the causes and effects of a lack of talent in a submediocre development pipeline.  That was my diagnosis of the problems with the Sabres at the time.  Now, I will expound on why I opposed The Tank and preferred a normal rebuild like 1995-6 and 2021-2.

A system so bereft of young talent and missing solid player development can't afford a tank where you ice a team consisting mostly of AHL Tweeners and the bottom end of the bottom end of NHL players because the team will lack depth and has no foundation on which to build.  Rochester has not won a playoff round since 2004-5 and was mediocre for many years, so there was no cushion there.  And then the players were mostly AHL cast-offs complemented by the rewards of lousy scouting and drafting.

The negative effects of The Tank infected the locker room.  (Make a good play and players joke that you are trying to get traded.  So the subconscious message is if you aren't traded, you clearly stink.  Masterful psychology.)  Then the management got some bad players for a young team, mishandled several veterans who brought the proper attitudes, had no one left in Buffalo who had had success here, traded away assets like they were candy, drafted rather poorly, being unable to bring in solid defencemen, and brought in a coach who was notorious for being terrible at developing youth.  That was followed with prematurely dismantling the rebuild with one God-Awful trade and then compounding the offence with terrible decisions with the bottom 6 forwards with a coach who thought he could be a dictator like Scotty Bowman followed by a coach who makes Ted Nolan look like a strategic, nitty-gritty genius.

Therefore, I criticise The Tank because: philosophically, I don't believe in trying to lose (yes, that is vastly different this season -- the GM never undermined the coaches and players and put an emphasis on culture and talent development); I don't like the psychology for the players left; I did not like the instability it brought to the locker room, which made it far too easy for Kane and Bogosian to infect it; it was a flawed analysis of the situation at hand, whence it went after a solution to the wrong problem AND it was a try for a quick fix for what were endemic, systemic problems.

I view the 11 years of garbage as the just desserts for The Tank.  It was the wrong thing to do because was not the correct solution to the actual problems at hand at the time.  And the lack of a deep talent pipeline after the current crop shows that there is STILL work to do to fix those problems.

I’m gonna wait for the movie.

[Stoner]

This is harder than I expected.

[SDS]

5 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

This is harder than I expected.

That’s what she said. 

[Cage]

Every bad team in all sports sells assets that aren't part of their future plans in order to fuel a rebuild, making themselves worse in the process. That's how Wayne Gretzky gets traded all the way through to Russell Wilson this off-season in the NFL.  Are the Seahawks better by trading him?  No, they went from a SB-winning franchise QB to unproven, unknowns.  They also did it shortly after Mahomes and Allen put on a clinic on how important QBing is to be successful in NFL.   

I think much of the bad result is simply not having the organization in place, GM on down, to successfully navigate a rebuild.  If you go back to the tank years of Murray we had great draft capital and were rated among the best in prospect pipeline.  But players like Grigorenko, Bailey, Baptiste, Hurley, Guhle, Nylander never pan out as hoped.  Then they gave up early on Zadorov, Compher, Lemieux.  Peterson wouldn't sign.  That's 10 players for whatever reason of bad drafting or organizational incompetence we got little from.   Some of them may not have wanted to be here, but we're just seeing on the Bills side how a competent organization enables a guy like Von Miller to WANT to come to Buffalo, leaving a SB champion in LA.

They did tank in 2014-15, but then if they rebuilt from there in a way more in-line w/ how GMKA is now approaching it, perhaps we'd have a different view of it all.  It appears we have more later round hits in the past 4 years than we had in the previous 10 as Bryson, Fitzgerald, Asplund, UPL are showing they may belong and our younger pipeline players like Nadeau, Bloom, Peterka, Quinn, Power, Levi are near the top of their respective leagues.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Cage

[SwampD]

The Tank was unnecessary.

 

10 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

I'd say we tanked to take the error out of our poor drafting. 

Absolutely. A bullsh!zz solution, made worse by it being a 2 plus year bullsh!zz solution.

If the problem was poor drafting, then fix the poor drafting.

 

The Tank was unnecessary.

Period.

Edited April 8, 2022 by SwampD

[inkman]

1 hour ago, SwampD said:

The Tank was unnecessary.

 

Absolutely. A bullsh!zz solution, made worse by it being a 2 plus year bullsh!zz solution.

If the problem was poor drafting, then fix the poor drafting.

 

The Tank was unnecessary.

Period.

For rebuilding purposes, yes. To satisfy all the tank dorks (I was one myself), maybe it needed to happen.  And end horrifically.  Sort of.  That Kermet, Star Wars meme stating, we tanker for Eichel, no we tanked for Tuch is sort of prescient.  We inevitably got the talent we needed with Tuch, Krebs and the draft picks.  Did we have to throw multiple seasons to do it.  Of course not, but it is interesting that it worked out that way. 

[inkman]

I don’t understand the flex in this tweet.  We all know the facts.  Has he not watched any games this season seeing the progress this team has made.  It just screams of someone who doesn’t pay much attention, that had a beef with somebody Buffalo related.