May Day 10

I think the postponement got postponed

Ah, yeah. Basically if it has the authentication cert then it is OK. JSA is the big one. Beckett too, but there are others.

What is TSE? I have bought stuff that is 'Hit Parade' from Dave and Adams as well as other similar outfits. Also participate in various Facebook breaking groups for this stuff.

Its 1000x better than when it was Sylvester and Peters. It does seem like Peters has put some effort into making himself a better broadcaster and I respect that. Overall, I think its a decent enough show. They do a good job. IMO Rivet is the weak link but not enough where I think he takes a ton away. I cannot listen to it though. I have almost no interest in the NHL right now and I have very little/no desire for Sabres news/talk. If the Sabres ever decided to become an actual real and relevant NHL team, Im sure the show would be a good listen.

There is a happy medium. Really gotta prep for Allen's payday (hopefully). This particular season is very restrictive as everyone knows. Also, going heavy-handed in FA rarely works out. Cycling good drafting/coaching with smart decisions letting the correct players walk at the right time is the key.

Terry Pegula said he was immediately impressed with Krueger's worldly background and philosophies. "There was a feeling when Ralph came in the room that it was almost a presence. It was like, 'Well, this guy's different,'" he said. "We started talking to Ralph and we didn't want to leave. I took so many notes, I stopped taking notes because Ralph's a quote machine." Pegula was particularly impressed by Krueger's decision to visit Buffalo and spend time talking to fans in bars while watching the NHL playoffs to get a sense of the city. "It's so ingenious," he said. "He's an out-of-the-box thinker." AND Kim Pegula, who works hand in hand with her husband, added her perspective. "Obviously, no matter what you do, you always make mistakes. But I feel like they all lead to something else," she said. "At the time you always think you're doing what you think is right with the information you have. But now as we sit here, all those steps, whether they were mistakes or not, is kind of where we are now," she added. "You can't think they're all bad because we've got Jack (Eichel), we've got (Jeff) Skinner, we've got (Rasmus) Dahlin. ... So all that wouldn't have happened if other things didn't happen. Sometimes, they were mistakes, but they're not." Completely doomed

Bottom line is they still have an organization in shambles. Kevyn Adams has no experience or qualifications, nor it is it clear he even has authority. They have this Nightengale intern level guy upjumped to head up like 3 departments. Nothing is changing here. I expect them to dive into the milquetoast pool of NCAA coaches who almost never work out.

Apparently they spoke this Summer but the Pegulas decided against it. He would be perfect IMO. He has been in numerous organizations in many roles, and has seen what works and what doesnt. Lots of credibility and he likely has a huge rolodex of contacts and people who can be hired.

I said with few exceptions. Trotz would be one of them (maybe the only one?) Lou also has made an art-form of tossing coaches into the trash can, even in 1st place weeks from the playoffs. Trotz though is probably the 1 guy you would mold your team around. Everyone else in the league has a limited shelf-life.

To me, who is behind the bench isnt even important anymore. Coaches in the NHL are basically throw-away mercenaries with few exceptions. The Pegulas seem to be looking for a life-partner. You also need your GM to hold the clout and be free to fire/hire the coach as needed. They need to fix the structure and the manning of the front office. A complete overhaul is necessary. Someone who has high-level front office experience in multiple organizations and has experienced a winner(s). Any coach will have very little chance to succeed. If they do grab a really good coach, they may see a temporary bump for a few months but it will crater. Watching Kim Pegula implement her management 101 night school concepts, Terry pretending he has some incredible ability to read-judge-and hire people, Krueger's phony six-sigma shtick is enough to drive me to the mad-house.

the problem i have with this, is Adams doesnt have any experience. Not even as AGM that guys like Drury, Brodeur, Francis, Sakic, Yzerman etc do for years. Adams has spent time under PS&E performing roles not closely related to the hockey department at all. His limited experience comes here with the Sabres at this clown college. His appeal to the Pegulas is that he has an education, played hockey and lives in Buffalo, a nice guy, and is willing to completely be subservient to ownership and probably Krueger/the coach. That is not a real GM, and I have no interest in the Sabres allowing him to try to learn on the job. This is a massive lift to restore this franchise and needs experienced hands from the outside, who is given full autonomy from the Pegulas. They dont even allow their GMs to choose and move on from their coach anymore. They will never attract a serious candidate like that. Furthermore, they completely pooped on their reputation with what they pulled this Summer with some pretty awful cold-hearted moves. This organization has a credibility issue on all fronts and needs a Rutherford/Lombardi/Dudley to restore it.

While FA acquisitions have proven to be a terrible way to build a team, New England loading up makes me nervous due to previous trauma. If this were the Jets, I would be making fun of them.

The players keep quitting. There is no leadership, including Eichel. There is no management. Adams is a fake GM with zero-point-zero experience. Krueger is a HC with limited NHL experience, and he has done a lot of losing in that experience. They have gutted their entire hockey department. Promoted a few intern-level employees to head of Scouting and head of analytics and pushed a ton more responsibility onto those positions. Ownership thinks if the media was nicer to them, then the fans would love them and the team would perform better. This team was trying to contend this year. They signed Hall to a 1 year deal, brought in Staal. Spend 99% of the cap... and they have a team that has won 4 regulation/OT games out of 27!. This isnt some sort of team deep in a tear-down. This level of failure is beyond comprehension. This organization is so far from contending. Like another galaxy. Even if the Clampetts came to terms with how severely damaged their franchise is, it is still an enormously heavy-lift, everything needs to be cleansed out, and we are looking at a 3-4 year rebuild to do it the right way. What is going to happen is A: they will stay with Kruger because they will excuse the season away to injuries, covid, hard division, etc and "continuity".... or B: can Krueger after the season, keep everything else the same, and hire a crappy NCAA/USDP coach like the Providence HC with no NHL experience and no ability to shoulder this massive lift here with this group of millionaire personalities. In that case, we are going to have to wait 2 more years of disaster until the Pegulas figure out it isnt working, then we again need to hope they do the right thing, get experience at the top of the org, and begin a 3-4 year rebuild. There is no end in sight. But you know 'the lines of communication have never been better' or something like that.

I think the wording is just tricky. I think he means that All the tickets werent bought by STH so there are tickets available to the rest of the public

It's like they are actively trying to be a villain

Im very close to OFF with the Sabres. As it is I watch no games. I hope they lose every game. It isnt about draft position. I hate what the organization has become. Whether it is losing in general, messing up a rebuild that was teed up for them, disenfranchising my favorite all time athlete and also coach, messing up alumni jerseys, mismanaging simple deadlines so they cant wear the goat head, jerking me around as a STH and punishing me for staying loyal through bad seasons to retain my seat location (price jumped 18% after last season because I happen to be in the middle of the 300s, and this is after a long line of grueling increases under this ownership), the awful way they purged their entire hockey staff along with a rather heartless attitude. And never replacing anyone. General tone-deaf nonsense from the team and owners that lacks self-awareness. I actually dislike the Sabres and what they have become. They are the worst organization in the NHL and it is not particularly close. I never got close to this during the entirety of my 40-ish years of being a Bills fan. I was always a Sabres fan first and took great pride and personal identity with the team. The only way to solve it is a clear change in direction and basically a re-branding from the top-down.

It comes down to what the owners are willing to provide as far as autonomy and budget. He wouldnt come to the Sabres not because he hates Buffalo and we dont have a downtown club scene. He wouldnt come here with the Pegulas telling him what to do, who to have as a head coach, etc. If the Pegulas gave the keys to someone, they absolutely can hire whoever they want. That is likely what Ledecky and Malkin did to get Lou. They were clearly serious about winning hockey games and were willing to give Lou the space needed to make it happen. In Buffalo, we would get, you can be the GM, but you have to keep Adams on as co-gm because he is educated and we think he is an authentic guy, is college educated, played in the NHL and is from Buffalo. We also hire the coach who reports directly to us. You also need to have a phone conversation with ownership daily as does the head coach.

I think Lamoriello and Trotz are as far from a 'lucky hire' as you can get. Adams is a GM they promoted from within, probably to maintain their and their coach's influence. He has zero experience, not even as an AGM, director of scouting... anything. He is basically our Garth Snow hire in terms of the Islanders.

The McDermott thing is interesting. I know the NFL helps guide these things. Also, in the NFL, organizations have become Coach-centric where everything seems to radiate from the coach. It is also simpler than an NHL team because you arent scouting apples to oranges 17 year olds around the world and developing them. You also need to live with mistakes for the long-haul as the contracts are guaranteed. NFL, you can turn over an entire roster and clear the cap in like 2 years and find a lot of immediate starters in the draft and UFA. NHL is so much more of a long-haul asset management game. I think the Pegulas tried to replicate the McDermott structure with Kruger which is absolutely impossible and doomed to fail. They absolutely have distrust of outsiders for some reason and feel the need to create this "lines of communication" brand of front office. Its basically the Bills of the 00s post-Donahoe. The talk of trading Eichel (or anybody) without any sort of amateur or pro scouting system gives me indigestion. I think it is quite easy to find a president of hockey ops. I can name 3 of them who are available. Any one would like to do it as long as the $ is fair and the Pegulas vow to stay out of the way and provide decent budget parameters. Rick Dudley, Dean Lombardi, and Jim Rutherford. I am also sure there are plenty of people available to the Pegulas who would give a blunt assessment of the situation and provide some ideas.

This is where we are. I dont know if it was Kruger who motivated them with some sort of efficiency in management philosophy, but they gutted the entire hockey department last Summer. They also installed an internal hire for GM who has next to zero experience in kevyn Adams. Even if you pretend he was observing and learning along the way: He was observing and learning watching this organization and its failure and dysfunction. Now we have a coach who has shown he has no clothes and is just a windbag of useless mental management jargon. They promoted two barely intern-level employees to head up their scouting and analytics departments and expanded those roles to include much more (efficiency!) Also, you have a group of players who quit for entire stretches of game(s). There is something rotten there, they never appear as a team, the captain never goes out and takes lumps for them publicly. You see the body language of someone like Staal on day 1. Other things in the recent past as well. Players who left that throw a little shade but stop just short. Berglund quitting. Players' performance falling off a cliff. If you were a parent of a draftable 18 year old hockey player, would you ever want your kid drafted by the Sabres at this point? This is such a heavy lift. The entire organization is in shambles. It needs to be fully rebuilt and redefined. What they have now is not salvageable. Look at what the Sabres are up against, just in their Division. Boston and Tampa have 2 model front offices. Toronto will be good for the forseeable future. Florida got serious with Zito and Quenneville. Detroit has Yzerman and a growing asset pool. Ottawa is even looking healthier overall with more upside.

This idiot organization gifted Skinner with a full No-Movement Clause, so unfortunately, that is not possible.

Thanks, john. Desperate to grab onto any kernel of hope that this doomed management structure is ending. Don't necessarily want them to sell. I understand the stability that would sacrifice (I would imagine the pegulas would try to ensure local interests)... but a team President is what I am hoping for. This really is the worst though. I can't even watch games anymore. Watched probably 99% of them from 1986-2013. I catch a period now and then. Get bored, do something else.

This is the 3rd time eichel has played a part in absolutely desecrating a coach. 2 of which were hand chosen to work better with his personality. I think it is a combination of everything. Just a terrible franchise that needs a new start and a thorough structuring/building

So they say... But he doesnt/never struck me as grasping the Sabres or the sport of hockey like a long-time fan. He never seemed to get it. Ted Black did only because he immersed himself in it, and at the time it gave the organization a flavor of 'getting it'. Anyways, rumors originally made the rounds today the Sabres were 4 sale, but some of the chatter morphed into 'help' or a Team President.

That's just it. I hesitate to just blanket them with the 'idiot' label... I mean, they have several billion dollars in assets. The way they have run the Sabres, and how stubborn they have been is nothing short of comical. Just hire a team President and don't get in his way. Nobody needs to hear your 'exchange of ideas'. Terry Pegula sounds like a low information sports fan, and I never believed the huge Sabres fan origin story. When he speaks he sounds like the low information guy in a group watching a game who keeps making dumb or overly simplistic comments and everyone else rolls their eyes. The over-arching pattern with this team is they always chase former high 1st round draft picks, even if they are busted out. No rhyme or reason other than that. Its crazy to think of the inexperience and ineptitude there is running the Sabres with next to no scouting, training, or development staff. We have the Pegulas, Kruger, and Adams in a model where both Kruger and Adams report directly to the owners. That doesnt work in the NHL. They took over this team and the city was still all about the Sabres. There was a locked-in STH waiting list and they were relatively healthy as an organization. They have bungled it in so many ways, and there is nobody/nothing else to blame. If they would just let someone with experience do their job... Sabres fans would still give the Pegulas a mountain of credit, it would be more 'fun' to run the team (although they wouldnt be intimately involved on many decisions), the team would be profitable, they wouldnt be besieged by the media local and nationally, etc... I dont get it. How is this fun? And dont think the Bills are safe in any way. I think they are very susceptible for a "Linda Bogdan" moment.