The level of Pegula shadow wrangling and armchair psychoanalysis with very little to back it up is entirely out of hand.
I get it. People are frustrated after seeing RoR hoist the cup after our GM got bent over on the trade. We just saw another postseason from the sidelines--things are especially painful now. But we have enough to be frustrated about that we can tangibly assess without piling on other things. When it's reached the point where people are blaming goalie coach hirings and ascribing Messiah complexes from afar, there needs to be a step back.
There is little in the way of rational evidence to reasonably support the Pegulas initiating the RoR trade, given that credible NHL journalists (you know, the ones that we sorely lack in this town) reported that his name was out there well before the supposed trade motivations that many people point to like end of season complex bonus deadline.
Even though it's still in the realm of hypothetical, let's think about a more realistic situation: the GM of your team, who is in regular communication with you and who is seeing a season on a trajectory to DFL, says he needs to fix the culture and identifies a candidate in RoR. People say constantly that Pegulas need to 'trust hockey people'. So let's say the owner does just that. Things come out like the locker room comments that can be seen to bear out that assessment. Is it completely unreasonable to not want to pay a bonus if you don't have to if your GM, who've you already trusted in this, says they think can still get a good return? If the GM comes to you around the bonus deadline and says it's possible we might get something better, but I like this return I have in hand right now, doesn't it seem reasonable to give the ok? On that front, here's another thing, the GM is on record multiple times as being *happy* with the return.
If anything, I think their track record as owners is far more compelling as a testament that they trust their hockey people rather than them getting in the way of them.
The issue is they've had the wrong people (which is something that is definitely on them). How do we reconcile what we see in the Bills vs the narrative with the Sabres? Do they operate wildly differently in each franchise or is it just that they seem to have hit on hires in one franchise but not yet the other.
Nothing is going to stop people from going down the rabbit hole of speculation. But without credible reporting or some other reliable knowledge source, the vast majority of what people want to pin on them is just not grounded.
They've gotten a lot of their hires wrong. This is not unique to them as new owners coming in, especially when they're not walking into the strongest personnel (Regier was good never a top tier GM, Ruff, who I will always admire was clearly past his shelf life).
I also don't think it's as easy as some paint it to get the right people in that situation will just a snap of your fingers. There is a limited subset of top tier personnel in a sport and Buffalo is what it is as a market, and had developed a reputation (deservedly so under Golisano) with things like the video scouting debacle. Before Golisano our ownership situation was so bad the NHL had to step in.
What did they do? Just try to help out personally and throw a ton of resources including upgrading the facilities into trying to bring in good player talent and management talent. They pay for personnel and don't hold off on moving on because they balk at paying someone relieved of thier duties.
I think there's also not a great recall for some of where exactly we were
before they came in (some people have even gotten to the point of fondly recalling the actions of people like Larry f****** Quinn). Charitably, we were a team with limited resources spinning our wheels that had struggled getting talent onto the team. A more honest assessment would be that we were stuck in a rut, with a limited pipeline and our better players on the the decline. We lucked to some degree into that post lockout success (and also managed to subvert it in short order). That fleeting success should in no way be taken as testament that we were some kind of well oiled machine.
I'm on record saying this before, but to reiterate, I think they're far from perfect owners (and they *really* need to get the hires right, though I don't think it's for lack if trying or a desire to be in the driver seat). But overall most the good significantly outweighs the bad.
