GDT: Sabres vs. Bruins, 7:30 PM. TV: TNT or max

[Vito_81]

For me, this season is on Donny. The team has not taken any steps forward. They still cant play D, at all. And whatever his plan was for this season has failed so badly that he’s talking about going back to last seasons gameplan, which failed.

Adams never said this season was playoffs or bust. Even when pressed to do so by the media. Perhaps he knew this team overachieved last season and still need more time before they’re contenders. And instead of going in on this season, he opted for an unpopular wait and see approach.

it is time for a new coach.

Long term contracts to Power and Cozens are not the issues. The coach not disciplining the play of Power and Cozen and allowing them to continue to make the same mistakes is the issue.

 

[SabresFan26]

For me, this season is on Donny. The team has not taken any steps forward. They still cant play D, at all. And whatever his plan was for this season has failed so badly that he’s talking about going back to last seasons gameplan, which failed.

Adams never said this season was playoffs or bust. Even when pressed to do so by the media. Perhaps he knew this team overachieved last season and still need more time before they’re contenders. And instead of going in on this season, he opted for an unpopular wait and see approach.

it is time for a new coach.

Long term contracts to Power and Cozens are not the issues. The coach not disciplining the play of Power and Cozen and allowing them to continue to make the same mistakes is the issue.

Coaching is a major concern but so is GM. Kevyn had 0, ZERO experience and got one of 32 jobs in the world. He’s failed to bring in veterans to help support the youth, he gave out long term deals on career years with recklessness. He kept a losing coach after the Kruger era from that staff. He did zero to make our goaltending better and promised a college kid we wouldn’t bring in another goalie to compete with. We have 3 goalies on our roster and none who are a starter in the NHL. Journeymen back ups and an up and comer AHL starter. We signed Clifton and Johnson to improve our defense.

Brutal

 

[sabremike]

Those RJ tribute patches should be removed from the jerseys because this pathetic group of shitbums are unworthy of wearing them.

 

[littletonhockeycoach]

Coaching is a major concern but so is GM. Kevyn had 0, ZERO experience and got one of 32 jobs in the world. He’s failed to bring in veterans to help support the youth, he gave out long term deals on career years with recklessness. He kept a losing coach after the Kruger era from that staff. He did zero to make our goaltending better and promised a college kid we wouldn’t bring in another goalie to compete with. We have 3 goalies on our roster and none who are a starter in the NHL. Journeymen back ups and an up and comer AHL starter. We signed Clifton and Johnson to improve our defense.

Brutal

Tragic as well.......

The thing that really bothers me is how often they are totally unprepared to start games. They have to lead the league in goals surrendered in the first 5 minutes of games. Hell, most of the time they give it up in the first minute or 2 itself. Again today, GA less than 5 minutes in. When it happens over, and over, and over...it's coaching.

Truth.

 

[MarkusKetterer]

Jesus H. Christ, shit on Granato all you want. You demand a winning coach. But how many of you chucklef***s know that Granato was an assistant for one of coaches you want?

Yea, Meatballs was an assistant coach under Quinnville, whom many people in this thread want to be the new coach.

 

[littletonhockeycoach]

This is the thing. I love my sabres but the owner is kicking us in the teeth

Not that it's ethically and morally that much better today but remember the state of Chicago Blackhawk HOCKEY under old man Wirtz.

Not wishing this on anyone but he had to pass away for things to change...

Mentioned it after the year-end press conferences - they needed to do a hard review of the assistants and look to improve. They ran it back like they so often do and now they've had the worst PP in the NHL for almost a calendar year despite the players they have on the ice. Its clear Ellis is all out of ideas and has tried nothing now for almost 12 months - it doesn't matter that he lives nearby or puts in hours at the job, he's not good at it.

I've not like Wolford at all for some time. I had hopes Girardi would be good now that he was back on staff full-time, but I don't see improvement from their defense - in fact I would say all of them have regressed who were here last year. So the new factor is... Girardi. Is there some clash of philosophy between how the two instruct or is it just that neither one is good at their job.

Christie... the review on that coaching app Sports Aux sums him up - taught nothing and took no responsibility.

But hey, he and Wolford and Granato were all buddies in Cincy so yay!

You'd think Sabre Assistant Coach jobs were paid government positions with all the guaranteed retention protections.

 

[littletonhockeycoach]

The Yotes scored 5 unanswered goals tonight in the 3rd period and OT to beat the Avalanche 5-4. (Avalanche apologists will declare that their team stopped skating but the reality is that the Coyotes outworked and outsmarted the Avalanche all night long. The Avs should never have been up 4 - 0 to begin with.

Yes Donnie, these kind of games happen. But they happen to YOUR TEAM far too often. You are clearly not making a positive difference with this team any longer.

I wish John Tortarella wasn't coaching the Flyers and was available because his coaching style is what these Sabre guys desperately need.

 

[Sabre the Win]

Well I'm not mad, I stopped watching mid way thru the 2nd and went about gaming a bit.

This team is dead to me sadly. I think this might be the first season in the 13 year long rebuild that I actually just don't care anymore and if a die hard like me is falling out of love with hockey and the Sabres, imagine the casuals they have lost completely at least I still check in on games from time to time and check the scores at the end of the night but man is it hard to watch or like anything about this team.

I say that as someone who still checks and posts on a hockey web forum. It's starting to get really hard to care.

This system and team reminds me of Kruger 2.0 right now and nothing is going to change, you all know it and yet we will still post and advocate for a change til we are blue in the face.

 

[SundherDome]

Kevyn is rapidly converging onto Botterill's profile, and I don't think there's a person on planet Earth who hates botterill more than I do.

Both had all-time bag-fumbles that are by themselves worthy of firing in disgrace. Jason traded his 2C for a pile of things that had far less value at the time of the trade than the 2C did, and slow-played the replacement to a point where he was fired before anything resembling a 2C ever existed in the organization. his first attempt was a 13F/4LW, which he stuck with for a full season despite an epic collapse from first place in season. His second attempt was a 3LW, Marcus Johansson. a year and a half after that epic collapse, his last gasps at building a roster were adding Michael Frolik, the worst Sabre skater I've seen in person since the tank, and then trading Scandella for a 4th (who the next team flipped for a 2nd weeks later). This overarching fumble entails being the only team in first place at Halloween to ever miss the playoffs (they were in first place more than a month after, and missed by MORE THAN 20 POINTS!). I thought this pile of things (not to mention 500 others, including the inexplicable 6th round pick debacle) was impossible to overcome but Kevyn is making great strides.

Kevyn took a franchise that had spent 2 years painstakingly rebuilding good will with the community (to his credit, which is something Botts never accomplished), and was flush with more valuable tradeable assets than he knew what to do with, assets that have no prayer of ever making the team because of their sheer quantity, a 94 point team with obviously identifiable and easily improvable holes, and ran it all back, did nothing of consequence, and went on the radio right before we lost 5-1 to NYR to open the season and bragged about how he was able to unplug for a month in July and go on vacation. Then as a still-salvageable season circled the drain, he continued to do absolutely f***ing nothing. His goaltending management is as ludicrous and unbelievable as Botterill's center spine, arguably even more so.

The only benefit I can give Kev is that in order to trade all those shiny high end pieces, the player they are being traded for needs to want to be here and that just isn't going to happen. Basically Kev needs to find those critical puzzle pieces and they can't have a NTC, MNTC or NMC while being signed beyond a year. The perception and nightly showing proving it to be a reputation is so damning that this core basically needs to figure it out. Adams needs to start tinkering, whether it is calling up Stillman and sitting Power, selling/sitting Oloffson, sending Levi down to get much needed development, sending a message to Tuch/Tage/Cozens/Peterka..

This team is afraid to go to the dirty areas unless they have dmen in a blender. They can play the physical or anti-trap game but they choose not to, so either play that way or sit, idgaf.

Adams needs to do something as there are two very winnable games against poor teams coming up that could spark something. If nothing is done, then maybe it's time to find someone who will do it

 

[toddkaz]

 

[SabresFan26]

Jesus H. Christ, shit on Granato all you want. You demand a winning coach. But how many of you chucklef***s know that Granato was an assistant for one of coaches you want?

Yea, Meatballs was an assistant coach under Quinnville, whom many people in this thread want to be the new coach.

View attachment 791461

He was an assistant at the end for 1 full season in Q’s near 25 year history as a HC in Chicago.

Quenneville won multiple cups and won everywhere’s he’s been. He’s a winning coach. He was on fire with Florida before getting expelled.

 

[toddkaz]

Jesus H. Christ, shit on Granato all you want. You demand a winning coach. But how many of you chucklef***s know that Granato was an assistant for one of coaches you want?

Yea, Meatballs was an assistant coach under Quinnville, whom many people in this thread want to be the new coach.

View attachment 791461

Who cares??? Do you know how many assistants go on to fail?

Do you think the coach sprinkles magic powder on an assistant?

 

[Dubi Doo]

Well I'm not mad, I stopped watching mid way thru the 2nd and went about gaming a bit.

This team is dead to me sadly. I think this might be the first season in the 13 year long rebuild that I actually just don't care anymore and if a die hard like me is falling out of love with hockey and the Sabres, imagine the casuals they have lost completely at least I still check in on games from time to time and check the scores at the end of the night but man is it hard to watch or like anything about this team.

I say that as someone who still checks and posts on a hockey web forum. It's starting to get really hard to care.

This system and team reminds me of Kruger 2.0 right now and nothing is going to change, you all know it and yet we will still post and advocate for a change til we are blue in the face.

I haven't tuned in much the past month or so. I'd like to say I'm completely numb to it, but it still stings a bit. It's an incredibly unlikeable group. I had hope going into the season, but they've destroyed all of that. Granato needs to be fired, and Adams isn't inspiring a lot of confidence in me.

 

[Chainshot]

The Yotes scored 5 unanswered goals tonight in the 3rd period and OT to beat the Avalanche 5-4. (Avalanche apologists will declare that their team stopped skating but the reality is that the Coyotes outworked and outsmarted the Avalanche all night long. The Avs should never have been up 4 - 0 to begin with.

Yes Donnie, these kind of games happen. But they happen to YOUR TEAM far too often. You are clearly not making a positive difference with this team any longer.

I wish John Tortarella wasn't coaching the Flyers and was available because his coaching style is what these Sabre guys desperately need.

I still feel like Tourigny is about to break through in Arizona.

 

[Sabre the Win]

Arizona and Flyers are like us last year, playing free hockey with no expectations. We will see if their young groups continue to project forward when more is at stake or is it really only a Buffalo problem.

 

[The Red Helmet]

Jesus H. Christ, shit on Granato all you want. You demand a winning coach. But how many of you chucklef***s know that Granato was an assistant for one of coaches you want?

Yea, Meatballs was an assistant coach under Quinnville, whom many people in this thread want to be the new coach.

View attachment 791461

You are not making the correlation you think you are. You think that because Quennville had Granato as an assistant that they must be similar coaches with similar ability? Your point is just so incredibly dumb and not relevant. You seriously have to be related to Granato.

 

[Vito_81]

Coaching is a major concern but so is GM. Kevyn had 0, ZERO experience and got one of 32 jobs in the world. He’s failed to bring in veterans to help support the youth, he gave out long term deals on career years with recklessness. He kept a losing coach after the Kruger era from that staff. He did zero to make our goaltending better and promised a college kid we wouldn’t bring in another goalie to compete with. We have 3 goalies on our roster and none who are a starter in the NHL. Journeymen back ups and an up and comer AHL starter. We signed Clifton and Johnson to improve our defense.

Brutal

Im Sorry that you dont like KA. But his choice of contract extensions have all been great.

Tage and Cozens are far from reckless contracts. Tage’s was signed after “career year” 1 before his “career year”last year and easily saved this team 3+ million per yr on the cap. Cozens is a 22 yr old player who is having a down year. You’ll look back at your argument here against his current deal in a few seasons and feel foolish for feeling how you feel now.

Once we have a coach to actually teach Power what the hell to do in his own end, that deal will be fine. A 21 year old D is far from peaked.

if you think Dahlin’s deal was reckless overpayment after a career year, you’d be very wrong.

There is one bad contract on this team and it was signed before Adams took over.

You want to hate on his lack of moves thus far. Ok. His choice of signings this past summer, sure.

But his long term team management so far has been superb in my eyes. The true test will be his upcoming moves to turn this team into contenders.

 

[old kummelweck]

For some of the supposed data gurus they have on staff, and all the talk about looking at everything and evaluating how to improve, you'd think it would be pretty ****ing easy for them to go, "Hey, let's just scrap all our current powerplay systems." Just as a starting point. Try something new. But no, we can't expect them to try and fix something over the course of an entire calendar year, that's asking too much.

It's like the org./current regime saw where rock bottom was previously and dug another couple hundred feet below that to produce this season.

Just dumping Ellis ALONE for someone competent to run the PP, we'd be having a very different conversation. They have the talent for a top 5 PP. There is this mythology in the org right now that if somehow the players would just execute the way they are told to execute, they would find success. I don't think this is any different than what is happening with the PP strategy.

But they keep drawing it up the same way and running out the same crew.

 

[Sabre the Win]

Im Sorry that you dont like KA. But his choice of contract extensions have all been great.

Tage and Cozens are far from reckless contracts. Tage’s was signed after “career year” 1 before his “career year”last year and easily saved this team 3+ million per yr on the cap. Cozens is a 22 yr old player who is having a down year. You’ll look back at your argument here against his current deal in a few seasons and feel foolish for feeling how you feel now.

Once we have a coach to actually teach Power what the hell to do in his own end, that deal will be fine. A 21 year old D is far from peaked.

if you think Dahlin’s deal was reckless overpayment after a career year, you’d be very wrong.

There is one bad contract on this team and it was signed before Adams took over.

You want to hate on his lack of moves thus far. Ok. His choice of signings this past summer, sure.

But his long term team management so far has been superb in my eyes. The true test will be his upcoming moves to turn this team into contenders.

By the time his team starts competing his long term contracts will be near done.

 

[Bendium]

KA could not find room to keep Peca in the organization. Feels like we lost our Brindamour opportunity. They should have made him a Sabre assistant, even if that meant letting another one go. Who would not trade Ellis for Peca right now?

 

[slip]

Im Sorry that you dont like KA. But his choice of contract extensions have all been great.

Tage and Cozens are far from reckless contracts. Tage’s was signed after “career year” 1 before his “career year”last year and easily saved this team 3+ million per yr on the cap. Cozens is a 22 yr old player who is having a down year. You’ll look back at your argument here against his current deal in a few seasons and feel foolish for feeling how you feel now.

Once we have a coach to actually teach Power what the hell to do in his own end, that deal will be fine. A 21 year old D is far from peaked.

if you think Dahlin’s deal was reckless overpayment after a career year, you’d be very wrong.

There is one bad contract on this team and it was signed before Adams took over.

You want to hate on his lack of moves thus far. Ok. His choice of signings this past summer, sure.

But his long term team management so far has been superb in my eyes. The true test will be his upcoming moves to turn this team into contenders.

Power is way overpaid. Yes he will improve but he’s nowhere close to being an 8.5 mil a year defenseman, and likely won’t be until he’s 24-25 years old. We’re looking at almost 8 million in overpayment during the first threee years of his deal. That’s Skinneresque levels of overpayment. Adams clearly blew it on this contract, even if he did well on the others.

 

[Evgeny Oliker]

Is Thompson ok? Anyone know the “personal reasons”?

I know it’s personal but…

 

[The Red Helmet]

Is Thompson ok? Anyone know the “personal reasons”?

I know it’s personal but…

Probably a hang nail. I really don't have much sympathy for these players and their personal days off. I know many of you soft hearted new age thinkers love to throw around "mental health" like it's going out of style but people use it as a crutch when they can't withstand the normal pressures of everyday life. So many of us never have the option of saying I need a day for personal reasons or mental health. You work for half the year and work 3 hour days. IMO if you are taking games off it should be a pretty serious issue.

 

[SabresFan26]

Im Sorry that you dont like KA. But his choice of contract extensions have all been great.

Tage and Cozens are far from reckless contracts. Tage’s was signed after “career year” 1 before his “career year”last year and easily saved this team 3+ million per yr on the cap. Cozens is a 22 yr old player who is having a down year. You’ll look back at your argument here against his current deal in a few seasons and feel foolish for feeling how you feel now.

Once we have a coach to actually teach Power what the hell to do in his own end, that deal will be fine. A 21 year old D is far from peaked.

if you think Dahlin’s deal was reckless overpayment after a career year, you’d be very wrong.

There is one bad contract on this team and it was signed before Adams took over.

You want to hate on his lack of moves thus far. Ok. His choice of signings this past summer, sure.

But his long term team management so far has been superb in my eyes. The true test will be his upcoming moves to turn this team into contenders.

Oof Vito, agree to disagree.

Tage is a good deal - I'll agree on that front. He also had 2 good years.

Cozens was a reach and early - That could look very bad and does so far.

Power is extremely early and has shown nothing to this point to warrant being a top 20 paid defenseman in the league

Dahlin is probably a little rich at this point since we haven't won anything although not an awful deal.

Clifton got 3 years

Samuelsson got paid and a 7 year deal without ever scoring a goal in the NHL.

Outside of Tage and arguably Dahlin, they've been for the most part awful.

Is Thompson ok? Anyone know the “personal reasons”?

I know it’s personal but…

Someone speculated something about his wife being due in January but I thought they just had a kid?

Hopefully all is well and him and they are ok.

KA could not find room to keep Peca in the organization. Feels like we lost our Brindamour opportunity. They should have made him a Sabre assistant, even if that meant letting another one go. Who would not trade Ellis for Peca right now?

I'd take Pecs over anyone on our staff. Literally anyone (Don included)

 

[ForsbergMoDo21]

Not that it's ethically and morally that much better today but remember the state of Chicago Blackhawk HOCKEY under old man Wirtz.

Not wishing this on anyone but he had to pass away for things to change...


You'd think Sabre Assistant Coach jobs were paid government positions with all the guaranteed retention protections.

I found myself wondering the other day, do they think that because coaching is like teaching that these guys need tenure?