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The Lesson in the Sabres Horrendous Season


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2 hours ago, nucci said:

I was responding to a post that the Bills were NEVER the worst or at bottom

Folks around here have extremely short memories.


Being a Bills fan has historically required a short attention span.

 

 

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29 minutes ago, Nextmanup said:

Folks around here have extremely short memories.


Being a Bills fan has historically required a short attention span.

 

 

I remember there was a reason I never joined Bills forums during the drought years. It seemed like getting five or six wins was a badge of honor to some because we were never at the bottom. Comparing the Bills and Sabres is apples to oranges, but not making the NFL playoffs for almost two decades is also epically bad. I don’t care if you win five games every season, it’s still a tremendous feat of incompetence. This is a good organization now, so none of that matters. I just think it’s funny how some will always be in denial that the Buffalo Bills had been a rotten franchise in the past. It’s ok to admit that, it makes having ownership willing to spend money, and good front office staff all the more impressive. 

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The bills during the drought were always an average to below average team.  In only 2 of those seasons were they really bad.  I wanna say 02 and 2010.  They would normally feast on the bottom quartile of the nfl, but were hopeless against the top quartile. 

 

The Sabres are blasting a hole in the floor of the NHL right now as possibly the worst team in a generation (since 1992-93 when they gave the shaft to expansion teams).  They have been a frequent visitor at the bottom of the NHL.  

 

The bills normally gave you "in the hunt" for awhile.  

 

I have never seen a pro sports organization so fundamentally broken as the Sabres are right now, and that includes the bills throughout the drought.  Krueger convinced them to fire everybody and these fools went along with it

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2 hours ago, May Day 10 said:

The bills during the drought were always an average to below average team.  In only 2 of those seasons were they really bad.  I wanna say 02 and 2010.  They would normally feast on the bottom quartile of the nfl, but were hopeless against the top quartile. 

 

The Sabres are blasting a hole in the floor of the NHL right now as possibly the worst team in a generation (since 1992-93 when they gave the shaft to expansion teams).  They have been a frequent visitor at the bottom of the NHL.  

 

The bills normally gave you "in the hunt" for awhile.  

 

I have never seen a pro sports organization so fundamentally broken as the Sabres are right now, and that includes the bills throughout the drought.  Krueger convinced them to fire everybody and these fools went along with it

I agree, the Sabres are an example of a sports team that’s as broken as I’ve ever seen. The Sabres are doing historically bad things in hockey. I will disagree with the drought Bills always being “in the hunt”. Mathematically they usually were, but football plays a short season. Winning just a few games keeps you in the hunt mid season. How many of those teams did anyone believe were truly in the hunt ? I almost always felt like the season was over by November after seeing the on field product for two months. The Bills never had a historically bad NFL season, but those 17 years, or whatever it was, were cumulatively bad on a historic level.  

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5 hours ago, SirAndrew said:

I remember there was a reason I never joined Bills forums during the drought years. It seemed like getting five or six wins was a badge of honor to some because we were never at the bottom. Comparing the Bills and Sabres is apples to oranges, but not making the NFL playoffs for almost two decades is also epically bad. I don’t care if you win five games every season, it’s still a tremendous feat of incompetence. This is a good organization now, so none of that matters. I just think it’s funny how some will always be in denial that the Buffalo Bills had been a rotten franchise in the past. It’s ok to admit that, it makes having ownership willing to spend money, and good front office staff all the more impressive. 

the sabres were the quality franchise.....what a shame that after 40 years of being an upper tier nhl  franchise its come down to this for the past decade

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On 3/24/2021 at 4:18 PM, Freddie's Dead said:

The Sabres are at an historically ridiculous level of suckitude.  The Bills were NEVER that bad.  Mediocre, but not absolute bottom of the NFL bad, as the Sabres are bottom of the NHL BAD!!  Eichel should be traded for a real NHL goalie, tear it down to the studs, and rebuild around what's between the pipes.  There are no parallels between the Bills and Sabres, none.

Ah yes they were. I guess you're too young to remember HC Harvey Johnson. I could gp on.

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This is turning into the worst season by any professional sports team in the history of sports. 2009-2010 Nets territory right now? They may not win again, so if it's historically that bad it's got to have some impact to the overall Pegula Empire, right? McBeane are fueled by morale, so this has to be a distraction by now at best.

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11 hours ago, GreggTX said:

Ah yes they were. I guess you're too young to remember HC Harvey Johnson. I could gp on.

 

I think most people are making the direct comparison between the Sabres' current drought vs the Bills 2000s drought.  

 

In Bills terms, I would compare it to the Bills entering a continuing loop of 1985 and 1986.  The scary part is, the Sabres have been behaving like they are in 'win now' mode for the past 5-6 years.  You also have to take into account how the NHL is structured presently.  The league is designed for parity.  The points system alone all but insures that nearly every team remains close and gives about 75% of the league the feeling that they are over .500.  What the Sabres have accomplished here is remarkable.

 

While there were certainly plenty of dark days in the Bills' drought, the Bills were almost always able to remain ahead of the bottom dwellers of that particular season.  The Sabres have been THE bottom dweller for 4 of these seasons.  A few of the other ones, they were going straight down the toilet but ran out of schedule.  

 

Their last regulation win in March was 3/31/18, Housley's FIRST season against Nashville.  

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9 hours ago, May Day 10 said:

 

I think most people are making the direct comparison between the Sabres' current drought vs the Bills 2000s drought.  

 

In Bills terms, I would compare it to the Bills entering a continuing loop of 1985 and 1986.  The scary part is, the Sabres have been behaving like they are in 'win now' mode for the past 5-6 years.  You also have to take into account how the NHL is structured presently.  The league is designed for parity.  The points system alone all but insures that nearly every team remains close and gives about 75% of the league the feeling that they are over .500.  What the Sabres have accomplished here is remarkable.

 

While there were certainly plenty of dark days in the Bills' drought, the Bills were almost always able to remain ahead of the bottom dwellers of that particular season.  The Sabres have been THE bottom dweller for 4 of these seasons.  A few of the other ones, they were going straight down the toilet but ran out of schedule.  

 

Their last regulation win in March was 3/31/18, Housley's FIRST season against Nashville.  

 

"they were going straight down the toilet but ran out of schedule.":lol:

 

They are making the most of their runway this year.............congrats on tying the record with your 18th straight winless game Sabres!

 

Yeah........their situation is not like the Bills drought........the Bills were just mediocre for most of that period.........the Sabres have been the worst franchise in sports in the period the Pegula's have owned them.    It's crazy bad.

 

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On 3/29/2021 at 2:25 AM, Nelius said:

This is turning into the worst season by any professional sports team in the history of sports. 2009-2010 Nets territory right now? They may not win again, so if it's historically that bad it's got to have some impact to the overall Pegula Empire, right? McBeane are fueled by morale, so this has to be a distraction by now at best.

Let's hope so!  I would like to see this streak hit 25 if we can do it.

 

My constant hope is that it just gets so ugly that at some point (soon), Pegula says "It's just not fun anymore.  Sell it."


And then he can focus on the Bills.

 

The fastest, easiest path to righting the Sabres ship is to get new ownership.

 

The last decade of Sabres hockey is *all* on Pegula and it's going to stay that way as long as he is the owner, unless he magically wakes up one day and completely changes how he and his wife approach the franchise.

 

Rather than wait for Hell to freeze over, it's just a lot easier to hope he sells.

 

 

 

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On 3/25/2021 at 6:03 AM, IronyAbounds said:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-that-could-go-wrong-for-the-buffalo-sabres-has-gone-wrong/?ex_cid=538twitter

 

No, this isn't a post about the Sabres, per se, it is the cautionary tale for the Bills. As the Sabres' horrendous season starkly demonstrates, improvement and optimistic signs of growth in one season do automatically translate to continued improvement and growth in the next.

 

 

Really?

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On 3/25/2021 at 7:02 AM, Beast said:

 

Lynn? Give me a feeaking break. He took over as interim. Doug Whaley was on board when Terry Pegula took the team over.

 

 

Yes, Lynn. Pegula is the one who let Ryan go during the season. You can bet he had the OK on any move for an interim guy. The buck stops there.

 

And Whaley was retained when he could have been let go. That is absolutely a form of hiring, keeping a guy in place when you could let him go. The buck stops there also.

 

The Pegulas are responsible for Ryan, Lynn, then McDermott, and at GM for Whaley in 2015 and 2016 and then Beane.

 

It would've been bizarre to fire Marrone in December when they weren't awful, so it's legit not to give the Pegulas any blame for him. But these guys above? Absolutely.

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B word about the Pegulas all you want, but the current Sabres are a bunch of heartless, gutless players.  No owner can change what’s inside a guy.  They need to gut this roster and give Adams the authority to bring in guys that give a damn.

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17 minutes ago, oldmanfan said:

B word about the Pegulas all you want, but the current Sabres are a bunch of heartless, gutless players.  No owner can change what’s inside a guy.  They need to gut this roster and give Adams the authority to bring in guys that give a damn.

The problem with trying to get guys who give a damn is those guys want to win.  The Sabres are going to have to win with the guys who give a damn already on the roster, and hope to trade guys like Hall and Eichel for other guys.  Signing give a damn free agents is going to be a hard sell.

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For me, it was surprising the pegulas went into buying the Sabres cold.  Didn't really have any plan or any help.  If it were me, I would be day 1 introducing my team president who was going to right the course of the franchise.  

 

So they didn't and every move since then has been terrible and made at the wrong time.

 

 

When they were buying the Bills, I was certain they learned their lesson and had someone on their team who was going to come in and build the bills organization that was sitting on moth balls in Ralph Wilson's closet for 20 years.  

 

Instead, no plan.  They just decided to continue with russ brandon as team president because he knew his way around the building and that was impressive.  Doug Marrone walking away should have been a wake up call and the bills showed their belly for the pegulas to make absolute change.  Instead they allowed russ brandon to help steer them into more bad decisions, culminating with an embarrassing pr run, capped with whaley's "privy fest". 

 

They got McDermott which seems to be a stroke of luck.  He seems to have been clear about walling off russ brandon and the pegulas.  

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41 minutes ago, May Day 10 said:

For me, it was surprising the pegulas went into buying the Sabres cold.  Didn't really have any plan or any help.  If it were me, I would be day 1 introducing my team president who was going to right the course of the franchise.  

 

So they didn't and every move since then has been terrible and made at the wrong time.

 

 

When they were buying the Bills, I was certain they learned their lesson and had someone on their team who was going to come in and build the bills organization that was sitting on moth balls in Ralph Wilson's closet for 20 years.  

 

Instead, no plan.  They just decided to continue with russ brandon as team president because he knew his way around the building and that was impressive.  Doug Marrone walking away should have been a wake up call and the bills showed their belly for the pegulas to make absolute change.  Instead they allowed russ brandon to help steer them into more bad decisions, culminating with an embarrassing pr run, capped with whaley's "privy fest". 

 

They got McDermott which seems to be a stroke of luck.  He seems to have been clear about walling off russ brandon and the pegulas.  


Even the “privy fest” was only notable because it embarrassed the Pegulas nationally, which led them to fire Whaley.  The ONLY thing that gets Terry and Kim (“Tim”?) to do anything different is being embarrassed.  It’s the only motivator for change.  Their “plan” hasn’t changed from Day 1 - hire people based on “gut feel,” with an extreme bias toward inexperience (they are addicted to rookie GMs) so they won’t feel threatened.  Stay the course unless/until something embarrassing happens.  Then react, usually by replacing one inept inexperienced manager with another inexperienced manager.

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2 hours ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

Yes, Lynn. Pegula is the one who let Ryan go during the season. You can bet he had the OK on any move for an interim guy. The buck stops there.

 

And Whaley was retained when he could have been let go. That is absolutely a form of hiring, keeping a guy in place when you could let him go. The buck stops there also.

 

The Pegulas are responsible for Ryan, Lynn, then McDermott, and at GM for Whaley in 2015 and 2016 and then Beane.

 

It would've been bizarre to fire Marrone in December when they weren't awful, so it's legit not to give the Pegulas any blame for him. But these guys above? Absolutely.

 

Like I said, give me a break with Lynn. What did he coach for, one game? Were the Pegulas supposed to have a Head Coaching search in a day and hire someone with ONE GAME Left in the season instead of promoting someone on the staff and conducting a search in the off-season?

 

LMAO!

 

And there was absolutely NO reason to fire Whaley when they took over. None. Zero.

 

 

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