Murray completes the Impossible

[TalkingProuder]

To me, there are three Regiers. The first Darcy traded for Briere and Drury and created a juggernaut team that should have won the Cup in 2006. That era ended due to Sabres ownership not committing to keeping the core and Darcy's decision to try to keep Drury over Briere.

The second Regier was the worst. The post captains era where we sucked at drafting, had no prospects, and Darcy decided to keep favoring skill over grit and leadership. Those Sabres teams were some of the softest ever assembled.

The third Regier brought in Devine to run the draft and realized what a mess the team was and started the suffering, tank, whatever you want to call it. He made great trades of pending FA's and brought in tons of prospects and picks including

Rasmus Ristolainen
Zemgus Girgensons
Nikita Zadorov

Making us a team that would be very hard to play against in the near future. I sometime wonder which Darcy we fired and kind of liked his drafts with Devine. Oh well, we never found out because Ron Rolston was so bad that Pegula had to step in and fire everybody.

 

[SabresFanNorthPortFL]

Regier did have his hands tied with the ownership situation, so I find it difficult to blame for lack of moves when there may not have been money/ownership support for them. Blaming him or ownership for specific things is up for debate and nobody knows what was happening behind the scenes.

I think that he did well on the start of the tear down, but his handling of having so many kids up/Rolston's coaching mess (literally the worst I've ever seen an NHL team look) was his undoing and he deserved to be fired for it. Plus there was no reason not to make Hodgson take a bridge deal.

The whole semantics with what's a tank/rebuild/teardown/build up/whatever is tedious, no team is ever done tinkering with any line-up, so the 'rebuild' is never done anyway.

Without a war of words.....

Darcy never addressed the center situation for 5 years.

Enough said.

 

[BowieSabresFan]

jBuds said it. I think the accelerated rebuild has gone swimmingly, but Regier had already initiated prior to Murray and finishing a teardown is going to be easier than building. Let's see what happens with the coaching situation and what he does with the myriad amounts of picks and prospects we have.

Yea, I think we should maybe wait to see what happens in the future when we can just the rebuild by things like games won, playoffs reached, Stanley Cups, etc...

 

[RiotAct]

Thread title is hilarious. Nicely done, OP.

 

[CatsforReinhart]

Without a war of words.....

Darcy never addressed the center situation for 5 years.

Enough said.

They tried, they were told to not even bother to show up for Richards.

How many number one centers were traded in those five years? Maybe Regier should of went to the number one center apple tree.

Regier failed but he was handcuffed IMO, video scouting was terrible too just to add to it.

 

[Baccus]

Without a war of words.....

Darcy never addressed the center situation for 5 years.

Enough said.

No doubt, but just saying that ignores that the only realistic ways to get good centers is to get top picks in the draft or sign expensive FA, neither of which were particularly viable options to the current ownership. But the lack of centers, even 2nd/3rd liners was a serious fault that he was very very slow to even start addressing.

 

[sabres4ever]

Do you realize how close this whole thing really was? Think about it. Having had it come down to the second to last game of the year. Imagine if Gorges hadn't have gone down for the rest of the year. Girgensons. Ennis for a bit. You get the idea. An extra goal here and there, a stopped goal here and there could have easily made us 29th instead.

Last year we were last by 14 pts I think. I could end up even depending on the game today.

Talk about dodging a bullet.

 

[Baccus]

They tried, they were told to not even bother to show up for Richards.

How many number one centers were traded in those five years? Maybe Regier should of went to the number one center apple tree.

Regier failed but he was handcuffed IMO, video scouting was terrible too just to add to it.

The bolded was one of the stupidest ownership/management decision of all time....

 

[CatsforReinhart]

The bolded was one of the stupidest ownership/management decision of all time....

Purely a financial one.

 

[Baccus]

Purely a financial one.

Still stupid. Shooting yourself in the foot isn't a great financial tool.

 

[Dubi Doo]

I like Murray's moves thus far. He seems to have a vision, but he was put in an ideal situation. Regier left his with a surplus of assets, and the tank was already rolling strong.

 

[joshjull]

The bolded was one of the stupidest ownership/management decision of all time....

Video scouting is pretty misunderstood. It was used to scout as many players as possible. More than could ever be viewed by our scaled back scouting staff at the time. It was also used to narrow down who the organization sent their limit amount of scouts to watch live. For Regier and company it was a smart way to see as many players as possible. We still use video scouting and now have an enormous scouting department. Best of both worlds.


Here is a good read on it http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=1234791

 

[Jacob582]

Do you realize how close this whole thing really was? Think about it. Having had it come down to the second to last game of the year. Imagine if Gorges hadn't have gone down for the rest of the year. Girgensons. Ennis for a bit. You get the idea. An extra goal here and there, a stopped goal here and there could have easily made us 29th instead.

Last year we were last by 14 pts I think. I could end up even depending on the game today.

Talk about dodging a bullet.

Imagine if Gionta and Foligno didn't get hurt in December against the Bruins.

 

[Baccus]

I wasn't referring to the use of video specifically. My memory (old and decrepit as it is) was that they drastically cut back on actual scouts at the time.

Glancing at that article, it doesn't really say they didn't cut back on live scouts, and suggests they did with "But although Golisano was an owner who spent well above the salary cap minimum, his budget for the amateur side was not nearly so big, forcing management to expand the process by a significant degree."

Doesn't really matter any more, but goes along with my broader point of Regier issues being intertwined with ownership issues (as if that's not always the case).

As an IT person I'm almost always in favor of more tech to enhance/supplement knowledge. Sometimes you just need a bigger hammer though

 

[HogtownSabresfan]

How much credit does Murray get for Sens run? Lot of gems on that team, starting with Mark Stone. Did TM have a hand in that? The kid is a 6th rounder. Wow!

http://video.senators.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=138322

 

[Der Jaeger]

To me, there are three Regiers. The first Darcy traded for Briere and Drury and created a juggernaut team that should have won the Cup in 2006. That era ended due to Sabres ownership not committing to keeping the core and Darcy's decision to try to keep Drury over Briere.

The second Regier was the worst. The post captains era where we sucked at drafting, had no prospects, and Darcy decided to keep favoring skill over grit and leadership. Those Sabres teams were some of the softest ever assembled.

The third Regier brought in Devine to run the draft and realized what a mess the team was and started the suffering, tank, whatever you want to call it. He made great trades of pending FA's and brought in tons of prospects and picks including

Rasmus Ristolainen
Zemgus Girgensons
Nikita Zadorov

Making us a team that would be very hard to play against in the near future. I sometime wonder which Darcy we fired and kind of liked his drafts with Devine. Oh well, we never found out because Ron Rolston was so bad that Pegula had to step in and fire everybody.

What about the Regier that finalized the 1999 ECF team?

 

[Orvald]

Not to be a partypooper, but completing the impossible is winning the cup 3xtimes in 5 years.

This is just the first step in place.
Cojack, Reinhart, grigorenko, larsson, ennis, girgensons, Moulson, kane, bogo, ristolainen, zadorov (half year in rochester), McCabe, pysyk, gorges. This will be start of the core, he needs to look to add/trade for some pieces now. Mainly a top 6 RW.

I have a feeling he'll give lindback a shot next year and trade johnson out of here. Lindback looked better than neuvirth to me.

 

[Tapu Coco]

Constructing bad rosters doesn't really make rebuilding "impossible", it does the opposite. Maybe it was just all the stress we had to endure that made it seem so daunting, especially this season, when the sabres made this a lot harder than it needed to be. Regardless, he's done a good job

 

[CatsforReinhart]

Video scouting is pretty misunderstood. It was used to scout as many players as possible. More than could ever be viewed by our scaled back scouting staff at the time. It was also used to narrow down who the organization sent their limit amount of scouts to watch live. For Regier and company it was a smart way to see as many players as possible. We still use video scouting and now have an enormous scouting department. Best of both worlds.


Here is a good read on it http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=1234791

Not trying to hijack the thread but sabres used video to scout overseas and cut back on using scouts overseas. If you think that is smart just ask the detroit red wings how they do it.

Staring at a film doesn't tell you who the player is and yes, our drafting was terrible then.

 

[SabreBlood]

How many file for bankruptcy protection? How many small market teams with in house salary cap restrictions have won the cup? Won the presidents trophy?

This team was taking money from the NHL when Golisano was owner but in the end you are right, there are worse GMs out there.

It is too bad you want to turn this into a Regier bashing thread.

As long as it doesn't turn into a "Thank you Darcy" thread.

The Sabres filed for bankruptcy 12 years ago. Are you kidding me with that?

 

[Chad Thundercock]

I like Murray's style so far, but let's wait for praise until he wins a playoff game, or any game, or tries to win any game.

 

[SabreBlood]

Not untrue, however I would say that any team with an in-house cap of any significance is basically going to be a playoff bubble team, which is pretty much the definition of what they were after the loss of Drury & Briere, so that created something that wasn't going to get fixed until basically now.

You want to just blame Regier, that's up to you, but it's pretty rare for anything to be so clearly black and white.

It was impossible for the Sabres to have a better roster in the last 7 years after the exodus Drury/Briere? You can't say that as if it's a fact. They also didn't have a self-imposed cap in every season after they left.

I don't want to blame Regier. He was in charge of the roster and the hockey department, and there was far too much bad compared good over that period of time.

And that's why we had to bottom out. Not because he was some great GM, but because he fell apart as one.

 

[Baccus]

It was impossible for the Sabres to have a better roster in the last 7 years after the exodus Drury/Briere? You can't say that as if it's a fact. They also didn't have a self-imposed cap in every season after they left.

I don't want to blame Regier. He was in charge of the roster and the hockey department, and there was far too much bad compared good over that period of time.

And that's why we had to bottom out. Not because he was some great GM, but because he fell apart as one.

I can't say that, and I didn't say that at all.

Yes he's responsible for the lack of acquiring new centers. But my point was that, it's not easy to acquire new centers outside of spending tons in FA or top picks. So if ownership wasn't going to spend at least in the years after the captains left, where were these top lines centers coming from?

Again, ignoring the ownership issues is silly, but whatever, he's gone, and this period of hockey is long gone as well.

At least we have some center prospects now and to come

 

[Savitar]

How much credit does Murray get for Sens run? Lot of gems on that team, starting with Mark Stone. Did TM have a hand in that? The kid is a 6th rounder. Wow!

http://video.senators.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=138322

Yes indeed

 

[sand1138man]

At this point Murray looks like an amazing GM, he has actually made moves to make our team better with Kane, and made some smart moves, and every interview he was calm like he knew that buffalo was going to clinch.......great job mUrray!!!! excited for the future!