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.