Hey Terry, Do Us A Favor and SELL

[slip]

A Bills loss tomorrow forces Pegula to focus on the Sabres.

 

[sabremike]

Have said this before but can you imagine having to put together the STH renewal letter in February? What could you possibly use as a sales pitch: "We are bottom of the east and about to miss the playoffs for a historic 14th season in a row. Our roster is a total disaster, our GM who has no business being a GM is incapable of fixing it and nobody wants to work for the idiot who owns us and who is the single least respected figure in the sport. In addition to having absolutely no hope of anything getting better anytime soon we continue to treat fans to the worst in arena and GameDay experience in the entire league in an arena that is a filthy substandard shithole we aren't doing anything to fix for at least the next 5-10 years because we don't give a shit about the Sabres and our entire focus is on the Bills. Our treatment of STH is absolute garbage with things like STH gifts that are things you get at Dollar General."

My prediction: <6,500 total STH's next season.

 

[Chainshot]

A Bills loss tomorrow forces Pegula to focus on the Sabres.

Eh, he doesn’t live in town, I doubt it matters any more or less.

 

[TehDoak]

A Bills loss tomorrow forces Pegula to focus on the Sabres.

When the Bills season is over (hopefully after a superbowl win), the only real effective difference is the majority of Buffalo media will have nothing else to do but focus on the Sabres.

I don't think that does much to the Pegulas, though. Its not like Terry is listening to WGR to see what the fans think at this point. I can't imagine anything local media does will impact the Pegulas, who will start focusing on the Bills offseason before the Sabres offseason ends. The NHL regular season ends April 17th.

Honestly, the best possible outcome is that the Sabres, at the bare minimum, hires an outside to advisor to oversee things through the end of the season and guide them through hirings/firings/restructuring in the summer.

They can hire him now, keep kevyn and co in place until the end of the year, and go through interview processes with the Advisor (or advisors).

 

[Selanne00008]

The Panthers were terrible until suddenly they weren't. While Viola owned them I might add. These teams are bad for a number of reasons structural and random.

NYJ (and MIA) have both made the incredibly bad decisions to play in the same Division as 2 of the best QBS for 20 years straight. No amount of ownership was going to move Brady out of NE until he got old.

The Bills have historically been awful, There was a sliver the 60s, most of the 90s, and very recently they were good. Ownership made no difference.

I'll grant you there are some exceptions to this, particularly prior to the establishment of salary caps where some teams just weren't going to get there. It's a lazy false truism to think Ownership is what makes the majority of difference in these operations.

Generally speaking, I agree with this.

HOWever, my biggest issue with expenses (ROR trade before bonus is due) and the on-ice product is if (I say if, but it's probably fact) Pegula has a tight grip on expenses when it comes to prospects, trades, scouting, etc. Then that is most certainly an issue.

We absolutely need to be scouting constantly. In person, video, overseas, etc. looking for the next Datsyuk (late round pick) and the next intangible player (Tkachuk) to grind and will us into the playoffs. Whether that means 4M more per calendar year in spend for travel and scouts. Eventually that $ outta come back to his pockets anyways due to on ice success.

We have not 'hit' on a mid round pick in a long time. Only ones that come to mind are Peterka and Goaloffson (if he even counts).

If there weren't any rumors about being extremely cheap on the scouting aspect and proper hires in general, then yeah, I would say changing ownership isn't gonna change a damn thing. Even when they do change ownership, this isn't the NFL where you can draft a Jayden Daniels and all of a sudden you're into the divisional round of the playoffs. With massive change and a sale, we are still looking at years of underwelming play most likely.

 

[Chainshot]

Generally speaking, I agree with this.

HOWever, my biggest issue with expenses (ROR trade before bonus is due) and the on-ice product is if (I say if, but it's probably fact) Pegula has a tight grip on expenses when it comes to prospects, trades, scouting, etc. Then that is most certainly an issue.

We absolutely need to be scouting constantly. In person, video, overseas, etc. looking for the next Datsyuk (late round pick) and the next intangible player (Tkachuk) to grind and will us into the playoffs. Whether that means 4M more per calendar year in spend for travel and scouts. Eventually that $ outta come back to his pockets anyways due to on ice success.

We have not 'hit' on a mid round pick in a long time. Only ones that come to mind are Peterka and Goaloffson (if he even counts).

JJ was the third pick of the 2nd round in his draft year. That's not far into the middle of the draft. Luukkonen was 54th - also 2nd round, Bryson was a 4th rounder. Gotta go back to 2016 for an actual late-round stud pick and that was Hagel who Botterill didn't sign (nor did the Habs, he may have needed that kick in the ass to get going but here we are). Olofsson was 10 years ago now and likely was only seen because of Regier's group taking his teammate Possler the year before. Odd that two of those few guys were OA's (Vic and Bryson). They certainly aren't hitting on anything else and it doesn't look like they are trying to find anything outside of their high draft picks if we can judge the farm team.

If there weren't any rumors about being extremely cheap on the scouting aspect and proper hires in general, then yeah, I would say changing ownership isn't gonna change a damn thing. Even when they do change ownership, this isn't the NFL where you can draft a Jayden Daniels and all of a sudden you're into the divisional round of the playoffs. With massive change and a sale, we are still looking at years of underwelming play most likely.

Agreed on them not finding any advantages anywhere. They're cheap everywhere and it shows. That starts at the top.

 

[Selanne00008]

JJ was the third pick of the 2nd round in his draft year. That's not far into the middle of the draft. Luukkonen was 54th - also 2nd round, Bryson was a 4th rounder. Gotta go back to 2016 for an actual late-round stud pick and that was Hagel who Botterill didn't sign (nor did the Habs, he may have needed that kick in the ass to get going but here we are). Olofsson was 10 years ago now and likely was only seen because of Regier's group taking his teammate Possler the year before. Odd that two of those few guys were OA's (Vic and Bryson). They certainly aren't hitting on anything else and it doesn't look like they are trying to find anything outside of their high draft picks if we can judge the farm team.



Agreed on them not finding any advantages anywhere. They're cheap everywhere and it shows. That starts at the top.

Agreed! And nobody get me wrong. Not expecting a Datsyuk to fall into our lap. They are very rare, even outside of the 1st round alone.

Ahh, I thought JJ was 3rd round. But yeah, to your point, very few and far between. And with our top pick being an average of what, 4th overall the last 6 seasons, they are often no brainer picks (Dahlin, power, etc). But even then, Nylander is in there..

 

[sabremike]

JJ was the third pick of the 2nd round in his draft year. That's not far into the middle of the draft. Luukkonen was 54th - also 2nd round, Bryson was a 4th rounder. Gotta go back to 2016 for an actual late-round stud pick and that was Hagel who Botterill didn't sign (nor did the Habs, he may have needed that kick in the ass to get going but here we are). Olofsson was 10 years ago now and likely was only seen because of Regier's group taking his teammate Possler the year before. Odd that two of those few guys were OA's (Vic and Bryson). They certainly aren't hitting on anything else and it doesn't look like they are trying to find anything outside of their high draft picks if we can judge the farm team.



Agreed on them not finding any advantages anywhere. They're cheap everywhere and it shows. That starts at the top.

We are literally the Mike Clown Bengals pre Marvin Lewis with the exception that Terry isn't even competent enough to stumble into a Marvin Lewis type who at least gets you into the playoffs before self destructing.