I should not waste my time, but I have seen too many people repeat the same nonsense about how Botts came into a horrible situation. It's absurd.
The team when Murray was canned was not a bottom 5 team. It was around 80 points, with Baby Jack and Sam.
The team had all of its first round picks. They had a still valuable Nylander. They had a valuable Guhle. A well respected Risto. Kane. O'Reilly.
Let's all live in reality. Was the team stacked? No. But then again teams seldom hire new GMs when everything is perfect.
But were they setup well for the longterm and the short? Yes they were. They had a couple bad deals, but some good ones, elc's for the twins, great cap for O'Reilly, Risto.
Then Botts did absolutely nothing to impactfully build the team in year one. Hired a moron with a bad resume, who was awful and they failed unimaginably bad.
And then the heavens opened up and we actually won a lottery and got the best prospect at the most needed position. And then Jeff Skinner became available with such a limited list of teams he was given away.
Now realistically anybody, feel free to explain how botts got a raw unimaginably bad starting point.
I mean crap, the delusions need to stop. Murray failed because he didn't do good enough. Botts has been failing because he didn't do good enough.
Botts wasn't buried by anything. He buried himself with trash choices like trading O'Reilly for poop, keeping a coach who was horrible for a year longer than necessary, picking up bad cap hits for bums and not finding the right deal to bring enough offensive talent to win.
It wasn't good enough when @struckbyaparkedcar was validly describing how they were not identifying or even trying low cost options.
It wasn't good enough to let a young team have to eat two full seasons of Housley.
It wasn't good enough to go into 3 consecutive seasons with the exact same number of impact forwards as the gm you replaced left you with.
I get that nobody wants to admit they were really wrong about something they argued for collectively. But its exhausting to have people tell you ignore your lying eyes day after day.
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