Nobody outside of Buffalo pays any attention to the Sabres.
And I’m talking about people who cover the team and follow the team. Pretty much everyone has been excited about the Sabres every single season since they drafted Eichel.
Why have all these teams failed? Worse rosters have made the playoffs.
The apologists at the Buffalo News do not count for much at all. If you follow the Athletic main writers, TSN, Sportsnet, Elliott Friedman ... none of them thought Buffalo was a playoff team. You have some columnist in the local town going on and on about changes in Buffalo because of the so-called bottom six. Seriously? A bunch of fourth-liners who don't even play 10 minutes a game and McLeod (an okay extra piece) and Jason Zucker (who they had to overpay to get him to come) were changing the team. The D was the same unless you count Dennis Gilbert who excites no one in the NHL beyond Buffalo. Then you have Devon Levi, who is anointed future superstar when analysts outside of Buffalo peg him as mostly a 1B or even a backup.
Buffalo is a tiny little echo chamber where people tell each other every year the team will be better because they love the Sabres so much. Me included. Then the season starts, and reality sinks that Pegula has hired incompetent people to run the team and is now penny-pinching everywhere.
If you want to win -- and it likely will never happen -- bring in a senior president of hockey OPs who will blow up this backwater country club and deal with the reality of being in a second-tier market. Sure Buffalo has a disadvantage beyond its control but competent management will get the team into the playoffs and then anything can happen.
He just wants control. Maybe it's even hubris that he thinks he knows what he is doing.
He installed the 3rd rookie GM in a row whiile the last one is completly inexperienced, Pegula groomed.
No one to mentor him or give him any help like other teams provide.
There is no structure in place except Pegulas nepotistic narcissism.
All true