Mostly agree.
Although I think those mistakes are magnified in light of their current cash flow crunch. Consider that this season they spent almost $3M in cash on the Erhoff, Leino, and Hodgson buyouts. Only Hodgson counts against the cap , but $3M could have kept a lot of workers employed through the pandemic shutdowns, etc. (Not so say they would have, but Im sure you get my drift.)
I almost 100% guarantee you it would not have mattered.
It's been a bit of a troubling turn the last 6 months with the Pegula's.
On paper, they've spent probably nearly 1.7B on both the Sabres and the Bills in the last ~9 years...which is a lot. 1.4B on the bills, 165M on the Sabres, and probably 20-30M just in operating losses on the Sabres since 2011. Maybe a little more. But that being said....he is worth 5B+. If he sat the remainder of his cash in an index fund after buying the Bills in 2014, he'd be worth 6-7B now.
They've also burned through cash with other projects, like the Harbor Center, PSE in general, and run several smaller teams, including the Amerks, Bandits, Nighthawks, and own a Hotel in downtown Buffalo.
The only "profitable" piece of that, at this moment, is the Bills.
I certainly understand that the Pegula's want PSE on a whole to be, at minimal, revenue neutral.
That being said, I think what we are starting to see is "buyers remorse", especially with the Sabres. I think Terry has seen 1 playoff series since buying the team? I don't think it's really enjoyable for him and probably frustrating for him as a business person to see so many of the properties in the red year after year. This is the biggest reason why we need to get a team president who is on top of things and can manage the owner and manage the team at the same time.
So, currently, GMJB reports directly to Terry and Kim. And frankly, that's problematic. We've heard from both TM and now JB that they talk to Terry daily.
Let's put this in perspective for a second. You are brought on to manage a restaurant. The owner LOVES this restaurant, so much he bought it, but he has no restaurant experience. At all. He eats at restaurants sure, but he has no food service experience. Your owner wants you to run the best restaurant in the world....but every day, he wants to talk to you about the restaurant. What he thinks about the menu, what'd sales look like yesterday, what color should we make the table cloths, etc. But, running a restaurant is hard. And it's much harder when you have to take an hour out of your day to talk to the owner, and run any big decisions by him before you do them. That is what I imagine all of our GMs have had to do under Terry. Heck, if i were a fan and I bought the team, I'd want to be a part of the conversation and direction of the team, heck I own it. But, I think a team president that has Terry's ear and can give a GM direction and room to operate would make a huge difference. Just huge.
