KO knew very early we didn’t have it - something was missing

[Second Line Center]

Worst captain in Sabres history.  Great dude.  Had no business leading this team.  
 

If I had to guess what I think it was - the 3 goalie situation.  Benson making the team (nothing against him just acknowledgement of how thin we are at F).  And honestly, my guess is the coach not having them ready.  But that’s also on the Captain.  


 

Wasted season - nothing made sense.  

Edited May 14 by Second Line Center

[SDS]

How Earth are you blaming Kyle Okposo for anything because of this statement?

[Second Line Center]

Just now, SDS said:

How Earth are you blaming Kyle Okposo for anything because of this statement?

 

The fans saw it and booed.  
 

They pouted.  He’s the leader.  
 

I read all of that as refusing to take ownership to an extent.  
 

And - most importantly - absolutely ZERO reason to knock us and the team.  
 

F him and Florida.  
 

Go Rangers.  

[nfreeman]

I too was generally unimpressed with KO, although he was far from their biggest problem.

He is 100% right in saying that he could tell in October and November there were major issues.  They were freaking terrible in those 2 months.  

[Second Line Center]

 

[Gatorman0519]

You can’t blame a soul for wanting out of this dumpster fire. 

[Sabre The Cup]

4 hours ago, Gatorman0519 said:

You can’t blame a soul for wanting out of this dumpster fire. 

The captain goes down with the ship. 

[Weave]

I don’t know how you can blame Kyle for recognizing what this season was.  And it wasn’t things Kyle could fix.  You are fooling yourself if you think the difference between playoffs and golf was Kyle Okposo magically becoming a more charismatic leader.  The teams play in October and November was squarely on Adams and Granato.  And failing to do something about it was pure Adams.  

[tom webster]

My only question after reading this statement was did leadership go to Adams with their concerns? It’s a similar situation to Drury going to Regier about Satan. 

[LGR4GM]

Adams and Granato are to blame. They did nothing, nothing. 

[Weave]

29 minutes ago, tom webster said:

My only question after reading this statement was did leadership go to Adams with their concerns? It’s a similar situation to Drury going to Regier about Satan. 

Adams knew about the issues.  He said as much in his post season presser.

I said it then, Adams was complicit in the Sabres missing the playoffs this season.  He knew the issues and did not react to them in any demonstrable way.

I don’t blame KO for chasing an opportunity at all.  He saw KA sit on his hands as this team struggled to rise up.  No help for Quinn’s injury.  No offseason boost to the bottom 6.  And no help from the GM when the team needed a shakeup badly.

[triumph_communes]

Dad energy leader and development to a fault coach. No surprise. Spilled milk, we got Ruff and he has bark 

[French Collection]

KO is not to blame but he didn’t help. All of his career has been spent on losing teams. He doesn’t know what a winning organization feels like until now.

Nice guy but not a winner. If he wins a Cup it is by the luck of parachuting onto a championship roster.

This is KA’s last chance, I hope.

[Archie Lee]

To me, this all goes back to last off-season and the lack of commitment and expectations established by Adams. Okposo is just stating what we all could see. 

At the end of last season the players were disappointed they did not get in the playoffs and were eager to take the next step. Adams and Granato went out of their way at their year-end pressers to throw cold water on the notion that they missed an opportunity by not getting in the playoffs AND on the notion that anything short of the playoffs this year should be considered failure.  They then lived up to their lack of urgency by not addressing obvious team needs in the off-season. Adams set the tone with his end of season press conference and with his off-season activity (committing to Levi, no changes to the 4th line, no replacement for Quinn, no willingness to sacrifice an asset to move off of Olofsson and replace him with a player who Granato could make better use of). Long before they started the season with a struggling Levi getting 4 straight starts and an 18 year old replacing Quinn in the middle six, the players had got the message:  we aren’t serious about this. 

Edited May 14 by Archie Lee

[Slack_in_MA]

19 minutes ago, Archie Lee said:

To me, this all goes back to last off-season and the lack of commitment and expectations established by Adams. Okposo is just stating what we all could see. 

At the end of last season the players were disappointed they did not get in the playoffs and were eager to take the next step. Adams and Granato went out of their way at their year-end pressers to throw cold water on the notion that they missed an opportunity by not getting in the playoffs AND on the notion that anything short of the playoffs this year should be considered failure.  They then lived up to there lack of urgency by not addressing obvious team needs in the off-season. Adams set the tone with his end of season press conference and with his off-season activity (committing to Levi, no changes to the 4th line, no replacement for Quinn, no willingness to sacrifice an asset to move off of Olofsson and replace him with a player who Granato could make better use of). Long before they started the season with a struggling Levi getting 4 straight starts and an 18 year old replacing Quinn in the middle six, the players had got the message:  we aren’t serious about this. 

If we had to apportion responsibility between ownership, coaches, and players, is it roughly 1/3 each? Or does KA bear a higher %? Or is KA’s lack of action due to constraints placed on him by TP?

[LGR4GM]

6 minutes ago, Slack_in_MA said:

If we had to apportion responsibility between ownership, coaches, and players, is it roughly 1/3 each? Or does KA bear a higher %? Or is KA’s lack of action due to constraints placed on him by TP?

Kevyn Adams is responsible. He let it happen. 

[That Aud Smell]

Okposo's observation that there was something amiss with the Sabres as early as October, November is one that any of us could have made (and, indeed, did make). 

What rankles me anew is how this same player, Okposo, led (or at least approved (which, as captain, is leading)) the no-salute policy when the fans were chanting "fire Donny" in mid-December.

Those fans (just a segment of them, btw) were reacting to the same sh1t that Okposo says he perceived in October/November. But his response to the  fans' chants of unrest was still "yeah, f**k them fans."

He seems like a nice guy. Please never come back. Not even for a Bills game or wings at Elmo's.

[Gatorman0519]

3 hours ago, Sabre The Cup said:

The captain goes down with the ship. 

It’s professional sports in the year 2024. It’s not like that anymore. It’s a business. That’s why ROR, Eichel, and Sammy wanted out. You can’t blame them. The only folks with that type of loyalty is fans. 

Edited May 14 by Gatorman0519

[That Aud Smell]

5 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Kevyn Adams is responsible. He let it happen. 

This is also true. There are others who can share some of the responsibility (coaches, players), but the overwhelming share of blame rests with Adams. It was Adams, after all, who had the power to make changes with the other people who shared responsibility for the team's ongoing failures.

[thewookie1]

1 hour ago, tom webster said:

My only question after reading this statement was did leadership go to Adams with their concerns? It’s a similar situation to Drury going to Regier about Satan. 

Begs to question who is the culprit or culprits.

I doubt its Cozens or Thompson for as much as their seasons started rocky; Cozens was over playing the puck and Thompson always starts a bit slow but got injured when he started to get grooving.

Dahlin isn't the issue because he's shown a million times that he's willing to block shots, throw and receive hits, etc. 

 

Its very unusual as a whole; perhaps the pressure of the drought is getting to them and when the injuries started they just lost their oomph

[Pimlach]

50 minutes ago, Archie Lee said:

To me, this all goes back to last off-season and the lack of commitment and expectations established by Adams. Okposo is just stating what we all could see. 

At the end of last season the players were disappointed they did not get in the playoffs and were eager to take the next step. Adams and Granato went out of their way at their year-end pressers to throw cold water on the notion that they missed an opportunity by not getting in the playoffs AND on the notion that anything short of the playoffs this year should be considered failure.  They then lived up to there lack of urgency by not addressing obvious team needs in the off-season. Adams set the tone with his end of season press conference and with his off-season activity (committing to Levi, no changes to the 4th line, no replacement for Quinn, no willingness to sacrifice an asset to move off of Olofsson and replace him with a player who Granato could make better use of). Long before they started the season with a struggling Levi getting 4 straight starts and an 18 year old replacing Quinn in the middle six, the players had got the message:  we aren’t serious about this. 

This is correct.  ^ 
 

And I’ll add that people blaming Okposo for last season do not understand the role of a Captain.  Wearing the C is not a free ticket to Adams office to advise him on trades and roster moves.    The stories of Chris Drury calling for Satan’s removal are interesting, but far from the norm.  

Okposo was overrated as a Captain and a leader, but let’s not blame him for Adams and Granato’s failures. 

[tom webster]

49 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Kevyn Adams is responsible. He let it happen. 

This where I’m at. However, I do think he has earned the right to correct it and learn from it, which know us not  a popular sentiment. 

[Doohicksie]

4 hours ago, Sabre The Cup said:

The captain goes down with the ship. 

It's a sport.... a game.  Not the Titanic.

I think the worst things about the early part of the season were:

1. Playing prospects too much in pre-season versus honing the timing of the NHL players
2. The three-headed monster in goal
3. The alleged focus on defense versus having the team play their uptempo offensive game

All those things led to a team that was ill-prepared to start the season- no timing, chaos in goal, floundering trying to learn an ill-defined system.  Okposo is a leader in the sense of working with the management to get the players onboard, but the management was too disorganized at the start of the season.  For Okposo to right that ship it would have required a mutiny against Granato, because Granato was trying to do too many things at once.

And Adams is certainly responsible for the goalie situation and partially responsible for the other factors behind the disorganized start.

[bunomatic]

It all starts at the top. TP and KA are joined at the hip. The meddling is real. They employed a coach and to a lesser extent a coaching staff that were unprepared and underperformed. The team they iced was constructed with inexperienced players in vital positions and given the hard asignments that they couldn’t handle. Add to that the training camp debacle and the 3 headed monster and the injury to Quinn etc etc etc. its a shitshow. KA has an opportunity to fix this, i don’t think he will get it right. 

[Taro T]

49 minutes ago, Pimlach said:

This is correct.  ^ 
 

And I’ll add that people blaming Okposo for last season do not understand the role of a Captain.  Wearing the C is not a free ticket to Adams office to advise him on trades and roster moves.    The stories of Chris Drury calling for Satan’s removal are interesting, but far from the norm.  

Okposo was overrated as a Captain and a leader, but let’s not blame him for Adams and Granato’s failures. 

Except it was the previous season.  When Comrie was finally healthy again, the players (aka Okposo) lobbied for management to keep UPL up in Buffalo rather than return him to the Amerks thus birthing the "3 headed monster."  Absolutely would believe that management asked for Okposo's input on moves and how the season was progressing as Adams has stated repeatedly that he does solicit opinions and has "honest conversations" with everybody in the organization.

And, with that said, no, the roster deficiencies were NOT on Okposo or any of the other players.  They fell in large degree on Adams and to a far lesser degree on Granato.