Botterill fired. Does he come back to Pens?

[JTG]

TAGE f***ING THOMPSON WAS HIS MAIN TARGET.

Jesus christ, who sold him on that magic bean? That scout should never work anywhere.

I cannot even necessarily say Buffalo's problem is poor GM'ing. I think the real knock on Botteril was he gave Skinner that insane deal, but honestly, if you are a GM you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I think most people would have said Skinner wouldn't live up to the deal. He had just scored 40 goals though.

There is just something about Buffalo where players go to die there. No one thrives there. It's really unfortunate because they are one of the really lucky franchises that has two amazing cornerstones.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

I cannot even necessarily say Buffalo's problem is poor GM'ing. I think the real knock on Botteril was he gave Skinner that insane deal, but honestly, if you are a GM you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I think most people would have said Skinner wouldn't live up to the deal. He had just scored 40 goals though.

There is just something about Buffalo where players go to die there. No one thrives there. It's really unfortunate because they are one of the really lucky franchises that has two amazing cornerstones.

I would have been skeptical why the Blues were ok giving that bloke up and also had done better scouting than "He's really tall and can skate."

I mean so can that russian wanker in college that the Pens drafted, we missed our chance to get Eichel for him, a 1st, 2nd, and JJ + Bjugstad.

 

[Gurglesons]

I cannot even necessarily say Buffalo's problem is poor GM'ing. I think the real knock on Botteril was he gave Skinner that insane deal, but honestly, if you are a GM you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I think most people would have said Skinner wouldn't live up to the deal. He had just scored 40 goals though.

There is just something about Buffalo where players go to die there. No one thrives there. It's really unfortunate because they are one of the really lucky franchises that has two amazing cornerstones.

It’s because they fire their management staff every couple years. Pittsburgh, LA, Boston, and Chicago. The successful teams of the league were able to create full organizations. That doesn’t happen in three years.

 

[Peat]

I cannot even necessarily say Buffalo's problem is poor GM'ing. I think the real knock on Botteril was he gave Skinner that insane deal, but honestly, if you are a GM you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I think most people would have said Skinner wouldn't live up to the deal. He had just scored 40 goals though.

There is just something about Buffalo where players go to die there. No one thrives there. It's really unfortunate because they are one of the really lucky franchises that has two amazing cornerstones.

While we're talking stuff about Botterill having his hands tied - from 31 thoughts

"Botterill, for example, is not crazy about term. Even before he took over there, he’d indicated that he thought term was more dangerous than salary. He wasn’t crazy about the Jack Eichel extension (which will turn out fine) or the Jeff Skinner one, but was overruled by ownership. In fact, I’ve heard from several sources that he pursued other free-agent forwards, offering high annual salaries but shorter terms. He lost those races, but felt they wouldn’t regret onerous ends to those contracts."

Again, Botterill's Skinner deal wasn't entirely (or maybe even mainly) him.

And I've seen Sabres fans in the main forum speculating that maybe Kruger was trying to get Botterill fired by giving Skinner zero platform so it looked stupid. The conspiracy part of that is probably far fetched but the part about zero platform isn't - Skinner's 5v5 ToI dropped by a minute and 15 seconds from last season; his most common line mates were Johansson, Sheary, Rodrigues and Sobotka; he only got 100 minutes with Eichel despite the pairing producing hugely better results together in terms of shot effects than they did apart; and he lost 30 seconds of PP time a night too. Any chance of Skinner living up to his deal got hosed by Kruger and maybe that's on Skinner, but it's a weird look when Skinner improved things for Eichel so much possession wise.

I mean, I'd stress the words entirely and maybe again. We don't know the full truth here. But it is crazy that we've got people who know saying Botterill's hands were tied on his three biggest moves as a GM (extending Eichel, Skinner, trading ROR).