sabrebuild
Registered User
I'm going to waste my own time by spelling this out again. Murray came in with a horde of extra assets...and wasted most of them in order to build half a roster with no quality future depth. Botterill came in after the extra assets were gone. Point wise, the team was not going to get any better. Lehner was still going to have personal problems, O'Reilly was still going to lose his motivation, and Kane was still going to be a headache off the ice and not re-sign. There was nothing Murray could do to make that team better if he stayed, and he probably makes it worse with more big-swing trades.
Take a look at this list of Murray's moves -Murray's drafts and trades
The extra picks he had from the Vanek trade (and others), and from the Miller trade he did himself, were wasted in future trades.
For example, let's look at #1 on the list, the last "tear down" trade and what he did with it after cutting through all the turnover of assets that followed...
Miller, Ott, 2015 3rd, 2016 3rd, Pysyk, 2016 2nd, 2016 3rd,
for (after sifting through the trades of Halak, Neuvirth, Stewart, and picks)
1st used in the Kane/Bogo trade, Chad Johnson, Karabacek, and Asplund.
That's pathetic. That's pathetic, and that entire chain of downward trades is not even in the top three of his worst, future depth gutting moves. There's still the trades for Fasching/Des (lost McNabb and two 2nds), Kane/Bogo (lost a 2015 1st and a slew of lesser assets), and Lehner/Legwand (another 2015 1st). I'll just stick this link here as a reminder for those who forget...
Sabres still paying for the sins of Tim Murray
TLDR; But an open question for all you Botts truthers, how many years and how little success will it take for you to stop the insane arguments and agree he failed. 2 more years? 4?
Honestly, for a group of opinions that uniformly say get over the trade that shall not be named, its pathetic to constantly read, but but but Murray ruined everything.
Ya I read that article before, shockingly the author was a big proponent of the O'Reilly trade to the blues.
You are out to lunch on this and have been since the moment the O'Reilly trade happened.
Murray did come in with a horde of assets. And he had an actual huge mess to fix, unlike Botts.
Maybe you forget what was here during the tank.
Maybe we should remember that this teams only decent players at the tank were girgs, ennis, Risto and Moulson.
Maybe we should live in reality were the return for Miller with no term and Ott with no term was perfectly fine.
I mean, do you really think that Miller, Ott, pysyk and a few 3rd round picks should return more than 2 full years of Kane on a good cap and Bogo and a good prospect like Asplund?
You seem to have this myopic view point that any future trades that Murray made were utter wastes, but the future trades that Botts makes are smart trades that give all these prospects time to grow.
Wtf are you talking about? Most of their bad cap the last two years have been Botterill pickups. Who sees a bad contract in moulson, Bogo and Okposo and says hey let me add more bad contracts, give away actual value for the bad deals and profit. They don't have some core of youngsters that Botts has drafted or traded for to even take advantage of this lunatic theory that didn't happen.
You defend this guy like he is family, but in reality, in three off seasons, the only definitive talent upgrade that has happened is lucking into drafting Dahlin.
Kane moved out, replaced by Skinner
O'Reilly out for poop/ arguably a year later Marjo is a junk lite version.
And zero other offensive improvements. No physicality brought in to replace trades and expansion.
Again, tell everyone all you want about this epic trash fire that had to be fixed.
But the facts are still the same. He had all of his future picks. He had solid prospects to trade or deal. He had only two truly bad contracts when he came in and had cap space to improve.
He had two star centers either in their prime or entering it, he had two star wingers and one defender who had a lot of league value.
I get it, you think Murray did it all wrong, and Bott's would have done better with a slow patient approach.
Maybe he would have. But that doesn't matter because that isn't how it went. And while I disliked a lot of Murray's moves, its revisionist history at its finest to say he ruined the team.
The team had 1 person who was screwed up, Lehner. O'Reilly didn't lose his motivation, his stats were similar every year and he put in more effort than anyone on that last place team. Who knows if Kane would resign or not. Botts never indicated he offered and they got back luckily a first for him anyway. Maybe not improving the team's roster in year one was not a good idea...
Just for real facts again, Botts created a last place team in his first year. Nobody is asking how could he not create a playoff team with Murray's ruinous leftovers, it's why can't they just improve slightly. Year two, they get a free 40 point defender, growth from Sam and Jack and they still can't get to the Murray base of success in the standings.
Maybe they will figure it out this year.
But you might want to hold off the told you so's in gameday threads till they actually prove something.