How much of this is on the coach?

[dudacek]

1 hour ago, inkman said:

So the current group of players is on their 3rd coaching regime and we are still blaming the coaches? 

Rasmus Dahlin is the only player on this team who was a regular for Ralph Krueger.

Byram played just 18 games for Granato. Mcleod, Zucker, Malenstyn, Lafferty, Kulich and Reimer have only played for Ruff. 

So if what you really mean is 2/3rds of the current team is on their second coaching regime and we are saying the team has notably regressed under the 2nd regime, I can totally agree.

 

This is like Promo constantly excusing any bad goaltending by saying the team is *****.

The players being ***** doesn't automatically excuse the coaching from being ***** as well.

Edited 20 hours ago by dudacek

[JohnC]

2 hours ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

It's was the basically the same team and guess what who cares.  Did Granato get them to the playoffs? No.  Was the defense good under Granato?  No.  Was offense any good outside the season when 5 guys had career years? No.

Again, the coaches don't make a difference unless they have the right players to coach.  The Sabres have only one blueliner who plays adequate to good defense and his name is Dahlin.  The rest are crap.  No coach succeeds with the steaming smelly pile of crap that is our D group.

Y'all are arguing over which lousy crappy coaching staff smelled worse.  IMHO fire them all and start again, I really don't care who coaches this team.  Until we have a properly constructed roster it really doesn't matter who "coaches" them.

To quote Bill Murray in Meatballs:  "It just doesn't matter!"

 

Everyone agrees that the roster is inadequate. No debate there. Maybe you disagree but in my view Granato has outperformed Ruff as a coach.

[HumanSlinky39]

12 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Everyone agrees that the roster is inadequate. No debate there. Maybe you disagree but in my view Granato has outperformed Ruff as a coach.

You are objectively correct:

Meatballs - .495 Pts%

Lindy - .435 Pts%

Plus, all that youth Grenato had is now older/more experienced. 

There is no data-based argument you can make that this team is better under Lindy. In fact, they're significantly worse by most any data point. 

I'm not arguing they should have kept Meatballs around by any stretch, but it's pretty clear hiring Lindy to coach this bunch has been a failure. They are a worse team than any of the previous two seasons by a decent margin and most everybody on this roster has either plateaued or regressed. Part of that might be the lousy coaching staff they saddled him with, but Lindy should have had the gumption to insist on his own staff. Not a bunch of retreads and their former AHL coach.

Just like most everything else Adams has done, hiring Lindy was the lazy/easy move. He thought Lindy would ride in on a wave of nostalgia and whip these guys into shape. It was a dumb move. Should have tried to get Berube or Eveson. Can't say for sure either of those guys would have taken the job, but they should have made an actual effort.   

Edited 20 hours ago by HumanSlinky39

[mjd1001]

47 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Everyone agrees that the roster is inadequate. No debate there. Maybe you disagree but in my view Granato has outperformed Ruff as a coach.

I know we can go back and forth on this, but to me, Both coaches are about the same.  I'd give a slight edge to Granato and his staff (not that he was a 'savior' of the franchise, but last spring I was vocal about not wanting him fired.) 

To me the main difference between this year and last year is substandard goaltending.  Yes, there are other differences, but the level of goaltending is what counts for most of the difference between this year and last.  That I think accounts for the DIFFERENCE between this year and last year. 

But there are other issues, the defense combos not working, the 4th line, the lack of a 2nd line..etc.

 

Edited 19 hours ago by mjd1001

[GASabresIUFAN]

10 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Everyone agrees that the roster is inadequate. No debate there. Maybe you disagree but in my view Granato has outperformed Ruff as a coach.

I actually don’t care if Granato was better.  It doesn’t matter.  The Sabres are 14 straight tears outside of the playoffs.  Why is anyone arguing about which failure was better?

In NJ the GM brought in Marino, Haula, and Vanacek among others to a young roster with Ruff as coach.  They miraculously went from a 60 point team to an 110 point team.  The next season, the key defenders got hurt and Vanacek regressed without the good D and they missed the playoffs and Ruff got fired.   It’s not the coach, it’s the roster. 

[JohnC]

37 minutes ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

I actually don’t care if Granato was better.  It doesn’t matter.  The Sabres are 14 straight tears outside of the playoffs.  Why is anyone arguing about which failure was better?

In NJ the GM brought in Marino, Haula, and Vanacek among others to a young roster with Ruff as coach.  They miraculously went from a 60 point team to an 110 point team.  The next season, the key defenders got hurt and Vanacek regressed without the good D and they missed the playoffs and Ruff got fired.   It’s not the coach, it’s the roster. 

The owner is inadequate. The GM is inadequate.The organization is inadequate. The coaching staff is inadequate. That is an overwhelming viewpoint that few would disagree with.

I made the statement that I believe that Granato has done a better coaching job than Ruff. If you disagree, then disagree. That assessment doesn’t change the assessments in the other areas. 
 

My unequivocal position is that the owner is most responsible for destroying the franchise.

 

 

Edited 19 hours ago by JohnC

[LGR4GM]

1 hour ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

I actually don’t care if Granato was better.  It doesn’t matter.  The Sabres are 14 straight tears outside of the playoffs.  Why is anyone arguing about which failure was better?

In NJ the GM brought in Marino, Haula, and Vanacek among others to a young roster with Ruff as coach.  They miraculously went from a 60 point team to an 110 point team.  The next season, the key defenders got hurt and Vanacek regressed without the good D and they missed the playoffs and Ruff got fired.   It’s not the coach, it’s the roster. 

Maybe, Ruff isn't good too. What if it's both. 

[Thorner]

7 hours ago, dudacek said:

I don’t necessarily disagree with most of this, Except - the way I read it at least - Lindy was brought in specifically to cut the umbilical cord and force the kids to grow up.

He’s failed to do that, and that’s on him.

It’s the “high-effort 4th-line grinders” who get their ice cut, not the bonus baby kids like Power and Cozens.

Lindy agreed to the coach staff. Lindy has kept running out lines and roles that look suspiciously like Granato’s. It’s Lindy employing tactics and deploying players who are self-destructing in ways Granato’s teams didn’t.

Maybe I was wrong, and he was always just a figurehead.

But if that’s the case, isn’t that on him too, for taking the job?

 

He’s not doctor strange 

6 hours ago, inkman said:

So the current group of players is on their 3rd coaching regime and we are still blaming the coaches? 

And not the person hiring the coaches? 

[inkman]

3 minutes ago, Thorner said:

He’s not doctor strange 

And not the person hiring the coaches? 

I got no love for Adams.  I still don’t understand how a player who played on good NHL teams doesn’t understand how to build a roster like the ones he was on.  

[Thorner]

Just now, inkman said:

I got no love for Adams.  I still don’t understand how a player who played on good NHL teams doesn’t understand how to build a roster like the ones he was on.  

A) the primary goals being keeping the roster young and cheap could be a potential answer ie we have a conflict of interest as fans with management right now

B) another potential scenario is Adams is enamoured with exactly what he says: long term success. And is frustratingly, i’d personally argue pig-headedly disinterested in “merely” fielding playoff teams.

- because if he’s not lying up at the podium (suggested scenario 1), and he’s not telling the truth (option 2), that leads to option 3 which is the incompetence you speak of which would be so extreme it legitimately seems to be the 3rd most likely of our scenarios

[inkman]

38 minutes ago, Thorner said:

A) the primary goals being keeping the roster young and cheap could be a potential answer ie we have a conflict of interest as fans with management right now

B) another potential scenario is Adams is enamoured with exactly what he says: long term success. And is frustratingly, i’d personally argue pig-headedly disinterested in “merely” fielding playoff teams.

- because if he’s not lying up at the podium (suggested scenario 1), and he’s not telling the truth (option 2), that leads to option 3 which is the incompetence you speak of which would be so extreme it legitimately seems to be the 3rd most likely of our scenarios

I sadly agree with this 

[Archie Lee]

11 hours ago, Thorner said:

A) the primary goals being keeping the roster young and cheap could be a potential answer ie we have a conflict of interest as fans with management right now

B) another potential scenario is Adams is enamoured with exactly what he says: long term success. And is frustratingly, i’d personally argue pig-headedly disinterested in “merely” fielding playoff teams.

- because if he’s not lying up at the podium (suggested scenario 1), and he’s not telling the truth (option 2), that leads to option 3 which is the incompetence you speak of which would be so extreme it legitimately seems to be the 3rd most likely of our scenarios

It’s incompetence. Adams isn’t unintelligent, he’s just not a good GM. I stand by my view that the early success post-Eichel (the better than expected outcomes in 21/22 and 22/23) had the adverse impact of convincing Adams he knew what he was doing. He found no reason to deviate from the path he chose, as the path was leading the team in the right direction (54 points to 75 points to 91 points). What he failed to recognize was that the success was driven almost entirely by the emergence of two players. Dahlin and Thompson went from being disappointing performers in 20/21 to star and then near super-star level performers over the next two years. This, I think, insulated Adams from reality. 

It was my hope that he was capable of learning from the lessons of the setback that was his do-nothing 2023 off-season. Sadly, the sham coach search leading to the Ruff hiring, the lack of any change to the d-corps, and the roll-back of a top-6 featuring Cozens, Peterka, Quinn, and Benson, was evidence that Adams had learned nothing. Now, inexplicably, he is going to get a third chance to show he can adapt and grow, on the job. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Archie Lee

[Pimlach]

16 hours ago, HumanSlinky39 said:

You are objectively correct:

Meatballs - .495 Pts%

Lindy - .435 Pts%

Plus, all that youth Grenato had is now older/more experienced. 

There is no data-based argument you can make that this team is better under Lindy. In fact, they're significantly worse by most any data point. 

I'm not arguing they should have kept Meatballs around by any stretch, but it's pretty clear hiring Lindy to coach this bunch has been a failure. They are a worse team than any of the previous two seasons by a decent margin and most everybody on this roster has either plateaued or regressed. Part of that might be the lousy coaching staff they saddled him with, but Lindy should have had the gumption to insist on his own staff. Not a bunch of retreads and their former AHL coach.

Just like most everything else Adams has done, hiring Lindy was the lazy/easy move. He thought Lindy would ride in on a wave of nostalgia and whip these guys into shape. It was a dumb move. Should have tried to get Berube or Eveson. Can't say for sure either of those guys would have taken the job, but they should have made an actual effort.   

They never even talked to either of these coaches.   Which is another reason they are not considered a serious team.  Terry is bound and determined to run this team without being involved with the rest of the league.  He is an outsider looking in.