Oh nooooooo not the kids ice time! If only we had an ENTIRE LEAGUE dedicated to giving kids ice time!
So you want to send Peterka and Quinn back to the minors? Because that is what we are talking about here. Playing kids in top roles who are not good enough in those roles to contend. They are the reason the team is not ready.
Sure you can. You can have ELC players in key positions (i.e. Power in the top 4, Quinn/Peterka/Cozens in the middle six) and still have enough veteran talent to to contend. You simply have to be willing to spend assets and cap space, which this front office wasn't willing to do.
This team was never going to contend with all the under 22 players in the top 6/top 4. If you watched the games, the kids got steamrolled a LOT. Power was a disaster is the D zone, and oppositions started throwing out physical checking lines against the kid line that were wrecking them. Saying that they could contend with some better supporting vets playing in bottom roles is ridiculous.
Please stop making excuses for the front office/ownership. Last year I noted that it was a poorly constructed team. That has nothing to do about players being unwilling to come here
I've said the team was poorly constructed for several seasons. You can't win in this league rolling a bunch of scoring lines that don't play D. I have been super critical of Adams in many areas, but I have accepted the "development years" excuse because it is a legitimate rebuild strategy, so I am giving them a chance to actually take several seasons and implement it- and it seems to be paying off.
The front office used all 11 draft picks, including 3 1st rounders. They didn't sign any even mid tier UFAs. That isn't players 'declining', that is a team choosing to use every draft pick over aggressively improving themselves.
Yes, Buffalo will always be a tough market to recruit to. But again, there's a reason why GM is a tough position. It's Adams (and ownerships) job to sell people on coming here. The Eichel debacle and two years of cap floor spending has hurt their reputation league wide more than the market ever has.
You seem to think attracting highly sought after UFAs to Buffalo is a thing. It isn't. The best free agents are going to go elsewhere. The only time this team has been able to sign top flight UFAs at the start of free agency is when they grossly overpay. It sucks, but it is something the GM has to contend with. We can't pretend the problem does not exist.
Nobody was expecting the Pegula's to spend to the cap after finishing dead last.
Wait. Did you not regularly accuse Terry Pegula of lying because the team was not spending the cap after that season and you kept referencing his statements from a press conference 10 years ago where he said "we will spend whatever it takes to make the sabres successful"?
Or was that some other poster with "Oak" in their moniker?
Using LTIR to circumvent the cap FLOOR two years in a row with a 25+ year old rotting corpse of an arena in disrepair is being cheap.
Hey, I have never defended Terry Pegula of being a great owner. I made the same arguments last off-season and was told I was off base and given a bunch of Buffalo Bills references to prove why.
The hiring of John Roth was a huge red flag for me.
Could they have spent a bunch of money and produced a better on ice product the last two years? Absolutely. Should they have signed any of the available high end UFAs to over-priced, long term deals? Absolutely not.
I honestly like where the team is with the cap flexibility.
But then, I do not feel like the 20-22 year old core had any hope of contending at the moment, so my reality was different than several posters here. I remember arguing against a couple of posters who were trying to convince me that giving Kadei 10+ million was the way to go....
Not even close to comparable. San Jose has several legacy contracts on the books, including Vlasic and Couture. They also have 7M in dead cap between buyouts and retaining contracts.
You missed the point.
The point is not the direction of the two teams, it is the comparison of small market teams having owners that spend money for draft capital and throwing away real dollars to get future assets (you mentioned weaponizing cap i.e. taking on dumps for sweeteners). I was pointing out that even the richest owner in the league is not throwing real money away to just improve draft capital, much to the shock and dismay of a few delusional Sharks fans who regularly post nonsense on the main boards. Expecting Pegula to do similar during the rebuild was a narrative around here.
