You Don't Understand How Bad Terry Pegula Has Been for the Buffalo Sabres

[Three On Zero]

You'll never believe who hires management and sits at the draft table breathing down the GMs neck

I do follow the Canucks, who are owned by Aquilini

 

[SomeDude]

That said, I would be insufferable if I owned a team. The fans would hate me.

I’d be owner, GM, coach, and 1st line center. Who’s gonna stop me?

 

[Pablo El Perro]

We all understand.

 

[I Hate Blake Coleman]

Is he too hands on for an owner? That's the impression I'm getting from this thread. Murray Edwards East?

 

[TheBarnIsElectric]

As a Sabres fan, I've never been convinced Pegula is the reason for the lack of success, and I certainly don't hate him or his family. I understand that his hires on the Sabres side of things haven't worked out, but I don't believe it's because they don't care. If anything, it's because he cares too much, but from afar, I don't really have any way of knowing that with certainty.

I'm as pissed and depressed by this team as anyone, but I try not to let my emotions cloud judgments where there is a lack of information. The truth is that building a winning team from scratch in a small market is difficult, and the reasons they've failed are complicated.

I just hope they turn it around because I really miss watching playoff hockey in Buffalo.

 

[Spargon]

It's a shame, I remember when he bought the team. There was so much hope and optimism "unprecedented era of spending and winning" or something was the tag line. Unfortunately he only got the spending part right.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

I’ve said a few times already, but I believe the Sabres are at the point where they need to see what they have in a competitive context. They need to start filling holes and weaknesses with draft and prospect currency. If it doesn’t work, then start again; they can’t keep spinning their wheels.

 

[AfroThunder396]

Terry is convinced that he is a hockey expert and should therefore be involved in the day-to-day operations of the team. Like most billionaires, he is convinced that he is both brilliant and infallible, and as such he'd rather hire yes men who tell him how brilliant he is than actually competent management.

With the Bills, he realized very quickly he didn't know what he was doing and that the stakes were far higher with an NFL team. So he hired a GM who knew what he was doing and generally left it alone. But with the Sabres, he just can't help himself.

 

[AaronPines]

I don’t know. In the darkest corners of the Sabres fandom, half truths about the Pegulas with dubious sourcing (if that!) get repeated in a game of angry telephone.

I’m frustrated with the losing too.

But the other fact is there’s rampant false hope that some white knight will come save hockey in Buffalo if the fans push him to sell. Sad times. Look no further than the WJC a few years back. The city fell out of love with hockey.

 

[Djp]

Is it Pegula or bad management and draft history?

coach/GM stability

2011 you had GM Regier and coach Ruff
2011/12--they just miss out of playoffs due to a bad injury period late Nov-mid Jan
2012/13 Regier/Ruff -ruff fired midseason
2013/14 Regier/Rolston-- midseason switch to Murray/Nolan
2014/15 Murrray/Nolan --Nolan out after season
--the past 3 seasons they traded off a bunch of veterans for picks/prospects targeting McDavid/Eichel draft, Then Murray made Kane, ROR, Lehner trades

2015/16 Murray/Bylsma
2016/17 Murray/Bylsma --offseason both fired
2017/18 Botterill/Housley
2018/19 Botterill/Housley -- Housley fired
2019/20 Botterill/Kruger --offseason Botterill fired
2020/21 Adams/Krueger --Kruger fired
--trade Reinhart, Ristolainen around draft, Eichel traded early in 21/22 season
2021/22 Adams/Granato
2022/23 Adams/Granato
2023/24 Adams/Granato


To be fair....for Murray he didnt inherit much in terms of prospect pool.

Galasssano, the prior sabres owner, gutted scouting department which hurt the draft from 2005-2011 drafts.

Adams inherited a lot more in terms of prospects drafted 2016-2019 than what Murray had coming in from 2008-2012.

Adams built on that with trading the vets for futures drafting in 2021-2023


the OP has an agenda against the owner

 

[DaveG]

I completely get it, we're getting a similar shit show here in Charlotte with Tepper when it comes to the Panthers. Dude treats the Sabres like he's playing NHL (insert year here) and I thought he was an idiot for trading much of the teams young depth at the time for O'Reilly after they landed the Eichel pick when the team was still another year or two out in the rebuild process. I won't say he's on the same tier of sports team owner as A$G or Dan Snyder, but currently nobody in sports is. He, along with Tepper, is most definitely on that shortlist for worst owner in North American pro sports.

And similar to the situation with Tepper it's completely different with the Bills. They're much more "hands off" as owners for CFC and the Bills respectively and they have people in place that actually know the sport running things, and oh look, those teams are actually capable of doing something.

 

[RogerRoger]

As a Carolina Panthers fan yes I do understand how bad an owner can be for a team

Yeah, teams with owners that are alright have no clue how damaging (even surreptitiously) a bad owner is.

 

[bleedgreen]

Since Terry Pegula has purchased the Sabres, these are the stats. The common denominator for a franchise that was always competitive has now sunk to the lowest of the low in the NHL and possibly all of sports.

Killing one of the best hockey markets in the US and an entire generation of fans in the process. There are college kids who probably barely remember seeing the Sabres in the playoffs. Let alone winning a series.

I wanted to get into this thread, but I keep looking at the newspaper and seeing the headline about pirates killing Americans on a yacht. I forgot about that story!

Four Americans Captured by Pirates Killed

The hijacking of an American yacht off the Somali coast ended in tragedy early this morning; four Americans aboard the yacht were killed by their pirate captors, according to U.S. military officials. American military forces killed two pirates aboard the vessel when they responded to gunfire...

abcnews.go.com

 

[Breakers]

Doesn’t his wife run quite a few things and is also just as bad?

 

[Ovie's Neighbor]

I remember the days of Moginly and Lafontaine and Hasek. My Caps had an epic ECF with those hideous uniforms you all had. But I always remember how passionate the fans are and how much they love hockey. The NHL is better off when the Sabres do well.

 

[Sabresfansince1980]

I’ve said a few times already, but I believe the Sabres are at the point where they need to see what they have in a competitive context. They need to start filling holes and weaknesses with draft and prospect currency. If it doesn’t work, then start again; they can’t keep spinning their wheels.

This summer is make or break for me with Kevyn Adams. There was just a little justification for being conservative last summer, but this summer there is no reason to bring back most UFAs and every reason to know what he has/doesn't have in prospects. He should know what the holes are to fill and who to trade in order to fill them. If it's a nothing summer like last year, then we should know that this is not just a management problem, as described by other posters on this page, but also a directive from ownership to save dollars and cap space in an ultra-prospect driven plan to be better with internal growth only.

Going back to the origins of Pegula and management in a nutshell, an internal shit show erupted while Murray was GM and the Pegulas decided they wouldn't be so hands off after that. Now Terry seems involved to a fault but like others have posted here, there really isn't enough info to know for sure if he is involved to an annoying extent, or involved to a detrimental extent.

 

[Rubi]

Wasn't Terry's wife, Kim Pegula, the one running the team and making decisions until she had that heart attack in June 2022?

 

[ijuka]

This is why you have executives making the decisions. You, as the owner, hire the ones that align with your vision, but other than that, you let them do their thing.

 

[ForsbergMoDo21]

It's a shame, I remember when he bought the team. There was so much hope and optimism "unprecedented era of spending and winning" or something was the tag line. Unfortunately he only got the spending part right.

That’s the thing. He got the lip service part right but he doesn’t actually spend.

Sabres' decision to waive Tyson Jost raises more questions about roster-building strategy

The Sabres have ONE pro scout. Their pro scouting is nonexistent. They are one of few teams who don’t spend close to the cap and have been that way for years. Terry will make a splash now and then on his own indulgent whims (a former player on local radio claimed that’s how Jeff Skinner got a laughable $9 million a year, for example), but by and large he runs his team like a skeleton crew. Hence the refusal to actually staff a full front office with a president of hockey ops or scouting departments. And that combined with his insistence on randomly inserting himself and overruling GMs (how do you think O’Reilly suddenly got traded traded for a pile of shit during the peak of his career?), no experienced hockey professional will come near the team. They’re on their 3rd first time GM in a row, and the current one wasn’t even an AGM first. What was his first order of business? To layoff half the staff (during the pandemic, no less). Something Jason Botterill refused to do and a major reason why he was fired. Not to mention his wife famously giving a PowerPoint presentation to Bills/Sabres employees in 2020 about how their goal is to be efficient and economic and to “maintain the Pegula lifestyle.” (Bills ownership is accustomed to a certain 'lifestyle' that could hurt its NFL franchise) One anonymous Bills employee said it completely tanked the whole front office’s morale.

The Pegula family f***in sucks and they can kick rocks. I don’t understsnd why they keep the Sabres, especially since it’s established they’re cheap assholes. The team went from sellouts and thousands-long season ticket waitlists to supposedly operating at yearly losses of ~40 million. The only possible explanation is Terry Pegula’s ego. It’s why he forces bad deals for the team, demands daily communication from his puppet GM, and why he can’t just cut his losses and move on from the Sabres. It would be an admission that he’s an incompetent buffoon.

 

[MOGlLNY]

Wasn't Terry's wife, Kim Pegula, the one running the team and making decisions until she had that heart attack in June 2022?

Kim had a heavy say as well before her illness, yes

coach/GM stability

2011 you had GM Regier and coach Ruff
2011/12--they just miss out of playoffs due to a bad injury period late Nov-mid Jan
2012/13 Regier/Ruff -ruff fired midseason
2013/14 Regier/Rolston-- midseason switch to Murray/Nolan
2014/15 Murrray/Nolan --Nolan out after season
--the past 3 seasons they traded off a bunch of veterans for picks/prospects targeting McDavid/Eichel draft, Then Murray made Kane, ROR, Lehner trades

2015/16 Murray/Bylsma
2016/17 Murray/Bylsma --offseason both fired
2017/18 Botterill/Housley
2018/19 Botterill/Housley -- Housley fired
2019/20 Botterill/Kruger --offseason Botterill fired
2020/21 Adams/Krueger --Kruger fired
--trade Reinhart, Ristolainen around draft, Eichel traded early in 21/22 season
2021/22 Adams/Granato
2022/23 Adams/Granato
2023/24 Adams/Granato


To be fair....for Murray he didnt inherit much in terms of prospect pool.

Galasssano, the prior sabres owner, gutted scouting department which hurt the draft from 2005-2011 drafts.

Adams inherited a lot more in terms of prospects drafted 2016-2019 than what Murray had coming in from 2008-2012.

Adams built on that with trading the vets for futures drafting in 2021-2023


the OP has an agenda against the owner

Who hires and fires these people? Is it the President of Hockey Ops? No? We don't have one?

Whose fault is the instability that you yourself mentioned then? The illumanti?

I really don't have an agenda against Terry, I truly believe he loves this team. I don't want him to sell. But he needs to realize he needs to stop sticking his nose in everything. He is the common denominator - there's nobody else.

 

[Kranix]

That video where he and Kim sit in on the Taylor hall signing tells you all you need to know about Pegula, and Kevyn Adyms for that matter

 

[Dirty Dog]

He has hired a variety of well respected GMs and coaches and things just have not turned out. Both Tim Murray and Botterilli were highly praised moves. I don’t blame him and criticism of him has always been speculative, baseless, or silly.

He bought the Bills who were floundering at the time and now they are one of the most successful and well/respected teams in the NFL

 

[Bear of Bad News]

stop hiring guys who are more interested in playing prospect pokemon than building a good hockey team

I was about to remark that I would love to play this, and then I realized that it's basically Strat-o-Matic Hockey, so I do play it.

I'm shitty at the entry draft as you all probably imagine.

 

[Ianturnedbull]

1. Tanking for McDavid
is likely the root cause. Followed by being overt about how shitty it was to draft Eichel.

Trying purposefully to be bad (trading away assets, etc.) clearly has a ripple effect that goes beyond 1 season.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

First year with trades, good choice

And then you'd play a season, get to the awards and the game would tell you Basil McRae of STL was the league MVP with 72 goals. Only needed a little bit of tweaking.

I'm shitty at the entry draft as you all probably imagine.

You're probably still overqualified to be in Sabres management. Do worse.