• Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!

The Everything NHL Thread

The funny thing about the Sabres is that they are actually a very terrible team. Obviously Ruff's time was going to come to an end sooner or later, but he wasn't the issue. Let's take a look at some of their players and salaries.

First line:

Vanek @ 7m -- This has been a ridiculous overpayment for the longest time. This guy starts off every season on fire and then disappears for the remaning 50 games of the season. Dude has only gone over 70pts twice in his career. 7m long term contract? Great plan.

Pominville @ 5.3m -- This guy is good. Solid deal.
Hodgson @ 1.7m -- Good trade. Huge potential.

Overall they have a very good first line, and even with Vanek being overpaid, I wouldn't blame the GM too much for what he has done with the first line.

Second line:

Tyler Ennis @ 2.8m -- Still waiting on that amazing potential bro.
Steve Ott @ 2.95m -- Solid 2 way player. Probably not 2nd line material. Good contract though.
Drew Stafford @ 4m -- 4m a year for an "offensive skill" guy that has never reached 60 pts? Ok. Another overpayment.

The Sabres don't even have a 60pt player on their 2nd line. Most "talented" rosters have at least 1 or 2 of those guys on their 2nd line. Stafford will never be that guy. Ott will never be that guy. Ennis COULD be that guy, but can he stay healthy and consistent? I'm not even going to waste time with the rest of the forwards. You better hope Grigorenko figures out how to play defense very soon or you guys are still going to be extremely weak down the middle.

Don't even get me started on the $20mil blue line of garbage. You call that a talented roster? Have fun spending $10mil on Tyler Myers and Christian Ehrhoff for the next 20 years. At least most other teams that are terrible defensively are only spending half as much as the Sabres on their blueline.

Talented roster that should be winning? How many teams win with an overrated (somewhat above average) goalie and 1 scoring line?
 
Would definitely have blown the team up instead. Can't see most of the players here ever being part of a championship team, almost everyone is playing a line up on what they should be and like Justin said, the value on the blueline is atrocious and shedding it is going to be very difficult because of length. They've been building to try desperately to stay mediocre since Drury and Briere left and it'd be hard for that to change any time soon with what is there. The team definitely quit on the coach, but other than maybe Pominville, Hodgson, Ott, and sort of Miller the team isn't as valuable as the coach was, anyway.
 
DM said:
In many ways though, it does. He has assembled a talent roster here that should be winning, much like the Eagles. And much like their coaching change to Chip Kelly, I'd like to think some fresh blood could get more out of the players.
Click to expand...

Regier and Ruff were both hired in 1997. Wouldnt it make sense to fire both of them?

The Sabres have a good top 6 and a top goalie but their defense has been awful even though it looks good on paper. The 3rd and 4th lines arent good either. And how can you forget about Ville Leino?
 
Buffalo has good potential in their centre, especially with Girgs looking to be a very solid player (though I disagree with bringing him to the big leagues this early, would have preferred to see him in the juniors to mature a bit more). I still have faith in Ennis to be the player everyone was expecting last year and Hodgson obviously is offensively talented and is looking like a bonafide 1st line centre if he can sort his skating and coverage issues (that shot...). Other than that, I don't see much going for this team, especially with their defense waterlogged with contracts that didn't make sense in the beginning other than Ehrhoff (whose contract I still approve of even though it didn't fit the Canucks cap structure); giving Myers 12 million this year was a bone-headed move, expecting him to live up to the weight of the expectations on him was dumb. At least you guys can look towards Sulzer being a top 4 defenseman on a very cheap contract...?

Anyways, the Pegula honeymoon is definitely over and I think Regier is the next out the door, especially with dumb contracts being handed out (See: Leino). I'm not sure how they can go with the rebuild with the swagger Pegula and co. had going into last season when he bought the team, but I guess better sooner than later.
 
Justin:

1. Some perspective on Vanek's contract: Briere and Drury had just signed elsewhere in free agency, gutting the team. Kevin Lowe, douchebag GM extraordinaire, signed Vanek to an offer sheet at $7m. He was coming off an 84-point season. If Regier doesn't match that and keep Vanek, the city of Buffalo riots burns down the arena.

2. Ott is not on our second line, Marcus Foligno plays with Ennis and Stafford. Who knows though, Ruff never kept lines together for more than a few games except for the top one.

3. I don't blame Leino for underachieving. We brought him in and promptly changed his position, then spent the entire season switching him back and forth between center and wing. He never got comfortable in a position, let alone long enough to build linemate chemistry.

4. Miller overrated? Plainly the comment of someone who hasn't watched many Sabres games this season. He's the only reason our 3-1 losses are 7-1.

Yes, our defense corps is a joke. No arguments there. The problem with that group is that it hinges on Myers playing like Chara, which anyone who was paying attention a couple years ago would've told you that he was destined to fail a la Jay Bouwmeester. He just doesn't have the killer instinct and nastiness that could take him to the Chara/Pronger level, hell, even to the Hal Gill level.

Stafford is a hot and cold player like none I've ever seen in any sport before. He'll go goalless for 15 games, and then score hat tricks in 2 of the next 3. I don't get him.

People need to remember that this is largely the same team that went on a 16-4-4 run to make the playoffs in 2011 and went on a similar run last year after Myers and Miller got healthy but fell short. It has proven to be a good team, and it CAN win. It's just... not.
 
DM said:
1. Some perspective on Vanek's contract: Briere and Drury had just signed elsewhere in free agency, gutting the team. Kevin Lowe, douchebag GM extraordinaire, signed Vanek to an offer sheet at $7m. He was coming off an 84-point season. If Regier doesn't match that and keep Vanek, the city of Buffalo riots burns down the arena.
Click to expand...

Man, thinking back on that, the Oilers dodged a real bullet. The 4 1st round picks the Oilers lost ended up being Tyler Myers (ended up in Buffalo after a series of deals including the Dustin Penner offer sheet), Magnus Paajarvi, *drumroll* Taylor Hall, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. *facepalm* Kevin Lowe might've gone down in history as the guy who made Mike Milbury look like a genius.

Seriously, the Oilers need to get this guy out of the organization. I know he had a HoF calibre career here and all, but him and Steve Tambellini have to be one of the worst management tandems in NHL history. From offer sheeting Vanek/Penner to giving Shawn Horcoff 33 million to trading for Patrick O'Sullivan to signing Ryan Smyth to a 2 year contract. These guys just clearly have no clue how to run an organization, which is evidenced by 3 consecutive bottom 2 finishes, with another coming right up. God I hate Kevin Lowe so much.
 
New World Order already took care of the value that the Sabres could have received if they would have let Vanek go, so I won't repeat all of that.

I will, however, mention that the Blackhawks let every single FA walk for nothing after their Stanley Cup run. By doing that, they have allowed their younger players to get experience and they are the best team in the NHL right now. They are off to the best start in the history of the NHL.

Dustin Byfuglien
Kris Versteeg
Andrew Ladd
Antti Niemi
Marian Hossa

All of those guys are 1st line/pairing/starting goalies somewhere else. The Blackhawks let ALL of them go for nothing. Now they are winning again.

Are the Sabres fans really stupid enough to think that Vanek is more useful to a team than 4 1st round picks? I mean seriously. The fact that Briere and Drury were gone should've just sealed the deal. Obviously time to rebuild.
 
Your hindsight, unsurprisingly, is 20/20. Let's go back to July 1, 2007 and have this conversation.

And yes, the Blackhawks let players go out of pure necessity because they were in cap hell thanks to Dale Tallon. None of those players were indispensable, and to compare any of them to Briere/Drury/Vanek is laughable. Most of them are playing first line/pairing because the team they're on BLOWS. The Blackhawks DID keep, however, Patrick Kane, who is currently making $6m a year. There's your comparison to Vanek.

Blown out at home to the Islanders. I think people are realizing just how well Lindy Ruff polished up this turd.
 
I'm glad you are so impressed because you should be. :)

I'll make sure to showcase his talent in more YT clips as they come until the draft. Or I could try to find something from Nate MacKinnon, also playing in the Quebec league, for the same team, scoring against more MABs but yet still will get drafted in the top 3 next year. I suppose Drouin was also playing against more MABs during the Jrs World Cup when as a 17 year old, he completed Team Canada's first line. A team Canada that included lockout'd players that would otherwise have been in the NHL, such as RNH. They impress professional scouts all over the hockey world but have still yet to actually really impress Justin8649, I suppose. Or it's just the flashy clips that leave you cold. Well sorry, while I don't expect to see this sort of thing done in the NHL against much better opposition, they do still showcase some massive talent and they make for cool videos to watch.

Makes me wonder why anyone saw anything in Sidney Crosby, that guy that's currently the best player in the NHL that had everyone excited about who would get to draft him after the lockout. What was there to be excited about beating a bunch of MABs in the Q. But sure, "the Q" is not exactly known for its defensemen yet still, it spawned Raymond Bourque, the D with the most career points in the history of this league and it did spawn some of the best forwards the league has seen... which allows me to be legitimately excited about Drouin, even moreso than I was about Huberdeau who, as a 19 yo, currently has more goals than other rookie in the league, some like Conacher much older than he is, playing for a shitty team.
 
Went to the Wings/Canucks game today. Had pretty ridiculous seats at row 2 in the corner behind the home net toward the benches. Have been that close repeatedly at the OHL level, but never for the NHL (though I've been close). Kinda neat being like 5 feet away from the action, the game looks a lot more like hockey and less like video game hockey that close when you can see the puck bouncing around so much more.



Some random thoughts from the game since I know there's some fans from both franchises here...

- Can't believe Vigneault didn't pull Luongo. I felt bad for Lu -- he's been having a pretty great season but it was obvious this wasn't his day here by the end of the first(I actually would have yanked both goalies after the first, but Howard ended up getting bailed out by his team the rest of the game). Most of the goals he allowed were super soft, and his coach left him in in the late periods to get embarrassed... I know Lu hasn't seemed to want out nearly as much as his franchise has wanted him gone, but it reminded me an awful lot of another game involving the Red Wings that got Roy traded. Little different scenario on the road... but given that the Canucks don't play tomorrow and didn't play yesterday I don't know why they didn't bring Schneider in.

- I was surprised at how many Canucks fans were there. I'm sure most of them are out of market and living in Windsor or whatever, but I don't think I've ever seen that many road fans at the Joe for a game other than the Leafs or Blackhawks. Props to the three people I saw wearing one of these bad boys: http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQKHlGYCnnngouDGZBa8aGew5KgmfcH4T2e7kF7Wloo2l9r2XZa

- Is Zack Kassian just going to be 15 his whole life or what? I haven't seen him live since his last year in the OHL, where he was in a playoff series against my home team and had a hissy fit and broke his stick against his own bench because they were losing. Today, he negated a power play (which was a bad call to begin with) by retaliating on Tootoo and then took an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, presumably for another hissy fit, which led to Detroit's 3rd PPG of the game that pretty much iced it. This is on top of him taking a dumb goalie interference call earlier in the game trying to bang people up that led to the tying goal early in the second. Have never seen a player look as cancerous as he does regardless of how productive he's been this year.

- The Sedins sure are good. This surprises no one, but I haven't seen them live before and it's always different than seeing people on TV. They definitely have the best cycle I've seen IRL, and they're a lot stronger than I would have expected, too(I should know better than to expect star players to be weak with Datsyuk on my team but yeah).

- Tootoo is much better at hockey than I thought he was when he was in Nashville.

- The Joe is super quiet compared to what I'm used to. Not surprised the Wings have been weaker on home ice the past few years -- I know it isn't the playoffs or whatever, but we were weak as shit before the team started blowing Vancouver out. Howard going 4/7 in the first period kinda killed the buzz, but still...

- Vancouver's PK is way better than Detroit's PP. I know that looks misleading because Detroit went like 3/6 but we got outworked hard and only got the goals on the last 3 as Vancouver was running out of steam and their goalie was collapsing. Would not want that matchup in playoffs if Detroit makes it.

- Kronwall looks better this year. He's never going to be Lidstrom, but watching a little more closely today reinforced what I like about how he's handling this year in that he's backing off the big hits and not jumping up into the play unnecessarily nearly as much because we can't afford for him to take dumb risks anymore. He has been a real #1 D for most of this year, it has been fun watching him man up.

- While most of the points they had today were more about Luongo being bad than them being good, I really like Detroit's kids. They're seeing a lot more time than we'd probably prefer with all of our injuries(Bertuzzi, Franzen, Helm(is he ever not hurt), Samuelsson right now), but they're proving pretty capable. They're not as naturally gifted as a lot of other teams' prospects, but getting brought up in our system for so much longer before playing a starring role seems to add a lot to their upside... I think Detroit will be pretty good again in a year or two as Datsyuk and Zetterberg give their last primeish years and we start getting more from people like Tatar, Andersson, and Nyquist at the pro level. Detroit is better positioned than most people think going forward and they have a lot of cash to play with.
 
Vineon said:
I'm glad you are so impressed because you should be. :)

I'll make sure to showcase his talent in more YT clips as they come until the draft. Or I could try to find something from Nate MacKinnon, also playing in the Quebec league, for the same team, scoring against more MABs but yet still will get drafted in the top 3 next year. I suppose Drouin was also playing against more MABs during the Jrs World Cup when as a 17 year old, he completed Team Canada's first line. A team Canada that included lockout'd players that would otherwise have been in the NHL, such as RNH. They impress professional scouts all over the hockey world but have still yet to actually really impress Justin8649, I suppose. Or it's just the flashy clips that leave you cold. Well sorry, while I don't expect to see this sort of thing done in the NHL against much better opposition, they do still showcase some massive talent and they make for cool videos to watch.

Makes me wonder why anyone saw anything in Sidney Crosby, that guy that's currently the best player in the NHL that had everyone excited about who would get to draft him after the lockout. What was there to be excited about beating a bunch of MABs in the Q. But sure, "the Q" is not exactly known for its defensemen yet still, it spawned Raymond Bourque, the D with the most career points in the history of this league and it did spawn some of the best forwards the league has seen... which allows me to be legitimately excited about Drouin, even moreso than I was about Huberdeau who, as a 19 yo, currently has more goals than other rookie in the league, some like Conacher much older than he is, playing for a shitty team.
Click to expand...

He'll be considered a bust the second the Oilers draft him 3rd overall.

Also, holy mother of god the Flyers offense is deep. Remember 2 years ago when the Flyers were considered morons for trading Richards and Carter? Well flash forward 2 years and of Voracek, Schenn, Simmonds, and Couturier, only Couturier is still a worse player than Richards/Carter. While he has no offensive instict whatsoever, he should still make a decent 2nd/3rd line defensive center in the future. Voracek, Schenn, and Simmonds are making the Flyers competitive even with Giroux "slumping" and Hartnell injured. I honestly think that them, Boston, and New York are the teams to beat in the East.
 
Troy Brouwer on losing Semin said:
“It was tough to lose his scoring ability when he wanted to play,” Brouwer said. “But all in all I think we’ve been doing well without him.”
Click to expand...

Oh really? The Caps have been doing fine without him? From what I can see, it looks like they have gone from a playoff team to contending with the Blue Jackets for worst in the NHL. Brouwer sure does have a funny definition of "doing well."
 
my love for bryz is humongous big

ZlFlaI1.jpg


BEDAPZnCEAE3z7r.jpg
 
Justin8649 said:
Oh really? The Caps have been doing fine without him? From what I can see, it looks like they have gone from a playoff team to contending with the Blue Jackets for worst in the NHL. Brouwer sure does have a funny definition of "doing well."
Click to expand...

seminv.png
Click to expand...

?????





Seriously though, not sure what Brouwer is thinking either. Washington has been better lately but there's nothing fine about being in 13th. Pretty hilarious the Canes still have no divisional wins despite being first in their division in points for now, though. Though they're only four points above a team contending with the Blue Jackets for worst in the NHL so I guess it isn't too surprising...
 
Don't hate on Flo Rida, they're only 3 points away from the division lead! I'm rooting for them or Jets to take 3rd, I really want to see a Florida/Phoenix cup final someday :D
 
Ah yes the epic return of the plastic rat! :D I'd actually like to see Pens/Panthers in conference final. I'd like to see either San Jose/Dalls in Cup final. If some of you looked closely at the end of the game, 2 plastic rats made there way on to the ice. Didn't think I'd see that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top