GDT: Buffalo Sabres @ Philadelphia Flyers 7:00 PM ESPN+, MSG, WGR550

[jad1]

46 minutes ago, Thorner said:

The difference? Depth. Playmaking. 05-06 was roll-4-lines era. Not to mention talent (see: actual current ability 2-ways at both ends of the ice) within other parts of the roster like the defensive unit and in net.

But, you raise a lot of good points with your excellent post. I do think things like urgency and accountability are a factor at times, too. I posted just the other day that that’s a functional error of the GM: no one claims the drought. They’ve been, year after year, levied with almost no expectations for each season. Not until this year, apparently. I’m sure the players saw the lack of spending as evidence it really was about playoffs this year, right? 

Where I disagree is the idea a “leader” would have the ability to siphon that mindset out of the rest of the team through sheer force of will. The Peca teams and the Briere teams weren’t the “youngest team in hockey”, were they? Or even close to? You can’t just look at the leader; you have to look at who you are asking them to lead.

We would benefit a lot from a more veteran captain mostly because that player would provide the right mindset within his minutes. We know the TALENT of a single player like Jack Eichel can’t elevate an entire team, there’s no reason to think the leadership quotient of one player could fare better. I don’t need to even argue that talent is more important than a sense of accountability: just that it’s as important.

The youngest team in the league, statistically, doesn’t make the playoffs. Bottom 10 spenders almost never make the playoffs. (Side note: You *don’t* think spending less than everyone would bear out, in most cases, in having less talent? Adams is so good that he’s equaling the talent of others teams with less money? That doesn’t pass the smell test.) We are both. Low spending and too young. Those teams don’t make the playoffs. 

Every one of those teams had a poor leader? Classic correlation / causation disagreement 

I get your point that the youngest team in the an issue.  I've criticized it also as a major issue with Adams' rebuild effort.

But how long are we going to use it as an excuse?  As the cliche goes, you don't get to pick the army you go to war with, you go to war with the army you got.  Adams isn't making a trade to fix the youth issue, as much as we might want him to.

If the Sabres are going to get better, it's the guys in the locker room who are going have to figure it out.  

And I don't think the issue is talent, or depth. I'd like see them make a trade, but does trading for Ehlers prevent them for no-showing against the Flyers last night?  Does it prevent them from giving up a 2-0?

This team continually fails to match the intensity of its opponents. The Calgary game is a perfect example.  The Flames, a mid team, slept-walk thru the first half that game and the Sabres took advantage.  As soon as the Flames picked up their intensity, the Sabres didn't match it and needed UPL to get them to shootout, where they won in a skills contest.  Ruff called that game a "gritty" effort, but nobody should have been surprised when they carried their low intensity effort into the Canadiens game and lost.

I think this all comes from low expectations.  Nobody, with good reason, talks about the Sabres winning the Stanley Cup.  Not the organization, not the media, not the fans, not this board (well one guy did, but he's gone I think). 

When Drury joined a bad Sabres team, he hung a picture of the Stanley Cup on the locker room wall.  It set a standard.  It introduced accountability.  This team expected to compete every night, because that's what championship teams do.

And it sounds crazy to set the same expectation for this team.  It's more realistic to set the bar at making the playoffs.  But making the playoffs means finishing in the top sixteen of the league, right? What do the standards look like for that?  Do you really have to compete every game to finish in the top sixteen?  Can you take a night off against bad teams and still finish in the top sixteen?  I'd argue the Sabres' effort is exactly what you would expect from a team who's goal is to finish 16th in the league 

If you set the standard that you are a championship team and hold yourself accountable to that, but still fail, you probably end up a playoff team who makes a memorable run before losing in the playoffs.

If you set the standard to finishing 16th in the league and fail, you end up with another lottery pick in the draft.

No doubt this goes all the way up to the GM and ownership.  The Sabres last three GMs all believed that they were going to eventually win a Cup three or four years down the line. And that has just sucked, because it ignored current success in favor of a pipe dream.

But the players can do something about it.  They can, within the locker room, set a higher goal for themselves.  They can call out a lack of intensity, a lack of compete, a lack of physicality, and hold one another accountable to play to a higher standard.  A strong captain could help them do this.  I'm not sure if Dahlin is that guy.  

Dahlin is a great player, extremely talented (certainly more talented than Peca or Drury).  But he seems like a guy who focuses more on his own game.  He's more of an introvert, uncomfortable about criticizing (constructively) his teammates.

I don't think a calvary is coming to fix this edition of the Sabres.  To turn things around they need Ruff (who seems like he's in 58 year old Mike Tyson mode, but that's another story), and the team itself to raise the standard of their play.  This means that Dahlin will need to be comfortable with introducing accountability in the locker room.

If this doesn't happen, the Sabres will miss the playoffs, Adams will be fired, and the new GM will start another rebuild.

 

[SabreFinn]

3 minutes ago, jad1 said:

I get your point that the youngest team in the an issue.  I've criticized it also as a major issue with Adams' rebuild effort.

But how long are we going to use it as an excuse?  As the cliche goes, you don't get to pick the army you go to war with, you go to war with the army you got.  Adams isn't making a trade to fix the youth issue, as much as we might want him to.

If the Sabres are going to get better, it's the guys in the locker room who are going have to figure it out.  

And I don't think the issue is talent, or depth. I'd like see them make a trade, but does trading for Ehlers prevent them for no-showing against the Flyers last night?  Does it prevent them from giving up a 2-0?

This team continually fails to match the intensity of its opponents. The Calgary game is a perfect example.  The Flames, a mid team, slept-walk thru the first half that game and the Sabres took advantage.  As soon as the Flames picked up their intensity, the Sabres didn't match it and needed UPL to get them to shootout, where they won in a skills contest.  Ruff called that game a "gritty" effort, but nobody should have been surprised when they carried their low intensity effort into the Canadiens game and lost.

I think this all comes from low expectations.  Nobody, with good reason, talks about the Sabres winning the Stanley Cup.  Not the organization, not the media, not the fans, not this board (well one guy did, but he's gone I think). 

When Drury joined a bad Sabres team, he hung a picture of the Stanley Cup on the locker room wall.  It set a standard.  It introduced accountability.  This team expected to compete every night, because that's what championship teams do.

And it sounds crazy to set the same expectation for this team.  It's more realistic to set the bar at making the playoffs.  But making the playoffs means finishing in the top sixteen of the league, right? What do the standards look like for that?  Do you really have to compete every game to finish in the top sixteen?  Can you take a night off against bad teams and still finish in the top sixteen?  I'd argue the Sabres' effort is exactly what you would expect from a team who's goal is to finish 16th in the league 

If you set the standard that you are a championship team and hold yourself accountable to that, but still fail, you probably end up a playoff team who makes a memorable run before losing in the playoffs.

If you set the standard to finishing 16th in the league and fail, you end up with another lottery pick in the draft.

No doubt this goes all the way up to the GM and ownership.  The Sabres last three GMs all believed that they were going to eventually win a Cup three or four years down the line. And that has just sucked, because it ignored current success in favor of a pipe dream.

But the players can do something about it.  They can, within the locker room, set a higher goal for themselves.  They can call out a lack of intensity, a lack of compete, a lack of physicality, and hold one another accountable to play to a higher standard.  A strong captain could help them do this.  I'm not sure if Dahlin is that guy.  

Dahlin is a great player, extremely talented (certainly more talented than Peca or Drury).  But he seems like a guy who focuses more on his own game.  He's more of an introvert, uncomfortable about criticizing (constructively) his teammates.

I don't think a calvary is coming to fix this edition of the Sabres.  To turn things around they need Ruff (who seems like he's in 58 year old Mike Tyson mode, but that's another story), and the team itself to raise the standard of their play.  This means that Dahlin will need to be comfortable with introducing accountability in the locker room.

If this doesn't happen, the Sabres will miss the playoffs, Adams will be fired, and the new GM will start another rebuild.

 

This post made me think of the clip with McDavid in the locker room after they lost a Stanley cup game to Panthers. 

[Thorner]

56 minutes ago, jad1 said:

I get your point that the youngest team in the an issue.  I've criticized it also as a major issue with Adams' rebuild effort.

But how long are we going to use it as an excuse?  As the cliche goes, you don't get to pick the army you go to war with, you go to war with the army you got.  Adams isn't making a trade to fix the youth issue, as much as we might want him to.

If the Sabres are going to get better, it's the guys in the locker room who are going have to figure it out.  

And I don't think the issue is talent, or depth. I'd like see them make a trade, but does trading for Ehlers prevent them for no-showing against the Flyers last night?  Does it prevent them from giving up a 2-0?

This team continually fails to match the intensity of its opponents. The Calgary game is a perfect example.  The Flames, a mid team, slept-walk thru the first half that game and the Sabres took advantage.  As soon as the Flames picked up their intensity, the Sabres didn't match it and needed UPL to get them to shootout, where they won in a skills contest.  Ruff called that game a "gritty" effort, but nobody should have been surprised when they carried their low intensity effort into the Canadiens game and lost.

I think this all comes from low expectations.  Nobody, with good reason, talks about the Sabres winning the Stanley Cup.  Not the organization, not the media, not the fans, not this board (well one guy did, but he's gone I think). 

When Drury joined a bad Sabres team, he hung a picture of the Stanley Cup on the locker room wall.  It set a standard.  It introduced accountability.  This team expected to compete every night, because that's what championship teams do.

And it sounds crazy to set the same expectation for this team.  It's more realistic to set the bar at making the playoffs.  But making the playoffs means finishing in the top sixteen of the league, right? What do the standards look like for that?  Do you really have to compete every game to finish in the top sixteen?  Can you take a night off against bad teams and still finish in the top sixteen?  I'd argue the Sabres' effort is exactly what you would expect from a team who's goal is to finish 16th in the league 

If you set the standard that you are a championship team and hold yourself accountable to that, but still fail, you probably end up a playoff team who makes a memorable run before losing in the playoffs.

If you set the standard to finishing 16th in the league and fail, you end up with another lottery pick in the draft.

No doubt this goes all the way up to the GM and ownership.  The Sabres last three GMs all believed that they were going to eventually win a Cup three or four years down the line. And that has just sucked, because it ignored current success in favor of a pipe dream.

But the players can do something about it.  They can, within the locker room, set a higher goal for themselves.  They can call out a lack of intensity, a lack of compete, a lack of physicality, and hold one another accountable to play to a higher standard.  A strong captain could help them do this.  I'm not sure if Dahlin is that guy.  

Dahlin is a great player, extremely talented (certainly more talented than Peca or Drury).  But he seems like a guy who focuses more on his own game.  He's more of an introvert, uncomfortable about criticizing (constructively) his teammates.

I don't think a calvary is coming to fix this edition of the Sabres.  To turn things around they need Ruff (who seems like he's in 58 year old Mike Tyson mode, but that's another story), and the team itself to raise the standard of their play.  This means that Dahlin will need to be comfortable with introducing accountability in the locker room.

If this doesn't happen, the Sabres will miss the playoffs, Adams will be fired, and the new GM will start another rebuild.

 

To be clear: I don’t use it as an excuse at all. I just point blame in a different direction: the players do not control whether they are young, or old. Inexperienced or experienced, or whether or not all the cap space has been spent. When we can demonstrably say teams “deficient” in these areas *supremely*, statistically struggle to even make the playoffs, what logic is there in saying you gotta go to war with who you’ve got when you are no longer asking them to be fare well by a 50/50, half-the-teams-make-it set of circumstances, but rather match the hurricanes and caps as the the only 2 playoffs teams out of the last 160 to spend in the range we did and make the playoffs, AND join the ranks of “youngest teams in hockey” who made the playoffs which is ALSO unlikely. 

They are willingly stacking the deck against themselves in their pursuit of fielding a playoff team, before they even play game 1/82.

- - - 

As for expectations, Cup or playoffs, it’s not a matter of what, it’s a matter of when: if the expectation was Stanley cup, THIS year, the team wouldn’t look the way it does. By prioritizing future currency for so long the priority indeed seemed to be Stanley Cup: but one we’d have to wait for. Likewise: a team with the goal of making the playoffs, this season wouldn’t ordinarily be constructed in the way we are (youngest team, low cap), and would generally fare better *this* year than a team with future aspirations.
 

Which, contrary to what they say, really seems to be more of what we are 

Edited 11 hours ago by Thorner

[jad1]

8 minutes ago, Thorner said:

To be clear: I don’t use it as an excuse at all. I just point blame in a different direction: the players do not control whether they are young, or old. Inexperienced or experienced, or whether or not all the cap space has been spent. When we can demonstrably say teams “deficient” in these areas *supremely*, statistically struggle to even make the playoffs, what logic is there in saying you gotta go to war with who you’ve got when you are no longer asking them to be fare well by a 50/50, half-the-teams-make-it set of circumstances, but rather match the hurricanes and caps as the the only 2 playoffs teams out of the last 160 to spend in the range we did and make the playoffs, AND join the ranks of “youngest teams in hockey” who made the playoffs which is ALSO unlikely. 

They are willingly stacking the deck against themselves in their pursuit of fielding a playoff team, before they even play game 1/82.

- - - 

As for expectations, Cup or playoffs, it’s not a matter of what, it’s a matter of when: if the expectation was Stanley cup, THIS year, the team wouldn’t look the way it does. By prioritizing future currency for so long the priority indeed seemed to be Stanley Cup: but one we’d have to wait for. Likewise: a team with the goal of making the playoffs, this season wouldn’t ordinarily be constructed in the way we are (youngest team, low cap), and would generally fair better *this* year than a team with future aspirations.
 

Which, contrary to what they say, really seems to be more of what we are 

I completely agree that Adams building of the roster is fundamentally flawed.  I think I can make the case that he is the worst GM in league history.  I believe most GMs see him as a rube and a mark, and that makes trading in the future difficult for the betterment of the Sabres.  

I'll even go on record to advocate that Adams should be fired even if the Sabres make playoffs.

And sure the low expectations coming as a result of Adams idiotic timeline has impacted the organization at all levels.

I still don't think that absolves the players completely though for the team's struggles.  They could use another top six winger, and a top four defenseman.  But even without these additions the Sabres aren't less talented than the Canadiens or Flyers.

The Sabres aren't losing games due to a lack of talent, they're losing because of a lack of intensity and compete. 

The team is mentally weak.  They are unable to compensate for the failings of the organization. After the Flyers game Dahlin and Tuch both said that this poor effort cannot continue.  Great, what are they doing to make sure it doesn't continue?  What are they doing to increase the team's intensity, or improve team toughness, or raise the general level of compete.  How hard is it to call player's only meeting to address team effort after the Canadiens loss).

Pegula is a bad owner.  Adams is a bad GM.  Ruff is a good coach who is doing a bad job right now (too much "patience"), and Dahlin is a great player who isnt really a good captain.

If this is going to turn around, I believe this is on Ruff and the players.  Adams isn't capable of fixing this.

[spndnchz]

7 hours ago, jad1 said:

I get your point that the youngest team in the an issue.  I've criticized it also as a major issue with Adams' rebuild effort.

But how long are we going to use it as an excuse?  As the cliche goes, you don't get to pick the army you go to war with, you go to war with the army you got.  Adams isn't making a trade to fix the youth issue, as much as we might want him to.

If the Sabres are going to get better, it's the guys in the locker room who are going have to figure it out.  

And I don't think the issue is talent, or depth. I'd like see them make a trade, but does trading for Ehlers prevent them for no-showing against the Flyers last night?  Does it prevent them from giving up a 2-0?

This team continually fails to match the intensity of its opponents. The Calgary game is a perfect example.  The Flames, a mid team, slept-walk thru the first half that game and the Sabres took advantage.  As soon as the Flames picked up their intensity, the Sabres didn't match it and needed UPL to get them to shootout, where they won in a skills contest.  Ruff called that game a "gritty" effort, but nobody should have been surprised when they carried their low intensity effort into the Canadiens game and lost.

I think this all comes from low expectations.  Nobody, with good reason, talks about the Sabres winning the Stanley Cup.  Not the organization, not the media, not the fans, not this board (well one guy did, but he's gone I think). 

When Drury joined a bad Sabres team, he hung a picture of the Stanley Cup on the locker room wall.  It set a standard.  It introduced accountability.  This team expected to compete every night, because that's what championship teams do.

And it sounds crazy to set the same expectation for this team.  It's more realistic to set the bar at making the playoffs.  But making the playoffs means finishing in the top sixteen of the league, right? What do the standards look like for that?  Do you really have to compete every game to finish in the top sixteen?  Can you take a night off against bad teams and still finish in the top sixteen?  I'd argue the Sabres' effort is exactly what you would expect from a team who's goal is to finish 16th in the league 

If you set the standard that you are a championship team and hold yourself accountable to that, but still fail, you probably end up a playoff team who makes a memorable run before losing in the playoffs.

If you set the standard to finishing 16th in the league and fail, you end up with another lottery pick in the draft.

No doubt this goes all the way up to the GM and ownership.  The Sabres last three GMs all believed that they were going to eventually win a Cup three or four years down the line. And that has just sucked, because it ignored current success in favor of a pipe dream.

But the players can do something about it.  They can, within the locker room, set a higher goal for themselves.  They can call out a lack of intensity, a lack of compete, a lack of physicality, and hold one another accountable to play to a higher standard.  A strong captain could help them do this.  I'm not sure if Dahlin is that guy.  

Dahlin is a great player, extremely talented (certainly more talented than Peca or Drury).  But he seems like a guy who focuses more on his own game.  He's more of an introvert, uncomfortable about criticizing (constructively) his teammates.

I don't think a calvary is coming to fix this edition of the Sabres.  To turn things around they need Ruff (who seems like he's in 58 year old Mike Tyson mode, but that's another story), and the team itself to raise the standard of their play.  This means that Dahlin will need to be comfortable with introducing accountability in the locker room.

If this doesn't happen, the Sabres will miss the playoffs, Adams will be fired, and the new GM will start another rebuild.

 

Is that a whole newspaper article. Or are you posting a plerp?

[JohnC]

55 minutes ago, spndnchz said:

Is that a whole newspaper article. Or are you posting a plerp?

What is a plerp?