stempniaksen
Registered User
- Oct 12, 2008
- 11,020
- 4,290
How did his moves blow up exactly? Ryan O'Rielly, Evander Kane and Lehner are all doing incredibly well. Bylsma is no worse than many many other hires and has Cup pedigree. The crazy owner didnt let his team or plan gel he gave him 3 years.
We disagree on Lehner and Kane I suppose. They are great in their new environments, but having them on a young Sabres team with a lack of leadership was a mistake, imo (moreso with Kane than Lehner obviously, as his issues were vastly different). He also acquired an absolute cap anchor with Kane, in Bogosian. I also don't think you can discount the fact he paid A LOT (by goalie standards) for Lehner. He kind of got tunnel vision on that one and did whatever it took to acquire Lehner when he could have been more patient in a saturated goalie market.
He also had the Hudson Fashing trade in which he kinda locked in on his guy and paid "whatever it took" to get him. That ended up being Brayden McNabb and two 2nds, which is insane.
There's also the Jimmy Vesey trade where he gave up a 3rd for ~2 days worth of negotiations rights, only to watch him sign the with the Rangers.
The ROR trade was great, but beyond that I only see minor moves, moves that blew up or moves that didn't fix any specific issues the team had. His "fixing" the defence involved trading for a past-his-prime Gorges, a band-aid Kulikov and crossing his fingers hoping for the best.
Outside of ROR, he took his big swings on the wrong guys, imo. He also got blinded by "getting his guy" and paid whatever price it seemingly took. Props for the brass balls it takes to do that, but when they don't pan out those moves look really silly.
The proof is kind of in the pudding though, the Sabres never turned a corner under his watch. He was brought in to make moves that could get the Sabres moving in the right direction. Instead they bottomed out and he was fired.