Sure, he poses those questions in his diatribe, but in the presser he'd just bloviate on and on about tanking and integrity. Harrington would never ask a serious, honest question...at least not one that he thought of himself.
Brilliant choice of vocabulary. I'm drawn to this Sabres forum by erudite posters.
The organization and local paper have clearly created a chasm between each other. Without finger pointing, I'll say that long term, a large media outlet is a helpful tool for an NHL team to garner interest from the "casual fan." And, an NHL team is an interesting subject for a local paper. It's usually a mutually beneficial relationship but, has become a battle: the Sabres allowing limited access and, the BN calling them out publicly.
The question moving forward is, do they resolve or move in different directions. The Sabres could see TBN as a useless PITA but that could be an overstatement.
My prediction is TBN's wounds will heal as winning becomes more routine. Persistent media antagonism in the face of on-ice success would be anathema to their dwindling readers.
All the "alienated" fans will be right back on board when we're good again. You call them alienated, I call them bandwagon.
Agreed, for the same reason given above.
As long as he can sound like a drunken blowhard similar to 90% of the people who call into WGR, that'll work.
My memory was stirred from a comment posted in response to a TBN article a couple years ago: "...Sabres should re-hire Scotty Bowman as GM..." (their coaching recommendation was an equally absurd time-machine proposal). Such opinions make me quite confident the majority of foreign countries needn't try hard to pass the USA academically given the apparent alacrity America demonstrates to cede it's slipping position.
I have one.
Went to school with Amy and Brian Moritz. Great folks.
Chose not to use my degree, and got my master's in another field. Only the best journalist make enough money to support the hours required to be really good.
I also see the weakness in the degree, a discussion I had with my professors. It's a split among the profession on how to train journalists.
Old way: get life experience, a degree in something that isn't journalism, and learn journalism OJT.
New way: train communicators in school.
The downside is journalists are becoming opinionated early on but without a great deal of experience. And it continues from there. Eventually, getting one's own opinion communicated to the masses, relatively unchallenged, leads to guys like Harrington. Harrington wont be bothered even considering other views. Social media exacerbates everything.
The only thing that Harrington has over anyone on this board is access. I wonder if he realizes that. He's blowing his only advantage.
Nice post. Will send PM.
End of the year press conferences though aren't an obligation. They're not going to say anything groundbreaking, or arguably meaningful. So really there is nothing to be said that hasn't already been said. They don't owe anybody anything.
Exactly. It's a ritual to placate the journalists, and affirm their self-importance.
But you speak for all the Sabres' fans? Or just the half dozen or so here that freak out when the News dares to opine?
Fact: the Pegulas have run this franchise into the ground from day one. Call it a genius plan if you will, but they should answer to it.
That's an opinion (subjective), not a fact (objective). Moreover, there are three elements to your opinion: (1) the franchise has been run into the ground... as others noted, what's your refefence / standard for making that statement? Financial measures? On-ice measures? Current cumulative view only? Forward looking view also allowed?
2) the Pegulas are singularly and autonomously responsible (aside from the obvious appeal to hierarchal responsibility)... implying a dissociation of the current Sabres state from the franchise "B.P." (Before Pegula)
3) from day one... implying a singular, cogent, malicious plan from the start, impervious to external factors
Each of the above elements have been discussed on these threads. Your entitled to your opinion, and I'm sure you're aware it's an opinion that's not shared by the majority who have debated those "three legs of the stool" on this board.
However, I responded not because I object to you, your opinion, or your right to hold it, but because I assume (perhaps erroneously) from the 1970 in your username, that you're a longtime Sabres fan. If true, I'd be interested in another thread (either new or bump a pre-existing one) in hearing your degree of present optimism (assuming you have some) as compared to other points in Sabres history.
The way people talk about ownership/GM/coaching tenures reminds me of how people talk about presidencies. A president takes office and suddenly he's somehow responsible for the entire state of the economy. That's not how it really is because you have to look back years to figure out why something like an economy is where it currently is. Even at the end of a president's term there's still only so much of the economy's present state that is, positively or negatively, due to the influence and decisions of his administration.
What did the Pegulas do wrong exactly? They took over a mediocre team and tried to get it over the hump. The result was that the team remained mediocre, making and then narrowly missing the playoffs. Direction was then changed and ultimately about a year after new management was brought in to oversee the new direction. If there's a criticism it might be that direction should have been changed immediately.
How do owners succeed or fail? Their job is to hire the right people and provide them with the resources to get the job done. Then there are other things like franchise stability, accessibility (affordable prices, proper television coverage, etc), local investment, etc. The Pegulas' ownership is pretty much universally praise-worthy in all of these areas with the debatable point being whether they hired the right people. Well, did they or didn't they? Seeing as how their hires happened barely a year ago I'd say it's hard to criticize that point yet.
Nice post. In their essence, these points are too often overlooked. There are sins of omission and sins of commission. A common speculation is to assume dramatically different actions, external events, and overall outcomes if a different leadership team had the same resources to confront the same external world environment over the same timeframe. Typically, such speculations make little to no concession for alternative, yet equally ineffectual, actions.
This entire post is bang on. Pegula made a decision a few years ago which didn't pan out. Ehroff and Lenino did not take the team to the places management thought it could go.
Do they deserve criticism for those moves? Yes certainly. When an honest appraisal of the teams assets was done, the decision was made to rebuild the team. We will know in a couple of years how that decision played itself out.
If you don't like the team being bad the last few years, you really need to go back in time, take a look at the way the 2012 Buffalo Sabres were built, and ask yourself, what can be done to this roster to make the playoffs? Once you take that look, compare it to what was actually done, or what moves were available.
Now you have a basis for rational decision. But emotional whining about the team losing is a facile critic.
Agree with both your assertion, as well as your closing admonition. (Although I think you mean critique and not critic.)
It always seems like the dumbest people have the loudest voices.
Statement I read years ago: "The best thing about the internet is it gives everyone a voice. The worst thing about the internet is it gives everyone a voice."
Harrington spoke to my class in College. He said that he intentionally tried a few times to goad athletes and coaches into losing their temper in order to get a "juicy quote". I, and some in my class, thought he came off as an arrogant a-hole.
I still hold that opinion.
Thanks for the first-hand testimonial. As Bill O'Reilly admitted to Jon Stewart, "I'm sitting here because I'm obnoxious, not because I'm white."
I wonder what the reply would have been had Hoppe or Wawrow had written a piece saying that they requested an end of year presser like every other NHL team and her rebuffed.
While that is a good question, I imagine instead another columnist would have simply footnoted the presser refusal in the text of some-other-Sabres-related-article, without the diatribe.
I'm a journalist (purposely not in sports) and one of the major measures of success is scoops. Harrington has not had many over the years.
Some columnists, especially sports, like to be contrarian. They may not admit that's the strategy but it's true. For sure clicks count in our industry. Any journalist who says otherwise is a liar or out of touch. We get a weekly report at my paper about which stories had the most clicks, just to give you an idea.
I'm a hardcore Sabres, more like rabid, fan but I think I can step back and offer a decent opinion on Buffalo sports journalism.
The Buffalo News guys decided to take a certain angle on the tank and hit that hard all year. I think it's fair game, as long as you don't make stuff up. I do think think there is a definite difference between Vogl and Harrington. Plus, columnists can write what they want. Harrington does a decent job on the day in and day out news. Lots of retweeting of other people's stuff -- he's on top of that stuff. I still point to not breaking news (Bucky broke the Lafontaine thing) as his biggest failing. Original major stories are the big prize. I do think he's a decent writer.
The radio guys (not including Hamilton) bother me a lot more. They are not well-informed on many occasions. There are just lots of gaps in knowledge. They're more fans than journalists, in my opinion. The stories they do write are pretty poorly written when they pop up on the WGR website.
You know what I'm most impressed by about the Sabres? The fans. The level of knowledge in this forum is astounding. You people need to get jobs. LOL. Seriously, if I was the Buffalo Sabres beat writer, I would comb through here for ideas. There is tons of crap in here, for sure, but there are some pretty intense thoroughly thought out discussions going on too.
I believe in journalism and papers like the Buffalo News but hockey fans have alternatives to get good information these days, outside traditional media. It's the reality of our industry.
Bolded - agree. As I've said before, I began lurking here during the '04-05 lockout to get my hockey "fix" (moving to the South for my career limited my hockey exposure). Joined HFB a couple years later because of both the caliber, civility, and humor of the people here. Glad I've stayed, though the Lord knows I could have benefitted humanity more directly with other uses of my time. Hopefully the Sabres win the Cup before I have to answer for that...
