#the rest of the atlantic is flopping like a fish rn

[three-headed-monster]

i promise i’m not trying to pick the debate back up again, i just feel like it’s worth highlighting the fact we're 12 games into an 82 game season! the sabres are far from the only team with players having a bit of a sleepy start (noted 50 goal scorer zach hyman has the exact same amount of goals and assists as jack quinn; elias pettersson on a $92M contract and dylan cozens each have 1 goal and 3 assists). regardless of all the couch GMs trying to sit quinn for (checks notes) missing two shots recently, he definitely improved since the start of the season; the first 6 games, he’s been absolutely invisible! now you notice him out there. lindy deploys him like he believes that too, so personally, i’m not too worried :) it’s all coming together (it might happen faster if lindy picks a line and Sticks with it, though!) (that line being anything but kulich - cozens - quinn. i feel like we’ve exhausted that!) (personally i’d give the kid line an HONEST go, or put him on the third line with greenway and mcleod. and for god’s sake, lindy, don’t move dylan to the wing! you know that's not it, lindy!)

no you're so right anon, i agree with this completely!

i mean, i know it looks really dire because the team is 4-7-1 and that's not exactly a recipe for a winning team, but i think sabres fans often get so caught up with how bad the sabres are that they FORGET to look around and see what the rest of the league is doing. like the vancouver canucks were legitimately running lines yesterday, and no sabres fan has been talking about how they've been kind of abysmal to start the year too.

this team is the youngest team in the entire nhl, at like 25 years of age. i'm fairly sure they have one man over the age of 30 and that's zucker. they're going to be streaky and not always have it every night, because they're young, and they don't always know how to bring it every night. that's how young teams ARE. the toronto maple leafs who MADE THE PLAYOFFS in 2017 were literally EXACTLY THAT, and yet i see no one mentioning it.

teams go through ups and downs, and yeah it sucks, but i feel like the 14 year no playoff streak is clouding our judgement and making it seem like these guys are older than they are. like dylan cozens has been in the league half a decade but he's 23 because he started when he was a literal teenager. over and over we've seen that you can't expect every single draft pick to break out right away, especially since the pandemic stunted everyone's growth for like 2 years. same thing with jack quinn, i think you can reasonably expect two major traumatic injuries to kind of mess with someone's development.

the problem is, and always has been, with patience. sabrestwt lovesssss to talk about how management had no patience during the eichel years and made too many moves, without realizing they talk the EXACT same way NOW. and they don't even recognize it! lindy had no patience with dylan's line (which again has not been the same for more than 2 games in a row), and they want to move jack quinn for what? a second line winger? when no one is trading second line wingers right now, and we ALL know he's going to breakout and be a star when he's gone? and with devon and upl, literally NO ONE was talking about how it might not be good to have them be a tandem this summer, until they had a couple bad games and now suddenly we need to sell the farm for a goalie.

it sucks not to win. it does. but so does making rash decisions and idk it's not like the sabres haven't seen the negative consequences of that before