Well, he hired the right people for Bills, although not on the first try, but he used a special firm for this. I think it's a matter of luck, although we are very rarely lucky.
Hey Terry, Do Us A Favor and SELL
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They've chosen to hire people with very little experience. Terry keeps trying the economically efficient route and keeps biting this organization in the ass.
Didn't he hire the experienced Rex Ryan before McDermott in the beginning?
There have been no recent leaks because everyone involved wants things to stay as they are. They're a bunch of roaches hiding in the dark, why would they shine the light on themselves?
Thinking about how if golisano never would have sold the sabres would not be anywhere close to where they are today
Sure up until 2017ish (or later not sure when team values sky rocketed) would have been more lean but golisano was always about putting competitive teams even if it meant first round losses or 9th place finishes
But with team values where they're today I can't imagine golisano not spending
Who knows maybe I'm wrong in a bunch of different ways but it was a thought that crossed my mind and needed to share it with someone lol
Sure up until 2017ish (or later not sure when team values sky rocketed) would have been more lean but golisano was always about putting competitive teams even if it meant first round losses or 9th place finishes
But with team values where they're today I can't imagine golisano not spending
Who knows maybe I'm wrong in a bunch of different ways but it was a thought that crossed my mind and needed to share it with someone lol
Guys! Yes he’s been very wrong. But this is not some evil empire he’s running.
I will never understand Pegula hate. The biggest argument against Pegula is he hasn’t been spending to the cap. There isn’t anyone else in the world that will spend more money than Terry Pegula will spend on the Buffalo Sabres. No one.
There’s a smarter way to run the Sabres, obviously. They’re terrible. But we have an owner that gives us the best chance of being a great franchise. He just has to get GM right one time! It seems bleak, but remember he once hired Rex Ryan to run the Bills. Things can change quickly.
Hey Terry aren’t there some new curtains you need to hang on the yacht?
What? I wasn't hating on Pegula with that post. I was saying that the employees in the front office don't leak as an act of self preservation. They do not want the spotlight on how incompetent they all are.
If they ratted on Adams, that could lead to Adams getting fired... which would lead to all of them getting fired too.
I can't speak for anyone else, but my biggest argument for why Pegula is bad for the team is that he is an owner who installed himself as president of hockey operations, partakes in personnel decisions, and frankly, does not know very much about the sport. He has hired a parade of rookie GMs who allow him to be in on decisions, and under his ownership, the franchise has been totally lost for way too long.
The not spending the cap narrative argument is a bit of misconstrued reality. For a time, he had his GM worked to not even spend to the floor under the BS guise of "don't want to block the kids". The truth of the situation was that the team drastically cut costs by picking up cheap real-dollar, high cap LTIR insured contracts to circumvent the cap floor and not spend any money to help the young players. They went out and brought in a ton of super cheap, borderline AHL free agents to fill the fulltime roleplayer roles of the team that the kids were never going to fill, which provided zero mentorship for the young players they were throwing to the wolves. To make it worse, they have hired cheap, underqualified coaches and assistant coaches and most of the coaching decisions seem to be more financially motiivated than well thought out for what is best for all the young player's development.
The problem with this franchise is Terry Pegula. The solution is for him to relinquish the role of president to an established hockey executive and remove himself from the team building equation.
When Terry bought the team, I was afraid it was going to turn into another Dan Snyder situation, and it has. Snyder took over my football team, ran them into the ground, destroyed my love for the team, and even though he's gone, my passion has never returned.
I love hockey more than football, and I'm hanging on by a thread. In the early 90s and 00s, I never missed a game on tv. I literally built my schedule around being able to watch hockey. The Knoxs, Rigas, and Gollisano ran a team that kept me interested. These days, if I miss a game, I miss a game. I still try to watch, but I don't go out of my way to do so. I brought friends and my ex-fiancee to games to try to get them interested and the Sabres are just flat and boring to potential fans, especially during the matinee games. The arena experience is, well, not exactly exciting and the team usually cares about as much as I do - they might watch a game, but if something better is going on, they certainly aren't going out of their way to show up.
There's no heart. There's no pride.
I live 2 hours away, so I don't go to many games in person per year, but I always used to try to catch a few,
For the people worried about the team leaving if Terry sells, well, you're in the same position that I'm in, being too far to attend games in person. If Terry stays and continues to give fans a crappy arena experience and on ice product, fewer and fewer people are going to show interest, and the team won't be able to afford to stay anyway.
In just 2 years with Snyder gone, the Commanders made it to the NFC championship game. I half-heartedly watched a couple games this year, but the damage Snyder did is going to take some time to heal, if it ever heals at all. Pegula might as well be Dan Snyder as far as how the team has been run into the ground. Snyder was a superfan too, probably even moreso than Terry, and had to be involved in player personnel decisions. It'll take years for the Commanders fans to recover, and it will take even longer for the Sabres fanbase to recover due to the lesser interest in the NHL vs the NFL.
At the end of the day, Terry is the problem. The buck stops with him regardless of how much daily interference he has. If he's hands off, he still picked the GMs that have given us horrible results. If he's hands on, then he's busy picking players, coaches, etc too. He needs to go. If it means the Sabres move, that's going to happen eventually even if he stays.
That wraps up my post for this decade and I'll be back to lurking.
I love hockey more than football, and I'm hanging on by a thread. In the early 90s and 00s, I never missed a game on tv. I literally built my schedule around being able to watch hockey. The Knoxs, Rigas, and Gollisano ran a team that kept me interested. These days, if I miss a game, I miss a game. I still try to watch, but I don't go out of my way to do so. I brought friends and my ex-fiancee to games to try to get them interested and the Sabres are just flat and boring to potential fans, especially during the matinee games. The arena experience is, well, not exactly exciting and the team usually cares about as much as I do - they might watch a game, but if something better is going on, they certainly aren't going out of their way to show up.
There's no heart. There's no pride.
I live 2 hours away, so I don't go to many games in person per year, but I always used to try to catch a few,
For the people worried about the team leaving if Terry sells, well, you're in the same position that I'm in, being too far to attend games in person. If Terry stays and continues to give fans a crappy arena experience and on ice product, fewer and fewer people are going to show interest, and the team won't be able to afford to stay anyway.
In just 2 years with Snyder gone, the Commanders made it to the NFC championship game. I half-heartedly watched a couple games this year, but the damage Snyder did is going to take some time to heal, if it ever heals at all. Pegula might as well be Dan Snyder as far as how the team has been run into the ground. Snyder was a superfan too, probably even moreso than Terry, and had to be involved in player personnel decisions. It'll take years for the Commanders fans to recover, and it will take even longer for the Sabres fanbase to recover due to the lesser interest in the NHL vs the NFL.
At the end of the day, Terry is the problem. The buck stops with him regardless of how much daily interference he has. If he's hands off, he still picked the GMs that have given us horrible results. If he's hands on, then he's busy picking players, coaches, etc too. He needs to go. If it means the Sabres move, that's going to happen eventually even if he stays.
That wraps up my post for this decade and I'll be back to lurking.
NHL owner rankings: Grading every team, from Tampa Bay to Buffalo
Introducing The Athletic's first NHL owner rankings, based 50 percent on a fan survey and 50 percent on expert accounting.
www.nytimes.com
It’s a sad state of affairs in Buffalo right now. This season is the franchise’s 14th consecutive out of the playoffs, the NHL’s longest drought in history and one that doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon.
The Sabres were voted dead last in every category in our survey by a large margin and 61 percent of fans said their confidence in ownership was lower than a year ago. Buffalo fans filled our survey en masse, with more entries than every franchise except Minnesota, and the hundreds of responses were filled with vitriol. Many were pleas for the owner to sell the team.
Things are about as bad as they can get in Buffalo.
Fan perspective: “He seems averse to hiring GMs and coaches with actual NHL experience and makes abrupt hiring and firing decisions. The franchise still appears to have a haphazard plan for putting together a winning roster. Part of this is that there is no team president or other executive with NHL experience to guide these decisions.”
“His entire ownership tenure has been a disaster. He used to have competition as the worst owner in the league in Eugene Melnyk and Alex Meruelo, now he is the last one of those remaining.”
“Hockey Heaven he said. Instead, Terry Pegula’s ownership has put Buffalo in Hockey Hell.”
Still feels too high somehow
Btw…this is your billboard right here. Just take out the weird part where four percent of people somehow feel more confident in his ownership. Those top two section would look damn good when driving to the arena
Btw…this is your billboard right here. Just take out the weird part where four percent of people somehow feel more confident in his ownership. Those top two section would look damn good when driving to the arena
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Regardless of how Terry Pegula feels about the direction he is taking the team and where he thinks it is going, this should sound alarm bells. This is a team/entity in the business of entertainment, where your customers hate you and have no faith in you.
You cant just plug your ears and hide and wait for this "success" that he and Adams think is inevitable and owed to them for simply sticking it out with a plan. Things are at a breaking point, I have it on good authority that STH renewals are a disaster. I sent my opt out form in today.
I refuse to spend a dime on the team until they change the way they operate. No more GM fantasy camp for kevyn Adams and Terry Pegula.
You cant just plug your ears and hide and wait for this "success" that he and Adams think is inevitable and owed to them for simply sticking it out with a plan. Things are at a breaking point, I have it on good authority that STH renewals are a disaster. I sent my opt out form in today.
I refuse to spend a dime on the team until they change the way they operate. No more GM fantasy camp for kevyn Adams and Terry Pegula.
I think the dichotomy of his ownership of the Bills and Sabres will have to be studied.
The Pegula family is likely going to have sunk what, over 1B in their own cash to build the new Bills stadium. And by all indications, its going to be a top end football palace. A well rated front office, willingness to spend, and, a team that typically will win at least one playoff round a year.
The Bills have become a model franchise.
But on the Sabres, every approach they have tried has been wrong.
Spend aggressively in free agency, failed.
Bring in an ex player to help shepherd a team, failed.
Having the league help you find a GM, failed.
An aggressive full gut rebuild, failed (twice!)
Use all the picks, spend all the picks, both failed.
The Pegulas need to do the one thing they haven't done since being owners:
Go find someone who has done it before and take a step back. They can be involved in the process...but trust someone to come up with a blueprint that is proven.
The Pegula family is likely going to have sunk what, over 1B in their own cash to build the new Bills stadium. And by all indications, its going to be a top end football palace. A well rated front office, willingness to spend, and, a team that typically will win at least one playoff round a year.
The Bills have become a model franchise.
But on the Sabres, every approach they have tried has been wrong.
Spend aggressively in free agency, failed.
Bring in an ex player to help shepherd a team, failed.
Having the league help you find a GM, failed.
An aggressive full gut rebuild, failed (twice!)
Use all the picks, spend all the picks, both failed.
The Pegulas need to do the one thing they haven't done since being owners:
Go find someone who has done it before and take a step back. They can be involved in the process...but trust someone to come up with a blueprint that is proven.
Let’s not rewrite Bills history though
The first thing that happened as owner was having a bad coach he wanted to retain walk away from the job. Then he fell for Rex Ryan bullshit.
I’ll say it plainly. Josh Allen happened. And in football that’s enough to get as far as they’ve gotten. Some years while it feels like the team is actively working against him. And the team prints money no matter how they do because of the tv deals. This is where people will try to tell me McDermott and Beane are great while ignoring giant issues in each of their work. Without Allen they aren’t still employed here. Period.
Hockey can’t be turned around by one player and the last five years of stripping the hockey department and going cheap everywhere ensure they’ll never luck into a team either
Ranked the second-worst owner by agents, ranked the worst owner by fans. When does he and/or the league take the hint and actually do something about it?
You would think an owner who possesses basic human intelligence would take the hint that the franchise needs a major shift in direction.
Public perception from everywhere is that the Sabres, their ownership, management, and coaches are junk (but we are going to throw rocks at guys like Eichel and Cozens on their way out). Fans cant wait to rush to tell anyone about how much they hate this.
If Pegula does not change things, and do it soon, this franchise is going to die. The lease is up in 2 years. They are getting crushed on renewals.
