Quoting: Tjm220
OK, acquiring Kane was Murray. Giving Kane away was Botterill. We got precisely nothing basically for Kane, just the conditional 1st when they resigned him (A trade condition we all know would not be allowed now). He still overpaid for Montour, handing Anaheim the better of our other first round picks when he could’ve just told them take the lower one or screw off. His thing was always giving the other team favorable trade conditional picks, it was really annoying.
At the time the Skinner trade looked like a steal. I still like turning Rodrigues and Sheary into Kahun, but we also let him walk away. Most of his other trades were of very little consequence, IE bringing in Simmonds for five games. His free agent signings weren’t exactly banner worthy either. But to be fair when was the last time the Sabres brought in a free agent that actually panned out? I suppose even Taylor Hall being mediocre still netted us a decent young player and 2nd rounder, and it only cost us money. I still like Kevyn Adams better now. He hasn’t actually made a bad trade yet. Maybe Hinestroza will replace Lazar as a third line player that will hang around beyond one year.
Good chatting you, The Sabres are in the doldrums and it will take time to get them out.
Let me remind you, the Sharks were the ONLY team that wanted Kane. I guess you missed my comment about Montour being the Sabres best defenseman the 20 games he played for Housley. The Ducks got nothing for him. Guhle who is still playing in the AHL and a forward who has Zero AHL pts in a dozen games.
Murray set the rebuild back by at least four years and now it appears he set it back 10 years.
The team had no depth and only two NHL defensemen (McCabe and Ristolainen) at the time he was fired.
He left Botterill one of the NHL's worse prospect pools, and over paid forwards Moulson and Okposo.
Back to the TDL trades, Simmons and Kahun were perfect,
Buffalo needed a physical RW and more scoring, which each of them provided.
At the time of the trade the Sabres were close to the playoffs, but they proceeded to lose their next 6 games.
A point in any of those games and the team is in the expanded playoffs.
Hall for a second was a disgrace, Montour for a third was nearly as bad, his signings last year were terrible when there were much better options (BTW, I complained about his signings last year before the season even started).
Everyone knew Hall had the talent and Krueger was misusing him.
Go back a year in ACGM, nearly everyone thought Hall would bring a first and more.
Back to Adams, losing Larsson over Eakin, not signing Pysyk last year, other than Sheahan (who had as many pts as Cozens) his signings were absolutely terrible,
Even Hall, while being a great move, was overpaid by nearly twice.
I think you will eventually find that ALL of the recent signings and trades were engineered by Karmanos and Granato.
Granato was a coach when Caggiula, Davidson, Hayden and Hinostroza played with the Hawks (Hinostroza also played with Granato).
The other GM's knew Adams was over his head and they took advantage of him.
Let me give you some thing else to consider.
The Amerks made the playoffs every year Botterill was GM. The Amerks missed the playoffs every year Murray was GM and the first year Adams was GM.
Building an NHL team starts by developing a winning attitude in the minors.
I will blame Botterill for picking Krueger as his GM.
I will bet you anything that now Karmanos is Associate (not assistant) GM, the Amerks will make the playoffs again.
Well that is my rant, I am not at all sold on Adams, but we will see if Karmanos can straighten him out.