BillsFan4

5-1 Blue Jackets?! They cant really knock out Tampa bay in round 1, can they? What an an absolute disaster that would be for Tampa Bay. Winning that president’s trophy is like a curse. They started handing it out in 1985, and in that time the presidents trophy winners have only won the Stanley Cup 8 times. 8 still expect them to bounce back though. But it would be great for the Sabres if Columbus can make the conference final (if the Blues lose by round 2). It would push that STL pick to #19, which would send it to Buffalo instead of Anaheim.

Its a a shame the Sudbury was eliminated so quickly. They just ran into a great team. Sudbury is not even close to the Ottawa 67’s level. UPL dragged that entire Sunbury team to the playoffs. But there’s only so much a goaltender can do when facing such a stacked team like Ottawa. I wonder if they will try and get him in one of the last couple Amerks regular seasons games (tomorrow and Sunday), or if they will just have him practice with the team. I doubt he will see any regular time in the playoffs, unless maybe the goaltending completely craps the bed like last year. Most people seem seem to think that he won’t see any playing time this year.

I would have been happy with TM but he wasn’t my first choice. Too many parallels between buffalo and Edmonton, where he just failed. That’s also why I was a bit surprised TM was interested in Buffalo. I am still hoping for AV, or Ralph Krueger or a trade for Bruce Boudreau (though I think the latter two are unlikely). Theres some other interesting candidates out there, too. Hopefully Botterill gets it right this time. He should have a much better idea of what this specific group of players need out of a coach, so that should help. He may may not get another chance at a coaching hire, so he better get it right! lol

I would be absolutely thrilled with Boudreau. His teams always get better under him, and seem to get worse when he leaves. I believes he’s made the playoffs 11 of his 13 NHL seasons. And there’s this - I see people saying “I don’t want BB. He can’t get far enough in the playoffs” and I just have to shake my head! lol Let’s make the playoffs for the first time in 8+ years first, and then let’s consistently make them every year before we worry about a coach that can get us over the playoff hump. And it’s not like the guy forgets how to coach once the playoffs roll around. There are a lot of things that go into winning a series. Sometimes it’s just bad luck hitting a super hot team. I mean, look at Trotz. Never made it past the 2nd round his first what, 20yrs in the league? As for Point for four #1’s... I’d love him but I couldn’t do that. The Sabres just don’t have anywhere close to the team depth needed to make that trade, and they haven’t been too great about finding good players outside of the 1st round. Plus, they have drafted top 8 for the last 7 years straight, 3 of those years being top 2. I would be fine with trying to trade for Point though. There was a rumor of Ristolainen + Mittelstadt as the base for a Point trade. I’d be more willing to do something like that rather than give up four 1sts.

Heard he’s interested more in a front office role than coaching, but this is a guy I’d love to have behind the bench. Botterill actually tried to interview him the first time around, but he wasn’t ready to leave Southampton yet. Seems to fit what we need. Super high energy. Super positive. Excellent motivator (he’s actually also a motivational speaker and even wrote a best selling self help book). He’s a believer in implementing analytics. Adapts his system to his team. Consistently gets the most out of lesser talented teams/players. Mike Babcock has even used him as a special advisor... We’d definitely be a very hard working team under Krueger, and I feel like he may be able to help fix the fragile mindset of this team. Here an an article on him. I can’t find the article i’m looking for. If I find it, I’ll post it here. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nhl/2016/09/28/ralph-krueger-world-cup-southampton-football-club/91240876/ love this quote on why after a lifetime in hockey he took a job turning around a soccer/football club -

I think this is at least the 3rd or 4th different day/time we’ve interviewed McLellan, if you go by twitter... lol

Anyone have any interest in a separate NHL playoff thread? Or should we just discuss it here? Im kind of thinking just discuss it here, as we seem to have a somewhat small group of hockey fans that post here. Anyone watching the Columbus vs Tampa game? I thought Columbus would get killed. Tampa came out real strong in the 1st and just swarmed Columbus. Bobrovsky looked like his usually shaky playoff self and Tampa was up 3-1. Columbus is now up 4-3 with 3minutes left! Bobrovsky has looked like a different goalie since that awful 1st and CBus has really turned it up. We need at at least one of Columbus, Colorado, Vegas or Dallas to make it to the conference finals (along with the Blues losing before that) so the STL pick gets pushed down to #19 and goes to Buffalo.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/31-thoughts-breaking-major-nhl-awards-candidates/ some good stuff on the sabres in here. Thoughts #7 through #12 are Sabres related (with small mentions in #29 and 31)

ok well maybe the “McLellan sweepstakes” is not over yet after all.... lol.

I do agree about not hiring someone out of fear of losing out. But sometimes you need to act quick when there’s proven coaches available. If we miss out on AV too, then I agree there’s no longer any rush. I really don’t want another assstant coach though. Not right now anyway... Washington was in a much different position than us, with a veteran team coming off a Cup win. I still think they were nuts for letting Trotz go. But a BIG reason they were willing to let Trotz walk is because their owner is cheap and wasn’t willing to pay Trotz what he deserved. They were only willing to give him something like a $500k raise and he was already making a low salary (MILLIONS less than the top coaches). They also felt very very strongly about Todd rierden. They were blocking him from interviewing for years. He was an in-house candidate the team knew very well. Detroit has yet to recover since Babcock left. Their fans hate Blashill. They’ve finished near the bottom of the NHL basically every year since he was hired. But again, he was another in house candidate that has been groomed by the team for many years. They even brought him up to learn from Babcock before sending him to coach in the AHL. They were here very sad to see Babcock leave, btw. Ken Holland tried everything he could to get Baba to stay. I followed that whole story very closely. I also disagree about Q, McLellan and Alain Vigneault being just some crappy veteran retreads. All 3 are distinguished veteran NHL coaches with proven track records of success. Q had 3 Cups. 2 of AV’s 3 teams have made the Cup finals and they’ve won 2 presidents trophies. Hisnteams have made the playoffs 9 of the last 10 years. McLellan is the least distinguished of the 3 (which is why he was my 3rd choice behind Q and AV) but he still has a proven track record of success. His San Jose teams made the playoffs every year. Had 3 division wins in 6 years. Made the conference finals twice. Took a historically inept Edmonton franchise to a game away from the conference finals in his 2nd year there. As ive said before, I feel that the Buffalo job is quite clearly a heavy lift. I really think we need someone who’s been there and done it before. Not another first time trying to learn on the job. This job has overwhelmed every coach to take it so far. I want someone who’s shown that they can take over a team and improve it. Someone with a track record that will give him instant respect in the Sabres locker room. The Sabres job is a different situation than most jobs out there. We have a team that has been proven to be difficult to coach. They go off script a LOT and throw the coaches game plan right out the window. We don’t have that experienced veteran leadership group to keep all the kids in line. Thats is a big reason why I think we need a proven veteran coach. Someone that’s a leader and will command the respect of that locker room and change this losing culture, similar to what Babcock did in Toronto or Trotz did with the NYI. Or AV IN Vancouver or NYC i think we need someone with some real credibility, that can actually get these p,Ayers to fully buy in to what they’re doing, and keep that belief if/when times get tough. Still have some hope that we can land AV... though I haven’t heard anything about a possible interview or him being interested. I worry that he’s not (interested) I’m not so sure how attractive a franchise we are right now, to be perfectly honest, and you know I’m normally a pretty positive guy. We’ve fired 5 coaches and 3 GMs just since 2013 (about every 2-3 years). Our current GM is in year 3 and already on his 2nd coach. 3 last place finishes in the past 5 years. Havent finished better than 8th last since 2012. We have multiple ex-players recently talking about how depressing and soul crushing it was to play in Buffalo. Having said all that, I will find reasons to get excited about anyone we hire. I always do. I am a “look on the bright side”type of guy. I will get on board with whoever we hire. Sometimes I just need to vent is all.

If true, now what? Really, the only veteran left is AV (who I’d be happy with, but I have a feeling he’s not interested. Or at least that my worry...). Gonna suck to hire another rookie, or some crappy 3rd-4th choice veteran coach. Buffalo probably isn’t the most desirable team at the moment, though. Edit - sounds like this is true. They are saying it was announced on TSN radio.

Crazy that this was leaked. The tweet was from just under 30 mins before it was broadcast. Someone is getting fired! lol

Wow. I didn’t know that. I still feel lucky lucky that we won the Dahlin lottery. I would 100% take the win last year vs. this year. Dahlin would easily be the consensus #1 pick in every draft ranking again this year.

I remember that from the McDavid year. Everyone was pissed at Edmonton, myself included (I still am! lol) but it was actually Toronto that was next closest to winning him. They were only 1 number away from McDavid. Buffalo still was 2 numbers away when Edmonton won. I was absolutely livid he went to Edmonton. I can’t even imagine my outrage has Toronto won.

How do you figure? It doesn’t work like that. Like I said, each team is assigned number combinations. They are not determined by draft spot. Only the amount of # combinations is. The actual number combinations are determined randomly. So each time they are assigned, teams would get a different set of numbers. If we had finished at #3, the number combinations we got would have almost definitely been different than the number combinations NJ got. We don’t automatically end up with the winning numbers...

I was hoping to stay at 5, or ideally move up to #2 (I really wanted Kakko) but I’m happy at #7. The only thing I didn’t want to happen is to get pushed to #8 (and even then, chances were that one of the top 7 would fall to #8). There are 3 tiers in this draft - #1 and #2 are tier 1 #3 - #7 is tier 2 #8 - #9 is tier 3 So we stayed in that 2nd tier where there are some really, really good players with top 6/top 3 potential.

I used to think that too, but it’s not really true. Each team is assigned a certain amount of 4 number combinations. Had we finished with the top 3 lottery odds, we would have had more number combinations assigned to us but that doesn’t mean we would’ve automatically had the winning set of numbers. That number combination could have still very easily went to New Jersey.

The draft lottery is tonight. It came fast this year! NBC sports is having a 1 hour special starting at 8pm. Last year they did the lottery during a game and dragged it out. They did picks 15-3 in the 1st intermission and then picks 3-1 in the 2nd or 3rd intermission. So there was quite a wait to find out where the Sabres drafted. So at first I was excited hearing that it was tonight, since there’s no games being played. I was thinking maybe it’d just be a quick 15min thing. But of course not... With it being a 1 hour draft special, we pretty much know for sure it’ll be dragged out again. But i’ll gladly take the suspense of waiting until the end of the show to see where the Sabres draft because that would mean we got a top 3 pick! Fingers crossed. Not that I’m all that superstitious, but everyone do whatever they did last year leading up to the draft! lol

I watched the Joel Quenneville press conference yesterday and he swore up and down numerous times that he thinks Florida is a cup contender. He said that it reminds him of the 2008 Blackhawks team he took over. He said there are are a lot of parallels and he thinks this team is poised to win now. He also said that he 100% meant it when he said he would just stay retired and wouldn’t take a job if he didn’t see a path to the Cup and he sees that in Florida. So whether it’s true or not, Quenneville 100% believes it is. Florida is actually a very talented team. The last time they had a good coach (gallant) they were 1st in the Atlantic with 105+ pts.

I feel like, for the most part, he has been proven right in not playing the kids he didn’t play. Most of them still haven’t done anything. Who didn’t he play that has proven to be good? Who’s really blossomed away from AV? The only one I can really think of is Jimmy Vesey. But it’s not like he is noticeably better. He is getting about 2 mins more ice time and producing almost exactly the same as under AV. All his underlying numbers are about the same. His o zone and d zone starts are about the same. It’s hard to say he’s really doing any better. I dont follow the rangers all that closely, so maybe I am forgetting someone? Honestly, I don’t really pay too much attention to fans complaining about a coach playing a veteran over a kid. You go on any teams message board or talk to any fan of another team and by far the most common complaint is that the coach favors some veteran they hate. And 2nd is probably line combinations and in game adjustments. you have to remember, any veteran coach that is available is going to have some knock against him. There is a reason he was fired. There is no perfect coach. The Sabres aren’t looking for a coach to put them over the final hump and get them to a Cup. They are looking for someone that can take them back to respectability and get them consistently competing for a playoff spot. AV’s teams have made the playoffs in 9 of his last 10 seasons and he took 2 separate teams to the Stanley Cup finals in the past 8 years. He has been considered among the better coaches in the NHL for damn near a decade. We would be lucky to have him. I havent really heard anything about the Sabres interviewing him though, and I read/heard somewhere that he may be looking for a team that’s somewhat close to Cup contention. So if that’s the case I don’t see him even having interest in Buffalo anyway.

I definitely still think LA is in the mix. I just meant take it with a grain of salt that McLellan will pick LA over Buffalo, since he’s a beat reporter for LA. It didn’t seem like he was basing it on anything other than thinking LA was the better destination. Id be happy with Vigneault though. I’d actually somewhat prefer him, though I do think McLellan could be a good fit.

interesring interview with dahlin. It’s in Swedish but subtitles are available if you click on the video options/settings and enable cc.

To be fair, this guy’s an LA kings writer, so I take it with a grain of salt.