I admit that the guy the franchise failed to name captain, hasn't been the captain...
But I agree in the parallels between Colorado and Buffalo as two very poorly run franchises who have failed for the better part of the last decade to identify leaders and promote them as leaders.
ROR has had his chance on taking a leadership role and actually lead. So far he has been unable to do that, and it might be that the ship has already sailed. I personally was hopeful that he would be the leader but so far it seems I was too optimistic.
As long as it's clear, that 80 minute sample sizes are fair game now.
I have no idea how you're able to pull something like that when I explicitly myself brought up the sample size factor in the first place. I mean, wtf...
I'm not discrediting Eichel.
I'm perfectly happy to come back and re-visit the end of year results after Kane is traded, and Eichel spends the rest of the year with Pouliot's.
What you're implying there is that Eichel's ES numbers are inflated by Kane in a fashion that might not be compensated.
The point is, that it really isn't an issue. Eichel needs competent wingers (just like any other top-line center), but Kane specifically is not the necessity (it's the opposite, in fact).
We are on to a 2nd coach who believes Larsson is a better center than Girgs...
What this has anything to do about anything here? Beside, we have had this conversation multiple times before already. And still you don't seem to understand why other is used more as a center when the player is pretty much useless as a winger whilethe counterpart is a useful as a winger.
And it's interesting that you (as an admitted fan boy of Larsson) bring Larsson up here while he is having an absolutely brutal season. Our tank roster would have been envy of his rate of getting scored against and not getting scored himself. Of ANY players in the league who have played at least 250 minutes on ES, none are even close as Larsson is GF% wise. But this really isn't a thread about Larsson.
The only true incentive to get a deal done early, was that Eichel "might" put up a McDavid-esque season.
You would argue that Buffalo couldn't risk being in a contract dispute with it's franchise star. I argued that the ramifications of catering to the kid, before he'd earned anything were far far worse. And here we are. A team with the identity of Jack Eichel.
You do understand that you're playing the "true scotsman" fallacy here pretty ignorantly? As pointed out several months ago, there were several incentives to give sign the contract. Evidently those were enough to make the deal being done. And we don't really know the weight of every factor there, because we simply have no idea what mid-term plan Botteril has.
It seems that you have started this narrative about this extension being somekind of disaster. First of all, it is utterly stupid to claim something like that when the contract itself hasn't even kicked in. And I will tell you how that narrative doesn't even make this season. It seems that the more desperate you get protecting your agendas, the more foolish your narratives become.
I was perfectly fine with 6 years....
Nice way to try to dodge the bullet. Instead of just admitting you didn't have any clue what you were talking about, you decided to spit some irrelevant nonsense.
Like you can easily see yourself, the talk was always 8 year deal. And you with 8x8 talk and comparisons to Gaudreau and Tarasenko just showed how out to lunch you were.
You never had a clue about the contract despite you claim so. Just like you shifted your story about the "draft for need" narrative. For very long you claimed that teams actually follow the "draft for need" concept, and that bad organisations like Edmonton don't. You even claimed that Sabres followed that concept in 2013 draft. I mean, before you were reminded about Domi/Zadorov aspect, which made your narrative look completely ridiculous.
Botts could've shaped the premise differently. And the franchise AND Eichel both would've been better off.
What the hell? You seriously can't be this clueless? You really can't change the premises unless you're negotiating with a moron. Sure, if Risto's agent were negotiating with you instead of Murray, he could have tried to change the premises by trying to sell you the narrative of you having no leverage and you actually buying that. But in real life there are not that kind of idiots who don't understand the basic fundamentals of negotiation (like there evidently are here in this forum for example).
Nobody really won. Eichel got his money. The Sabres got their certainty. And the franchise will be mired in the much because of it.
The certainty and the money certainly were big incentives for both parties - and they both got it. The last part is just your silly narrative.
A contract that is inline with every other reality in the market place besides one outlier that cannot objectively be correlated to Eichel... is not lowballing.
You don't seem to even understand that this quote shows very clearly that you STILL cannot understand the premises. Even though that there have been several persons tryinh to bang those things in to your head and the real world actually followed that reasoning.
It's pretty clear that you have no idea about the market place here.
Semantics. If Eichel plays out this season at a Pastrnak scoring pace... will be all the evidence needed to prove how wrong you, botts, and everyone else were.
This is another great example of you not understanding anything about the market here. I have no idea how you think that I were wrong in any way, when I predicted the ballpark of the contract exactly right (unlike you, lol) and actually told you the reasons for you. Just because you don't agree with the market, doesn't mean you can change it. This is very basic stuff...
If he put up a 100 pt MVP level season, and actually proved what type of player he was. Why would I have a problem paying the max for that type of player?
Now you're talking about a different thing. You can argue that no contract should have been signed. But you need more information (the type of information we're not able to get) from all the factors being involved. It remains to be seen how that contract works out.
The point obviously isn't what Eichel has accomplished, but what he will accomplish. It's obvious fact that players like Eichel are paid for potential and expectations. Even Murray said that with young players you pay for the potential and with older guys you pay for the past merits. If you can't understand that fact, and the way the market is trending, you're simply a lost case.
Since his first game? Yea, he's developed some...
From last season to this season? No... not really.
Nonsense... unless you believe hard work doesn't impact development.
You seem to confuse here "hard work" and habits which are more of a mental thing. There really isn't any doubt that Eichel is a hard working guy when you think his physical side of things. That requires a tons of things, and you don't acquire that kind of strength without tons of effort.
The flaws Eichel has are easily traceable to his junior/college times. He simply didn't have to have a complete game to be totally dominant. Those are habits which develop with long time. That's the reason you really cannot fix them quickly and you really cannot speed up the process with monetary incentives - it simply doesn't work like that. You cannot motivate a depressed person to be not depressed by giving him monetary incentives and telling him to "work hard".
That's where the culture/leadership comes in. It's a process and it requires right type of mentoring and authority. Something we obviously lack here.
But lets' get back to the "Eichel hasn't developed and this contract ruined his development" nonsense. Since we simply disagree about the on-ice performance (he has had such complete games this season that he definitely didn't even sniff close to last season), let's take a statistical approach. Let's go season by season.
2015-2016
Sabres
GF 1,83, GA 2,27, GF% 45.23
Eichel
GF 2.01, GA 2.57, GF% 43.82
On his first season Eichel had a pretty sheltered role. Except GF his numbers were below the team average.
2016-2017
Sabres
GF 1.88, GA 2.32, GF% 44.84
Eichel
GF 2.33, GA 2.77, GF% 45.68
On his second season his role was pretty much the same as on his first. Eichel lost 20 games and around the christmas really turned things up. Except the GA, his numbers improved and his GF% went above the team average. The team's performance was pretty much the same as the previous season.
2017-2018
Sabres
GF 1.83, GA 2.65, GF% 40.87
Eichel
GF 2.77, GA 2.77, GF% 50.00
This season Eichel's role has changed dramatically - he has been the one who has been facing top-lines more than any other center in this team. Overall the team has performed clearly worse - especially goals allowed.
Despite those factors Eichel has been able to clearly improve his GF number and first time in his career Eichel hasn't been a net-negative player on ice, despite the fact the the team average is clearly net negative. His absolute GA number is same, but when you take into account the more challenging role and worse performance by the team, it's clear that the has done better there as well.
This really shows that this "no development" narrative is totally stupid. Whether is it the eye-test or statistics, everything supports development. Of course, if you're simply looking POINTS, you might get distracted here. But as we know, Jame would never do that since he always blames everyone else of doing that...
Oh... you didn't do the legwork to find the post I was talking about... how surprising.
Here it is:
Jack Eichel – Part 3
yea, it's pretty good
So it isn't only your memory that is not working properly - it is also your reading comprehension.
It's pretty clear that I made a prediction in 1 million range, and my prediction hit the ballpark...
It seems that now you realised that there were clear posts showing how clueless you were there, you started changing goal posts.