So who do you blame for that?
Honestly? I’d peg it more on fatigue and being burned out. They’ve gone into June 2 years in a row, getting very little time off.
Same as Ottawa’s complete implosion this season. Can’t blame that on coaching, or lack of talent.
:word:
missing 20 games is considered a healthy year for him. For a guy his size that continues to leave himself exposed to the big hit, you never know when the next one is going to be the career ender. Then you lose him and get nothing, the sabres specialty.
As soon as we trade Max or Connolly, they will be stars. That’s the Buffalo curse. Look at Dumont. Sitting on 29 goals this year!! And we let him walk for a bag of peanuts.
As of today, the Sabres pick 12th and 29th in the draft. I’m behind on keeping up with the draft pool. I gotta start reading up.
Or maybe we don’t have a coach that knows how to use the talent?
Look, the more you sit back and really think about the more it makes sense to give someone else a shot at leading this team.
The Sabres are perpetually going to be a young team due to their unwillingness to spend to the cap. I’d love to see that change but ownership changes are very unlikely. For years people in the hockey world have talked about Randy Cunnyworth getting a shot at an NHL coaching gig and I think this is the time. He’s got a real skill at developing young talent and that’s what the Sabres generally have a lot of.
I loved Lindy. In the 05-06 season he had those players motivated to the point that they would skate right through the boards if he asked. They started out great in 06-07 too but you could see something start coming apart the last 15 games or so before the playoff meltdown. This year they just haven’t wanted to play for him at all.
I’m not arguing with you there. Ruff’s coaching has seemed to become a bit stale with the players.
Draft pool looks reeeaaaally deep for defensemen after the top 5 forwards are gone.
And that’s my problem with him. I don’t think there is a fix for that unless you want to unload 3/4ths of the team and start over. There is way too much talent still here to do that.
“Teppo Numminen, Mike Ryan, Andrew Peters and Jocelyn Thibault will all play saturday”
according to WGR
I did do the right thing leaving…lol
the arguments about the coaching/leadership and the line changes are baseless unless you know the insider politics of the team.
Unless you are in that locker room day in and day out, at practice etc. You cant say anything one way or another about how the players respond to lindy, or how the captain leads the team… its just not a valid argument
you may be right, or you may be wrong… but its strictly opinion and has no supporting doccumentation.
ie to outsiders Vanek may appear lazy some times, but maybe he is playing hurt… who knows…
maybe miller was playing hurt
maybe lindy shuffled the lines cuz 2 players fucking hate each other, or complain about somebody else.
maybe lindy got every last ounce of talent out of the team, and they left nothing on the table… and somebody new would show a DRASTIC drop in talen utilization… who KNows
And three of the four are unrestricted free agents. Coincidence? I think not.
why does there have to be specific blame?
the team and organization as a whole has a large collection of small problems that added up this year to create an overall big problem…lack of winning.
i don’t understand why everybody here is trying to attribute the outcome of this season to a single explanation…there is no single right or wrong answer. the last several pages of this thread, and i’m sure several to come…can all be avoided if people would understand that there isn’t a single aspect or person/player to blame…but rather just many small problems/mistakes that are/were made that caused things to end up this way. trying to figure out a single reason for it is stupid, you’re wasting your time and just going to yell at each other for pages to come because you all have a different opinion…none of which are wrong (well, maybe some are wrong), and none of which are 100% right.
while sad we didn’t make the playoffs but it’s totally not unexpected. This team needs to get trade some players and gear towards next year. Max and connolly need to go in the off season. Max had potential but he just never developed into what he could of been and connolly spends more time watching the games from home then playing them. Kalinin also needs to GTFO. This would free up some cap space so we could maybe sign some decent veteran players who can provide some more leadership and maybe sign a better back-up goalie so Miller doesn’t have to play every game.
Miller has never had enough talent to start?:smash2:
I’m done trying to argue with you, because you’re fucking delusional.
No one scored for us?
It’s not Lindy or Ryan’s fault that no one could put the puck in the net.
Oh well, maybe after another poor year next year people will change their minds.
You are all ridiculous.
As Andy said a collection of small problems that were usually hidden by alot of goals going in the net have surfaced and they resulted in the team not making the playoffs.
For every game they blew the lead…so what? Noone complains when they come back and steal a game in the 3rd period…it goes BOTH ways. You win some you lose some.
Miller was as decent as he has always been but certainly declined with the 34 or 35 games in a row. He has always been and will always be a 2 goal a game goalie…you need to score 3. When the team puts alot of pucks in the net then he looks like a superstar. He has the ability to win you a game, not a season.
The few things that are overwhelming about this season to me.
The losing streak or as its now known the non winning streak.
They were ranked well on the powerplay.
The amount of shorthanded goals they gave up.
Vanek will finish with Mid 30 goals but really didnt have much of a presence except for a few games there. I cant imagine what he could do if he could be consistent every game.
You need a goalie that can win you a game and not be such a departure from your starter. Miller is not going to be a 65+ game a year goalie with good results.
They led the league in goals scored…thats insane to me for a team that didnt make the playoffs. I dont know where they rank in goals against but obviously its not very good.
Lindy’s system while it seems magnificent when its played to perfection it would seem that 1 of 2 things need to happen, you need guys that play the system or you need to modify the system to work with the players you have. I dont think that was done much this year.
I would like to see them get more big physical players on offense and defense.
It will all be fun next year again anyway. Now I can enjoy my spring/summer and look forward to the Bills lol