Staying the course - Comments from Season Ticket Holder Q and A

[Hank]

5 hours ago, Mango said:

Listen 1H 1A 1N 1K. I get it, you want to be Kevyn Adams. But you can’t be him and the Mrs. are already here. 

You're one of the tools from TBD who think thier witty. You're not. It's nice that you found your way over here, but this isn't TBD. 

[Thorner]

57 minutes ago, Hank said:

No, it wasn't a light hearted joke. You posted a screenshot of my profile page in an attempt to out me as a liar and embarrass me. You're so bothered by eye rolls that you're pettiness is becoming increasingly aggressive. JohnC commented some time back that liger was being a certain way. I responded with something like I disagree, when you say someone is doing that my mind goes to Thorny breaking 100 sticks on his dead horse. You read that and said something to the effect of, it's obvious people don't want me here so I'm gonna leave, and you disappeared for awhile. Then you started with the retaliatory eye rolls, which is kind of amusing. Recently you sent me a DM about giving you eye rolls. Now you post a screen shot of my profile page trying to embarrass me. So no, it most definitely was not intended as a joke. If the eye rolls bother you so much stop beating your dead horse and I'll stop giving them. It's just a message board. If eye rolls from an anonymous person in Nashville are affecting your emotional well-being, maybe you're the one who should seek help. 

You said 2 decades. The year in your profile was 2005. That’s 19 years. What a feeble, feeble attempt at “embarrassment” that would have been. What sort of “gotcha” is that? How could that possibly have been my intention? “19 years, not 20?!! This man is a liar!” The *point* of the joke, an intentionally over exaggerated line from the classic children’s movie ELF (2003), set against a meaningless distinction. I’m sorry you didn’t “get it” but it’s fairly obvious I wasn’t trying to embarrass you 

Hell of a self fulfilling prophecy, tho 

[That Aud Smell]

[inkman]

The ignore feature is your friend 

[That Aud Smell]

Years ago, I would sometimes get exercised around here by what someone else was posting. (For whatever reason, I always think of how I felt while I was crusade-posting about the Pat Kane allegations.) When those feelings arise nowadays based on this message board chatter, I take a deep breath and remind myself: It's a funking message board, bud. Log off. Relax. 

[nfreeman]

Let's chill out a bit in here please.

[Mango]

1 hour ago, Hank said:

You're one of the tools from TBD who think thier witty. You're not. It's nice that you found your way over here, but this isn't TBD. 

This post has very Pegula “wet blanket” vibes. I’ll have to do some digging to see if that’s you Terry.

Thanks for the PSA though. This is the no fun zone when you are around. And if anybody does want to have fun Hank will call you names. Noted.

Get over yourself. I haven’t done anything offensive or egregious. Especially nothing to deserve any name calling. You are not the arbiter of…well….anything.

 

[Pimlach]

@Hank and @Thorny after guitar lessons, singing a song with jangly guitar rhythms.  @Sabres73 is off the prairie, and on the drum kit. 
 

Edited March 15 by Pimlach

[FrenchConnection44]

On 3/11/2024 at 9:30 PM, PromoTheRobot said:

I think Kev is saying he can't get elite players to come to Buffalo so we have to grow our own. 

I think this is not an insignificant point. The NFL is different. Buffalo has a long tradition there and the NFL system is such that teams can get good players because the money can be massive and wherever you go you can get national notoriety. It’s the NFL. Major networks talk about every team nearly every day of the year. At least once a week. 

But the NHL has a problem of a) lack of widespread popularity and b) disparity between smaller markets and large markets - where players get better endorsements, that get a lot more TV time due to a major ratings increase, as well as c) an advantage of lifestyle/weather in southern markets like Nashville, Raleigh, Tampa, Miami, et al  (part of this is the lack of popularity relative to other sports, part is the failed leadership of Bettman). Had Eichel turned out to be as good as McDavid and not be such a baby, we might be in better shape. If you don’t have a Stanley Cup tradition /major star player or two (like Edmonton & McDavid/Draisaitl), you are going to struggle to attract players. 

It is a catch 22. If you are a smaller market, you can’t attract good players unless you have talent and are winning. But you can’t win and have talent without good players. 

You are left with the vagaries of the NHL draft. The Sabres haven’t had good luck there (we get the #1 pick when Power is the top player but not when it’s a McDavid). But also, while Adams has drafted some good players, he hasn’t landed a star via the draft. Nor has he drafted talented but tough players who bring an edge to the game and intensity to lead a team. The Savoies, Bensons, Rosens, Powers, Dahlins, Etc. etc. are nice talents but they are not going to bring intensity or real grit (along with the talent) to the team. Adams drafts a lot of soft players, frankly. And I’m not referring to goons. But players who have talent and physicality combined. 

No one sees Buffalo on the schedule for the next game and thinks, “Oh, this is not going to be a pleasant game to play. We are going to have to be physically and mentally ready.” 

[Thorner]

9 hours ago, FrenchConnection44 said:

I think this is not an insignificant point. The NFL is different. Buffalo has a long tradition there and the NFL system is such that teams can get good players because the money can be massive and wherever you go you can get national notoriety. It’s the NFL. Major networks talk about every team nearly every day of the year. At least once a week. 

But the NHL has a problem of a) lack of widespread popularity and b) disparity between smaller markets and large markets - where players get better endorsements, that get a lot more TV time due to a major ratings increase, as well as c) an advantage of lifestyle/weather in southern markets like Nashville, Raleigh, Tampa, Miami, et al  (part of this is the lack of popularity relative to other sports, part is the failed leadership of Bettman). Had Eichel turned out to be as good as McDavid and not be such a baby, we might be in better shape. If you don’t have a Stanley Cup tradition /major star player or two (like Edmonton & McDavid/Draisaitl), you are going to struggle to attract players. 

It is a catch 22. If you are a smaller market, you can’t attract good players unless you have talent and are winning. But you can’t win and have talent without good players. 

You are left with the vagaries of the NHL draft. The Sabres haven’t had good luck there (we get the #1 pick when Power is the top player but not when it’s a McDavid). But also, while Adams has drafted some good players, he hasn’t landed a star via the draft. Nor has he drafted talented but tough players who bring an edge to the game and intensity to lead a team. The Savoies, Bensons, Rosens, Powers, Dahlins, Etc. etc. are nice talents but they are not going to bring intensity or real grit (along with the talent) to the team. Adams drafts a lot of soft players, frankly. And I’m not referring to goons. But players who have talent and physicality combined. 

No one sees Buffalo on the schedule for the next game and thinks, “Oh, this is not going to be a pleasant game to play. We are going to have to be physically and mentally ready.” 

It’s not that buffalo doesn’t have some issues that affect them vs some teams but the issue is there’s an astronomical gap between how one measures how much affect those things have, vs our actual output. The Winnipeg Jets are LESS desired of a location and they’ve been in the playoffs MULTIPLE times over the last 13 years. We haven’t made it once. We generally haven’t even come close. It shows you how much of a definitive factor “GM aptitude” is. It made all the difference 

Yes, there are challenges but there’s a chasm between 13 years missed and the success they have had, as a LESS desired market.

It presents an excuse for why winning the cup is hard. It presents an excuse for maybe why we’d see a 3/4 year drought when most teams see only 2/3. But we went to 13. 4 purely in this regime so far. With the amount of variables that go into building a team, our deficiencies in one area relative to only some teams don’t come close to presenting a viable excuse for anything close to what we’ve seen. It’s an infinitesimal portion of it 

Also imho your comment on Eichel is just wrong. It’s sort of flabbergasting that, still, while being first hand witnesses to the ineptitude for this long, and seeing how these guys have gone on to IMMEDIATE, upper echelon success after leaving, that we STILL can’t grasp the concept that in the NHL it doesn’t matter how good your star player is if you don’t build a team 

the issue was never that Eichel wasn’t McDavid, the issue was we employed a strategy where we were *counting* on Eichel to be McDavid

its wrong on two severe levels:

- it’s an incredibly dumb, shot in the dark hope to pin your franchise fate on

- even if he was it doesn’t matter if you don’t build a team 

Edited March 17 by Thorny