Botts v. Housley: Apportioning Fault

N.Y. Orangeman

Registered User
Mar 15, 2002
2,279
538
myspace.com
This may be premature, but...

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on apportioning fault between Botts and Phil. Phil takes an incredible amount of heat on the board for his handling of the lines, etc., while Botts takes some, albeit less, criticism for his roster management at key points during this season, as well as the offseason.

How do you divy this mess up?
 

DolanPlsGoSabres

スカンデッラ
Mar 17, 2013
2,220
1,317
Nagoya
Botts: Lack of in-season adjustments, whether it be through minor trades, waiver pickups...If your mid-season pickups are Jordan Nolan, Scott Wilson and Remi Elie, it's obviously not good enough. Got fleeced in the ROR trade, no excuse for a trade that bad, unless he was handcuffed by the Pegulas and it was trade ROR or get fired.

Housley: Everything on-ice.
 
  • Like
Reactions: N.Y. Orangeman

Kyndig

Registered User
Jan 3, 2012
5,147
2,862
80% Housley and 20% Botterill. Only reason I blame Botts is for not firing this clown.

Housley would just ruin any call up and he couldn't win with an all star team. The team is far better than what Rolston or Bylsma had but Housley still finds a way to make it worse. That 10 game win streak at the beginning of the season might've been the worst thing to happen to the team this season, it bought Housley the season and possibly ruined another top 3 draft pick.
 

Buffaloed

webmaster
Feb 27, 2002
43,324
23,584
Niagara Falls
It's hard to say. What do we really know about what's going on? As Donald Rumsfeld said, "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know".
 

littletonhockeycoach

NOT the Hanson Bros.....
Sponsor
Oct 26, 2008
15,787
11,154
Littleton, Co
They both suck at their jobs 100%. No need to quantify, no need to over analyze.

Jason assembled the roster. Phil coached the roster. Jason is responsible for possibly the biggest trade blunder since Chicago sent Phil Esposito & Co to the Bruins. Phil owns 2 seasons of the team's full W-L record. I believe both measures would be critical performance elements of their work plans (if the organization actually maintains annual work plans....)

And both have failed spectacularly. (Fortunately for them, Sabreville seems to be run like a government agency where no one is ever held accountable or gets fired...)

Glad I am not a season ticket holder and feel bad for those who are.
 

kirby11

Registered User
Mar 16, 2011
9,735
4,614
Buffalo, NY
I'll go 60/40 Phil/Botts. Mostly because even if we'd had RoR rather than the trash Botts got back for him, Phil probably would've run back last year's idiocy of giving the guy unprecedented D-zone work while also relying on him to drive offense.

It's true that: Phil's lineup choices are idiotic, the team seems perpetually lost in their own end, the offense is mostly stale and predictable, and he's done little to address these problems or show that he can optimize the team so it performs on par with or better than the sum of its parts. These issues, the team's record, and their generally dead play over the past months warrant a firing, IMO.

That said, Botts' only real wins are falling ass backwards into Dahlin, getting Skinner for a song (who knows if he gets signed tbh), and signing Pilut. I like the Montour trade so far.

Still, he blew up the 2C spot (possibly on the Pegulas' orders) and the only viable NHL piece he got back went AWOL. Rather than do anything to fix that spot, he decided it was cool to have Casey and Sobotka flounder in the middle 6 for a while while our playoff hopes plummeted.

Botts has also refused to make low-cost, low-risk upgrades at the roster margins, especially in the bottom 6 forward slots. His prospect development plans seem questionable given how older guys like Smith and O'Regan are super slow-cooked in Rochester--to the point where we may lose O'Regan for nothing without seeing if he could've been at least an ok 4th liner--while Tage and Casey got fast-tracked to the NHL without the kind of production that merits such a move.

Additionally, taking on cap dumps in all but 2 trades (I believe the Skinner and Montour deals) for minimal added value while we fail to offload any of our own bad salary seems at odds with Botts' reputation as a cap wizard.
 

GellMann

Registered User
Dec 16, 2014
4,281
3,779
Lancaster NY
The answers to these questions will tell you, with 100% accuracy, which posters were the most angry the second the ROR trade happened, versus which posters tried to convince that segment that we were going to get 45 goals out of the return in that trade this season.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BuffaloGooner

Baccus

Garage League filled with Mickey Mouse teams
Feb 18, 2014
1,453
953
I'd say 60/40 to Botts at this point between the two, but that's only because I've come to expect Housley being terrible at this point and am becoming ore annoyed by Botts daily. Plus he could have removed Phil at any point.

Housley is a dead man walking no matter how long he lasts even if it's somehow into next season. This Amerks prospect tryout rush, even considering injuries/flu on the team, is overdue by at a minimum of a couple months, and that's all Botts.
 

Rasmus CacOlainen

The end of the Tank
Sep 24, 2015
7,226
1,137
Europe
I have a very simple question: won't local fans get up and actually do something about this situation? Doubt complaining on a forum/twitter or complete apathy achieves anything at all. The media won't do shit, so its up to the fans to let the management know this can't on, otherwise it might actually do go on.
 

jBuds

pretty damn valuable
Apr 9, 2005
30,876
1,449
Richmond, VA
Sadly, there’s no answer.

At the end of the day, the roster is far from good enough, with guys who were to be counted on in big ways falling massively short.

But there are a number of teams with less talent who are ahead of us in the standings.

Is that because they have a cast willing to work harder and do more as a team? Or is it because they’re all coached with more intelligence (data) and thus, more success?

So basically, it’s chicken/egg and we’ve managed to prove that you can, indeed, find yourself in a spot where you’ve tried to change both the Staff and the personnel and neither worked.

I’m truly lost with regards to this.
 

Tatre

Jan 12, 2019
1,544
569
They're both at fault and the players have let themselves down too. It's all interdependent like jBuds described, but the impact of Botteril's roster building is probably greater than what a coach can do with it.

While rationally I know that Housley is making the wrong choices, I also can't settle on how good the team ought to be. Any sane organisation would have already replaced Housley, but I wonder if Botts wants to give him another go with a roster that should be better next year.

If we get a new HC in the summer along with new players, we're still not going to know what was the bigger problem. (Unless they're legitimately good and it's easier not to care.)

Just waiting for the results to show that someone is competent, unlike whatever we're experiencing currently.
 

wunderpanda

Registered User
Apr 9, 2012
5,491
467
i put all the blame on housley, either the players listen to bad coaching or the coach can't get thru to them. botts has done well with the cap & the prospect pool, too early to say if development is healthy but can't declare it's unhealthy. i expect housley to be fired but am okay with it because he had a fair chance with 2 seasons.

i only give jack 1 more coach. if housleys replacement only gets 80 points, i'd move jack before firing botts or the coach. we are at the point where its not everybody else now.
 

Icicle

Think big
Oct 16, 2005
6,055
1,007
Botterill has given his coach full leeway like you would want a GM to do. Otherwise you have the Toronto situation and we don’t need that circus.

However, if Botterill doesn’t fire Housley at the end of the year he takes the blame.

Only thing to harp on Botterill for is the ROR trade, and I don’t believe that was his decision to even make- it was made for him and he made the best of it.

Otherwise, people’s gripes with Botterill I think are just fan impatience. He knew the team was a fluke early season, but he wanted to develop some in positions and others in Rochester. He didn’t care about this season, he just didn’t outwardly tank like the last guy who got in trouble for it.
 

NEcoli

Registered User
Apr 13, 2014
1,120
262
They both horribly mismanaged the roster all season, but Botterill actually has at least a few positive things in his column, while Housley is an unmitigated disaster.
 
  • Like
Reactions: GellMann

Bflodukes

Registered User
Mar 29, 2019
1
0
This may be premature, but...

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on apportioning fault between Botts and Phil. Phil takes an incredible amount of heat on the board for his handling of the lines, etc., while Botts takes some, albeit less, criticism for his roster management at key points during this season, as well as the offseason.

How do you divy this mess up?
Its 50/50. Housley has mismanaged the game day roster since the 10 game winning streak. His defensive parings leave much to be desired and his insistence on keeping certain players in the lineup, when they are struggling, is mind blowing. Moving Skinner off a line with Jack, makes no sense, unless it was dictated by Botterill. Makes me wonder if they dont want him to reach 40 or they are already searching for a replacement. Botterill waited too long to supplement the roster. His trade of O'Reilly has blown up on him, first, with Berglund leaving and then with the performance of Sobotka and Thompson. Let's see what he does with the 1st round pick. I like the pickup of Montour, but we clearly lack size and stay at home defensemen to balance the back end. He should have reacted when we started the slide down the standings. Should Skinner walk, (I get that feeling) he would have to go. It's unfortunate, that going into his 3rd year, he will be on the hotseat. How he handles Housley will be the first test of the offseason and then what he does to strengthen the roster will be the 2nd. With a fanbase needing this team to make the playoffs, converting some draft picks into NHL rostered players is a must. With it looking like a coaching change is in the offing, attracting FAs could be difficult. As a former GM stated, Sabres fans will have to endure some suffering, before it gets better, but when will the suffering end
 

truthbluth

Registered User
Feb 2, 2011
7,184
6,415
I haven't made any effort to watch the team for about 5 games. It's probably my longest stretch in 15 years. The can both go. My prediction, neither will, and by this time next season, these guys will be playing in front of a half empty arena and Jack will be rumored to have requested a trade.
 

Josh007007

Registered User
Jan 17, 2019
112
8
When stl looked like they were going to enter a rebuild
Why did he not pull the trigger to get tarasanko or Shenn?

Aside from piling up draft picks ...nothing has been done
 

Josh007007

Registered User
Jan 17, 2019
112
8
Many people here mention the line combos as his fault - which is very amateur

His issue is the game plan ; where teams are easily able to pick off (unable to get the puck out of the D-- how many times has that happened?!?) --> is it too simple ? Too defensive risky ?

And his inability to adopt the team to the opposition
 

Ad

Upcoming events

Ad

Ad

-->