The Athletic Putting the ‘tank’ on trial

[Buffaloed]

 

[wunderpanda]

some of y'all wanted to tank. stop crying.

 

[Chainshot]

Darcy purged all the talent and loaded up on picks, the picks and prospects that Murray traded depleted a pretty thin prospect pool. Then not giving two ****s about developing the ones we did have has led little to no depth or competition from within. When this team was good, prospects moving up made the team better, that’s just not the case the last few years. It looks like that could change in the next year or two, with some pretty good looking draft picks the last two year, but patience and developing is key. I still think Murray’s biggest mistake was ignoring Rochester.

Murray and Regier were both crap at development and had done poor management of the Amerks. The difference between what the Leafs did and what the Sabres did is easily looking to their respective farm systems to see the outcome of those players at the time they went into their tank mode and why they came out of it how they did. Lack of depth and lack of later draftee turnout is a long-standing outcome of several regimes and multiple ownership groups.

 

[Crazy Tasty]

Eh, even before the Rochester core, it seems like, there was one or two players coming up from the minors... Audette, McKee, CuBro, Varada, Sarich, Max, Soupy, etc. When is the last time someone from Rochester actually graduated and played regularly? In the last 5 years, one player, Rodrigues.

 

[Washed Up 29YearOld]

What a cringey thread this has become

 

[ThunderD]

I can't believe how people get hung up on ROR winning. The guy was a lockerroom cancer who lost the will to play. Keeping him was just not an option even if we only got a bag of used pucks for him.

 

[ThunderD]

As for why the tank isn't successful yet (it still could be) the answer is clearly the ROR (from CO), Kane & Lehner trades. Not only did we take on 3 problem childs to try to win too soon, we lost a ton of prospects, took on cap space for guys like Bogo and worst of all, gave up 3 key picks in the 2015 draft. Those picks could've been on guys like Boesser, Roslovic, Konecny, Aho, Carlo, etc. we also lost guys like Compher & Zadorov who went out but by not having theose players, we would draft higher in '16 and get Tkachuk or Keller instead of Nylander. Possibly even Matthews or Laine. The only downside would be likely not getting Dahlin but we may have gotten Hughes instead.

 

[DolanPlsGoSabres]

I can't believe how people get hung up on ROR winning. The guy was a lockerroom cancer who lost the will to play. Keeping him was just not an option even if we only got a bag of used pucks for him.

This doesn't belong here but ROR wasn't the only player who lost the will to play and asked out under Phil Housley. Also, idk about Kane, but ROR and Lehner aren't being problem kids on their current teams, right? Maybe there were other problems?

As for giving up assets, you say we should have finished higher by not accelerating the rebuild in 2016. That is one year after the tank, and finishing 25th-ish or worse after drafting Jack Eichel would not be very pleasing, and probably unacceptable by ownership standards. The bottoming out ends at 2015, then build up.

As for Bogo cap, Bogo-Myers was close to cap neutral other than term, and we had no idea he'd break down this much. Bogo at his best would be a decent asset, but he declined terribly this year.

I do still agree we gave up an extra asset too much in each trade though - however I have my doubts that this organization would have developed any of their draft capital correctly - that includes Compher and Zads. (I'd love to have one or both on this current team) Other than those two, how much help would Armia (if developed as a scoring role, unlike his trajectory in WPG/MTL), Lemieux (no leverage), Grigs (Darcy messed up), in other words the rest of the prospects given up in the trades, be?

The 3 trades themselves in a vacuum are not the reason for the rebuild to be derailed. There were tons of other mistakes, like coaching (Bylsma, Housley), drafting (Nylander over Sergachev), failed development of depth players, improper addressing of depth issues (LHD black hole)...

 

[ThunderD]

This doesn't belong here but ROR wasn't the only player who lost the will to play and asked out under Phil Housley. Also, idk about Kane, but ROR and Lehner aren't being problem kids on their current teams, right? Maybe there were other problems?

As for giving up assets, you say we should have finished higher by not accelerating the rebuild in 2016. That is one year after the tank, and finishing 25th-ish or worse after drafting Jack Eichel would not be very pleasing, and probably unacceptable by ownership standards. The bottoming out ends at 2015, then build up.

As for Bogo cap, Bogo-Myers was close to cap neutral other than term, and we had no idea he'd break down this much. Bogo at his best would be a decent asset, but he declined terribly this year.

I do still agree we gave up an extra asset too much in each trade though - however I have my doubts that this organization would have developed any of their draft capital correctly - that includes Compher and Zads. (I'd love to have one or both on this current team) Other than those two, how much help would Armia (if developed as a scoring role, unlike his trajectory in WPG/MTL), Lemieux (no leverage), Grigs (Darcy messed up), in other words the rest of the prospects given up in the trades, be?

The 3 trades themselves in a vacuum are not the reason for the rebuild to be derailed. There were tons of other mistakes, like coaching (Bylsma, Housley), drafting (Nylander over Sergachev), failed development of depth players, improper addressing of depth issues (LHD black hole)...

I agree with you, I think I am saying a few things differently. As for the players we traded for, they may not be problems now, but they definitely were problems when we acquired them. So I would ask as a strategy, do you speed up the rebuild by acuiring problem childs? I agree that there were other problems (don't get me started on Disco). I also agree on the Bogo/Myers deal but had we avoided that we could've avoided an unforseen problem on the horizon.

To me the biggest problem was maybe development. However a massive problem was not just the players acquired or prospects we gave up, but those 3 picks we gave away. The '03 & '15 drafts were so deep and we knew going in that '15 was deep. Look at the players we could've acquired at or a few spots after each pick. As well, even if you combined those picks, look who we could've traded up to get in just the middle of the round.

Also, while you say ownership wouldn't allow us to tank one more year, remember Toronto was also tanking that year. They were going for Matthews, it would've been an easy sell. We didn't need to go full blown tank, but by not having those trades we could've just moved up 1 or 2 spots up in '16 and made a world of difference.