Moving On (Please!)

This just in: Daniel Briere's agent says things didn't go down the way Larry Quinn said they did. What happened? Who's telling the truth? Who's not?

Who cares? Do you hear me, Buffalo? WHOOOOOOOOOO CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARES?! Those of us not directly involved in the negotiatons and talks are NEVER. GOING. TO KNOW. THE TRUTH especially since our local newspaper seems to be fine with reporting one side of the story without bothering to get even a "no comment" from the other side. No one wants to look like the bad guy, okay? Quinn and Regier have a team to run. Pat Brisson has clients to appease and, I'm sure, would like to get new clients in the future. Chris Drury and Daniel Briere want to protect their reputations. No one is going to stand up and say, "I am solely responsible for this screw up" which is fine because I doubt any one person is solely responsible so can we please stop trying to figure out who exactly is to blame? Are we going to rehash this over and over and over for the next 80 odd days until training camp starts? Because it's really starting to get on my nerves. Buffalo News make your point about management screwing up already and move on. Larry and Darcy, quit defending yourselves because clearly some of us love you and some of us hate you and nothing is going to change anyone's stance on that. Chris and Danny, I love you, I appreciate what you did while you were in Buffalo, go away and let us forget you for a while and please take your agents with you. Fans, deal with the fact that Chris and Danny are on other teams because NOTHING IS CHANGING THAT and see what you can do about enjoying the players who are still here. And please decide whether you're going to complain if management refuses to spend a lot of money on a player OR complain if management agrees to spend a lot of money on a player because you really can't do both. And Lindy, would it KILL you to sound a LITTLE excited about next year's team? Because it's not like you've been given crap all to work with. And Blogger, what the heck is your problem with titles lately?

Ryan, Adam, Soupy... Carry on. I'm fine with you and God bless you.

There Ain't No Good Guy, There Ain't No Bad Guy

I've posted every day this month, twice yesterday! I'm on a roll!

Since this is a Sabres blog I suppose I'm obligated to comment on this story in today's Buffalo News. I find this... hard to believe to say the least. I can understand why people feel like management bungled negoitaions with Briere and Drury and yes, both situations probably could've been handled better regardless of the team's intentions with each guys. But Darcy Regier and Larry Quinn are, if nothing else, great businessmen. They reached an agreement with their top priority free agent and somehow overlooked making that contract formal? Sorry, I'm going to need more than an anonymous source on that one, guys. I'll believe elements of the story are true, but I'm not going to believe it's quite as straight-forward as it's being presented here.

It would help if this weren't the Buffalo News. They beat the "management is stupid!" drum so loudly and so repeatedly that I'm at the point where I disregard pretty much everything they say about Regier and Quinn. Regier has put together a stretch of quality hockey, consisting of some of the best talent in the league, and the News has never given him any credit for that. Everything he does is criticized from one angle or another - heck, the guy was criticized for being too honest to use Connolly and Afinogenov's IR status to his advantage even though what was being suggested was technically against league rules. The Buffalo News hasn't shown itself to be exactly unbiased when it comes to Sabres management so I'm not going to automatically buy what they're selling in this case. And for the record, journalistically speaking, there are a couple of things that bother me about the story. One, even I learned in a year and a half of journalism school that reporters really should get a source and then another source to back that one up before running with a story. And two, the story uses quotes from Chris Drury that are clearly about the situation in June and spins them to appear as if he's talking about last fall. That's cheap and irresponsible.

Here's the bottom line as I see it. This thing has totally spiraled. Everyone wants to find someone to blame, someone to turn into the bad guy and I'm just not sure there really is a bad guy here. Everyone was right, everyone was wrong. Everyone wanted something and didn't get it. Drury and Briere are gone, they're not coming back, let's move on and focus on the guys who are still here because one thing Darcy isn't wrong about is that there's still an excellent group of young talent in Buffalo. And honestly, part of me can't believe we're this upset about missing out on the chance to pay a guy who has averaged 23 goals and 58 points over the course of his career 7 million dollars. I understand that there are other things Drury brings to the ice and the lockerroom but that's a lot of dough.

To quote Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that."

Dear Buffalo...

Dear Buffalo,

CHILL THE HELL OUT!

Seriously, you people are killing me. Put down the telephones and turn off the sports radio. Kill the TV. Step away from the message boards. Take a few deep breaths. Relax.

Does it stink that we lost both of our top free agents and the faces of the franchise? Yes, it does. Will the absence of Chris and Danny next year affect the team on the ice? Yes, it probably will. Will the team look different next year than it did this past year? Yes, obviously it will. It boils down to this: The Sabres didn't want Danny, Chris didn't want the Sabres. It stinks and we the fans are left with huge holes in our hearts.

But it's not the end of the world.

Repeat after me. It's not the end of the world.

The Sabres still have a lot of young, still developing talent. They had four 30 goal scorers last year and a slew of guys who scored in the 20s. Most of those guys are still here. Did playing with Daniel Briere make Jason Pominville a better hockey player? Possibly. But I think he's played with enough different people over the last year and a half to show that he's also just a pretty good little hockey player. Oh, and let's not forget that string-bean between the pipes, the guy that's on the edge of being one of the best goalies in the NHL. He's pretty good too.

It's a different core than the team had three years ago, but you know what, THAT core was different than the one three years before that. It stinks for us, but it's the way of professional sports. Guys change teams and teams get different looks. We've survived the changing of the guard before and we'll survive it this time time too.

And you know what? I like this core. They seem to like each other and they seem to enjoy being together. I have a feeling that they're going to pull together and fight like hell next season, if for no other reason than to show everyone that there was more to the team than Chris Drury and Daniel Briere. Will they win the Stanley Cup? They might not. But they might. You never know. Most people agree that there was some kind of breakdown in team chemistry last season and most people seem to feel like that's why Drury and Briere left. But maybe the guys leaving will take the bad juju with them. Just because they're the veterans and the faces of the franchise doesn't mean they're in the right.

And as for the matter of what we're going to do about the "C", I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to slap it on a young guy who's never worn it before and we're going to ask him to grow into it. Just like we did with Chris Drury.

Am I being naive and optimistic? Maybe. But I'm fine with that. It'll be okay. It will. I promise.

Love,
Heather B.

Free Agency Sucks (e5)

Let me say, for the record, I'm mostly on Darcy's side here since that seems to be what all of Buffalo is talking about right now. I think we can all agree that the non-negotiating during the season needs to stop and yes, it might be nice if the team would think about extending contracts before they actually expire. But Daniel Briere and Chris Drury both got ridiculous contracts and while we maybe could've afforded to keep one of them at that price, it seems pretty apparent they wanted to both stay or both leave. (Which begs the question, why so insistent on playing here together while being perfectly fine playing elsewhere separately, fellas?) In the end, it seems like the Sabres didn't really want to go all out to keep Danny and Chris didn't really want to stay that much. And while it stinks to lose so much leadership in one day, it would also stink to have too much money wrapped into Briere and Drury when it comes time to renew guys like Vanek and Miller. There comes a point where you have to decide where you want to put the money and I can't really fault the Sabres for not going to ridiculous lengths to keep both guys in the fold. And for the record, I'm not believing for a second that Danny would've accepted 5 million in January no matter what he or anyone else says. He wanted a raise and he got it.

I am a little taken aback at just how much venom people are spitting at Darcy tonight. I know it was a disappointing day - Chris and Danny were important parts of the team and fan favorites - but geez, they're not exactly innocent here and I can't believe how many people are leaping to their defense. There are two arguments that seem to be coming up over and over that kill me:

One, the "These Guys Retire Young and Want to Set Up Their Families" argument. Please. At my currently salary, I'd have to work 299 years to make what Danny Briere made last season alone. If he can't take care of his family on the 25 million the Sabres offered him, I don't know what to tell you, he's an idiot. I'm not going to pretend I wouldn't go to the highest bidder if I were in the same situation, but if that's the case, I also probably wouldn't say, "I'd definitely take less to stay here."

Two, the "Darcy Didn't Make Them Feel Apppreciated" argument. Give me a break. It's a business - or so the athletes say when it suits them. What's he supposed to do, leave post-its in their lockers that say things like "Good job on that PK!" or "Congratulations on the hat trick!" My boss doesn't walk around patting me on the head all day - heck, I feel pretty safe in saying my boss has zero appreciation for the amount of work I do - and I still get up and go to work every morning. Eighteen thousand people stood up and applauded them after they lost game five of a series that consisted of some really crappy hockey including one of the most atrocious games I've ever had the displeasure of watching and they're not appreciated? Gimme a break. Oh, wait, I forgot. Fan appreciation clearly doesn't factor into these things.

By the way, I'm so glad we had the lockout so we could avoid big market teams sucking up all the free agents and raising the salaries to ridiculous prices. It's really working out well. I'm glad the Sabres have a smart, fiscally responsible GM in Darcy, but it doesn't really do much good when almost every other GM in the league is an idiot.

More on all this later. I'm too tired and cranky to think straight right now.