In shocking news (Sullivan article)
 

Jerry Sullivan is a dick!

I swear he has to be an HF poster.

Because they have more talent than the Sabres do to cover?

He even gets in the anti-Miller rant!


Jame, are you "Jerry Sullivan"? :laugh:

you gotta love that Ryan Miller is not elite talent but lets trade him for elite talent idea. shaking my head

Dick or not, I think he pretty much sums up the situation. No matter how you break it down, or what misfortunes you may point to that "caused" the problems, the Sabres haven't done squat in half a decade - despite spending plenty of money on plenty of talent.

The current administration has had every chance to get it done, and they have failed over and over and over again. I give Regier a lot of credit for making big moves, and I think Lindy's a great coach, but obviously something is fundamentally wrong from the top down.

I think it's more on the players, but from a management standpoint that's an extremely difficult situation to change. A lot of fans seem to think Darcy can just go to the hockey player pawn shop and trade everyone for better players, but that's just not how it works. The Sabres are likely stuck with the likes of Stafford, Leino, Vanek, and Roy whether they like it or not. Just in those four guys (and there are many others), there's a lot of talent that's not reaching its potential. Might as well see if there's someone else out there that can coax it out of them. Lord knows Lindy has had his chances.

yup, i wrote that article

while you may not agree with everything that Sullivan says I think his main point in the article everyone can agree with, Ruff and Regier need to go.

Cognitive dissonance. For someone who constantly claims his job is to bring "perspective," whatever that means, he constantly shows an inability to process and interpret information outside of whatever narrative he tries to push.

There's a good argument for getting rid of Ruff and Regier, IMO, but he didn't make it there, he's never made it, and Jerry Sullivan isn't the person I would want being the public face of that argument because he's not capable of making it.

A lot of truth sprinkled in with the usual pompousity.

It drives me crazy when Bucky and Jerry say in every article something along the lines of 'for the record, I said Regier should be fired in a column *years ago'. What, are you bragging that you made a prediction that hasn't happened but you still think should happen?

Journalism is dead.

I love how he criticizes Regier about certain moves and then ignores the good moves by saying there isn't enough space to dissect all of them. Instead of saying Regier robbed Nashville for their 1st, he says Nashville "gifted" the pick to Regier.

He might very well have a few good points, but his delivery is so obviously biased and shallow that he just shows to be another print media hack job artist.

I love how he brings up the Caps making it over us even though they were missing Backstrom and Green for half the season. He fails to mention that the Caps got those two guys back right when they needed them, and leaves out that at the same time the Sabres lost their two best dmen to injuries. I know people are sick of the injuries excuse, but the fact that those guys all got hurt or came back when they did matters. Just like Ennis coming back and moving to center helped spark our turnaround.

Just like when he talks about Philly and their injuries. Philly lost Pronger, but they still had Coburn, Timmonen, Meszaros, and Carle. Four guys who can play big minutes. And Briere might be hurt, but they still have Giroux, and as long as he's in the lineup they'll still be good.

The Sabres just don't have that kind of talent where they can overcome injuries to major players. It's annoying to hear people point to how well the Pens were playing without Crosby to say injuries aren't an excuse. Yeah because having one of the best players in the world in Malkin to pick up the slack wasn't the reason they still played so well.

Right, and I believe the argument goes that its Regier's fault that that is the case...

He might be a dick, but he isn't wrong in this case.

Good for him, hopefully a full on TBN hatchet job gets some changes made. It usually works with the Bills.

Yeah. But funny i haven't seen TBN cover any of the Parades downtown after the SuperBowl wins.

Other then that...they do great work.

Oh. And Harrington is working on getting rid of the Blooper Reels and Kiss Cams at the games. God Bless his angry heart.

I doubt that everyone agrees with that take.

Namely Terry Pegula and Ted Black.

I'm in this boat as well.

Tho' this offseason will be telling ... The core got their chance this year. It's time to move on from them. If R&R realize this and make moves to change the overall make-up of this team i will continue to support them....if they don't ... it will be time for a change.


Having said that..im pretty optimistic changes will be made. Only thing that worries me is the CBA hindering us from doing so

He goes over the top on a few things, but he's right on many things.

So you're saying players like Dupuis, Cooke, Neal(last year 1 goal since being traded), Adams, Kennedy, etc are more talented than our team? Because they made the playoffs without Crosby and Malkin last year. If you watched their games, you didn't see a team with pretty passing or snipes. You saw a team working their butts off to win a hockey game. It was a team of grinders winning hockey games while their biggest stars were out. That is character and determination, and many of our players don't have that.

While I hate Sullivan's role as a chronic whiner focused always on stirring up controversies and invoking arguments (and, when he's on WGR, it almost seems a script for him to do it in grandstanding manner), I can't really disagree with much in this article.

I think what becomes hard to swallow or tolerate for most of us fans when it comes to reading these opinionated rants from Sullivan or Gleason is that they just memorialize and remind all of us in print form of thevarious frustrations / disappointments that we'd rather forget or not dwell on (i.e. the Drury / Briere mess). Yet, as columnists, it's not unusual for them (or any other columnist) to take issues that the public perception is divided on or upset about and try to scrutinize / overanalyze / sensationalize, etc such towards drawing attention and readership.

Sullivan has valid points. Certainly if the franchise keeps the same Coach/GM tandem they've had in place for a decade and a half, you're not going to see fundamental change. That's pretty obvious. And every team battles through injuries. Some are resilient and some crumble. The Sabres need to become more resilient with stronger leadership and better depth. If teams like Philly and Pittsburgh have more talent, then the Sabres' front office needs to build the team's talent base like those franchises have done. Stop giving $3 and $4 million contracts to non-performers. I happen to believe Miller is an "elite" goaltender (Vezina trophy, Olympic Silver, strong playoff performances), but he is inconsistent and at over $6 million per season his value to the team is certainly up for discussion. Could they get the same production at half the price from someone else? Could they flip him for a true number one center? These are valid questions the GM and front office should be asking. Personally, I'd keep him, but suggesting they take a hard look at Miller and his cap hit is hardly out of line. Not sure how Sullivan asking valid questions makes him pompous. I'd say most of us on this board are a lot tougher on the team than he is!

The real fallacy that I think all of the Buffalo media point out, but which seems to get portrayed in the opposite way by the national media, is the consequences of the Regier-Ruff duo being in place for 15 years. While the national media always seems to hype in a positive light the rarity of any sports management pairing being together that long and how "special" that kind of stability and constancy is for a sprots franchise, the Buffalo media rightly remind us of the question what benefit exactly has that long-term duo provided? It has neither produced a champion nor led to some improved perception around the NHL that the Sabres are an organization to pursue playing for.

That's the thing....he sounds like your typical HF Poster (A Fan) .. and not an objective, professional journalist. Just annoying.

By definition, the role of any columnist is to offer an opinion or individual perspective about a subject. It is by design a different approach than reporting of facts / news or documenting an event. Neither Sullivan nor Gleason have ever pretended to be objective reporters or represented that what they write isn't their personal opinion / interpretation of a topic.

He didn't say shop him for Elite talent he said shop him while value is still high.

Regier got us a First, Coho, and Sulzer this year at the deadline and put this team in a great position for the future. I would be more willing to let Ruff go than Regier. If Regier doesn't make any upstanding changes then cut him, but I fully expect this team in the playoffs again next year and I believe that

Regier knows the problems. Even make Ruff a co-gm or assistant gm or something just get him away from the bench because he cannot coach.