Cleanse The Palate (pegula buffalo bills buffalo sabres)

pegula buffalo bills buffalo sabres

Cleanse The Palate

By GARTH'S CORNER

Sep 13, 2017 • 8:01 pm

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It was just before 1:00 pm EDT on Friday when my phone vibrated. It was a text from my son texting me that our beloved Buffalo Bills had just traded wide receiver Sammy Watkins and defensive back Ron Darby. My sushi platter would have to wait until later. Much later.

Rookie Bills GM Brandon Beane traded Watkins and Darby traded for players on expiring contracts and draft choices.

I immediately flashed back to when then Buffalo Sabres GM Tim Murray traded popular veteran leaders Ryan Miller and Steve Ott for draft choices, roster players and futures back in the day.

Out with the old. In with the new.

The Miller-Ott trade signaled that the Buffalo Sabres' infamous tank was on. The team had an aging core of leaders that needed badly to be cultivated and turned over.

Beane, like Murray before him, is now stock-piling premium draft choices to ensure a successful future for the Buffalo Bills.

Watkins, the fourth overall pick in the 2013 NFL Draft, was about to begin the final season of his entry level contract. Prior to the two Friday blockbuster trades, there were serious doubts as to whether Watkins would be open to re-signing with the Buffalo Bills. Trading him Friday makes sense in that Beane gets value in return for a player who may have flown the coop as a free agent and likely would have left without the Bills getting compensation for him.

Darby is a talented player with a high ceiling in terms of his future. Would he have re-signed with the Bills when his entry level contract expired?

The world will never know.

Former Bills GM Doug Whaley drafted Watkins and Darby out of college football factories Clemson and Florida state, respectively.

Whaley was fired five months ago. Now Beane is making his mark on the Buffalo franchise by signing vets like Anquan Boldin and trading Sammy Watkins and Ron Darby for Jordan Matthews and E.J. Gaines. Let's not forget about the premium draft choices either.

The bottom line:

The Bills would likely have finished this season with a 7-9 or 8-8 record WITH Watkins and Darby in their lineup. No playoffs for the Bills for the 17th season in a row.

WITHOUT Watkins and Darby the Bills will likely finish with a 4-12 or 5-11 record and still not qualify for the playoffs.

With or without Sammy Watkins or Ron Darby, the Bill would have missed the playoffs.

That's why it makes sense to trade the assets away in exchange for more assets and future building blocks.

Buffalo sports fans have seen this movie before. The eyes don't lie. The tear down of the Bills just four weeks before the season opener was at first confusing to the Buffalo sports fan base. We get it. Losing stinks. we'd rather be making the playoffs and competing for championships rather than constantly losing great players and replacing them with youngsters with promise.

We've learned to accept it.

Today in pro sports, tanking has become the new normal. Owners and GMs are making wholesale changes on the fly to maximize their assets and to insure future success.

The Edmonton Oilers would not have won the NHL Draft Lottery had they not lost 44 of 82 games and finished with a Western Conference worst 70 points.

The Sabres would not have gotten their hands on generational center Jack Eichel were it not for them winning only 23 games 54 points in an 82 games season in 2014-15.

Why all the football talk in this hockey space?

The Bills and Sabres are very unique in that both teams are owned by Terry and Kim Pegula.

The Bills and Sabres share a rabidly loyal, combined fan base.

In Buffalo, fans live and die with their NFL and NHL teams.

The Pegulas saved both the Bills and Sabres from being relocated out of Buffalo to other cities. For that, the fans are eternally grateful.

The court of public opinion is important in Buffalo.

If the Pegulas want to make their fans happier in the wake of the Watkins and Darby trades, they should call a press conference for Saturday morning to announce the re-signing of Jack Eichel, the face of the Sabres franchise.

Eichel will be signing his brand new eight-year contract extension in the days to come.

Eichel's next contract is expected to come in at $10 million average annual value.

In June, Connor McDavid's signed a gargantuan 8-year, $100 million contract. McDavid's high tide will float all NHL ships moving forward.

McDavid's $12.5M AAV is the brand new gold standard by which all oung yNHL stars, like Eichel, Auston Matthews, Leon Draisaitl, Patrick Laine, John Tavares, and others will be paid. Nashville recently re-signed forward Ryan Johansen to an 8-year, $64 million contract extension. If McDavid didn't negotiate for and receive $12.5M AAV, there is no way in hockey hell that Johansen would have gotten $8M AAV.

McDavid was the first overall pick by the Oilers at the 2015 NHL Draft. Eichel was selected second overall by the Sabres.

Last season, Eichel scored 24 goals and 57 assists in 61 games played. He missed the first 21 games of the season with a high ankle sprain that he suffered in practice on the eve of the season opener.

The Pegulas would be wise to sign Eichel today to cleanse the palate of the collective Bills-Sabres fan base.

***

Brendan Freakin Guhle!

What a freak of nature!

Look at the vertical leap on the Buffalo Sabres D prospect.

Guhle tweeted out this impressive video of him scaling a 5 foot tower of gym equipment. Dude has wings on his skates! Guhle stands 6'1" and has added serious muscle mass to his body this summer. Guhle played at 185 lbs. last season. He weighed in at nearly 195 lbs. at July's development camp on Buffalo.

Sabres head coach Phil Houlsey must be drooling at the prospect of coaching Guhle in the NHL.

Guhle is the poster child for Housley's aggressive, 5-man attacking offensive style that we've seen in Nashville the past couple of seasons.

Guhle skates like the wind, loves joining the rush, can back check like a Lamborghini, has a bomb for a shot, loves to play a physical style and is smart beyond words.

Guhle is ear marked to start this season in AHL Rochester, however, he can earn himself Buffalo Sabres roster spot if he performs well in exhibition games and if he has himself a productive, error free training camp.

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