Buffalo Boy's Blog

Im listening to Schopp and the Bulldog on WGR 550 and I want to turn it off because of the negativity of the fans of this team. How can anyone criticize this hockey team or its management?

Plain and simple, this team spent to the salary cap two years in a row following the lockout, so calling them cheap is a joke. Last year, they had two centers who they could have signed. They could have but then you would have lost Thomas Vanek and you would have been looking at not being to lock up Derek Roy long term because you would have had Briere or Drury eating up that money.

If anything last year I fault this team for signing guys like Numminen and Andrew Peters and not going out and finding a defenseman who was younger and ready to play. But these other squabbles over how this team has been mismanaged is a joke.

I would rather have Thomas Vanek and Derek Roy over Daniel Briere and Chris Drury any day of the week if for any other reason than the fact that Vanek and Roy have more productive years ahead of them that either of our former two co-captains.

Brian Campbell's contract even at $5 million a year like he would have taken last year would have taken them over the cap. There is no way this team was going to spend the $56 million it took for Chicago to sign him either.

So going into this season if no moves are made I feel pretty good about this team. They have a ton of depth at forward which someone like Max, Kotalik or Connelly could easily be traded off for defensive help. What other team could say they have 15 NHL caliber forwards (thats five lines worth) ready to go?

Drew Stafford and some of the youth on this team last year should be much better than last year with some playing time under their belt and their young stud defensemen Mike Weber and Andrej Sekera will be better as well.

This is not a dying team. They are a young team and a deep team. Remember, even if they don't go out and sign a defenseman in free agency they can still try Michael Funk, Nathan Paetsch or Marc-Andre Gragnani. They have had incredible success pluging young guys in and getting immediate results.

Their problem isn't management, their problem is they are young. But with the long term committment to Paul Gaustad, hopefully, they signed their new permanent captain who can lead the way. Cut out the negativity and chill out and give this team a chance.