Sunday, January 30, 2011

pegula's impact upon darcy regier (already)

terry pegula is inching ever closer to becoming the new owner of the buffalo sabres...speculation is that the deal could be done sometime around the trade deadline, a date that is inching ever closer for gm darcy regier, who's in his usual pre-deadline, diplomatic role...for the most part...

there are times when the words that come out of our mouths are not necessarily ours...the conversation is in familiar territory, we frame words in a way that stays true to the tone that we've used over the years--a tone and a structure that has remained constant over the years because the environment we're in and the people around us are constants as well...

yet sometimes words enter into our vernacular that we'd never really used before simply because it's something that's stuck in our head from a previous conversation with someone outside of our constant...this someone says things we may or may not have heard before, but the words, now delivered with an aura of power and respectability surrounding them, carry significant weight and are etched into our subconscious...
 
we've heard "regier-speak" for the last three-plus years all within the friendly confines of the constant that has been the sabres for those years...on many occasions, we could cut and paste an interview from one of those years and seamlessly fit them into another interview from another year...

on january 28th, espn's pierre lebrun had an article on the upcoming trade deadline and one of his interviewees was regier...this was the day before pegula, apparently, impressed the comish and the nhl board of governors executive committee at a meeting the next morning...pegula and the league seem to be ready for the sale...and it seems as if regier is starting to feel pegula's impact...

here's the first quote from regier in the lebrun article:

"Most of us have players that we would make available even right now for a trade, either because they're underperforming and/or overpaid," Buffalo Sabres GM Darcy Regier told us this week. "But it's impossible right now to get an agreement on values. We're all hoping that we're going to be able to just charge a cost without taking anything back, and that's not reality. So I think, yes, we're all sitting around to the last day or two again [before the trade deadline]."

that paragraph opens up with regier lumping his players into a pool with other teams' players who are "underperforming and/or overpaid"...the rest falls into more traditional "regier-speak" centering around--"yes, we're looking into trades," "it's a tough market," "salary for salary," "player values," "getting a feel for the market," etc, but i don't think i've ever heard him explicitly lump his players into the category of "underperforming and/or overpaid" players...

the second quote goes like this:

"We're getting a lot of pop out of our young kids," Regier said. "Older players that we all believed in when we signed them aren't performing at the levels that they're capable of, or maybe we misjudged it. In some part, I think we could be selling veterans if we can sell them because we like what we see in our youth. I think it's going to be really interesting."

maaaayyyybe, at various times regier would say something to the effect that his players could be performing better, but i can't really recall a time when he implied that he (and his staff) made a mistake or "misjudged" a player they'd brought on board...maaaayyyybe in the past he'd mention the possibility of moving veterans, but i can never recall him using the word--"selling" in reference to moving them...even if he'd slipped those words by, i'm pretty sure i've never heard the complete train of thought laid out like he did in the proceeding quote...

lumping his players into the"underperforming and/or over paid" category?...admitting that they may have "misjudged" certain players?..."selling" vets?...

i do not know for a fact that darcy regier has sat down with owner-in-waiting, terry pegula, and/or any of his inner circle, but it's probably safe to assume that he has, likely more than once...and i'm pretty sure that pegula's veiw of the present and vision of the future (near-term) is firmly etched into regier's brain as well...and ya gotta believe that pegula has had a definite impact on regier, especially because it looks as if the ownership change will be completed mid-season...

the hints are there...

and if pegula is getting regier to admit to things--like he's fallible--that's a good thing...

11 comments:

  1. Good. Accountability.

    I think this could also be an indication that Regier will be allowed to actually try to do things. I still have serious doubts he was ever really allowed to do anything he wanted to beyond the draft under the current regime.

    I don't know that he should stay, but I'd like to see Regier operate this trade deadline under Pegula's watch as an audition (and perhaps the offseason depending how the rest of this season goes).

    I want to see if he's the ball-less wonder we've seen for the past several seasons, or if he's capable, when allowed, of making substantive changes to a team that badly needs changes.

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  2. Agreed..This is not typical Darcy at all. There was a point while the Sabres were losing games that Darcy had mentioned that the players were there but not ready to play. I took that as a shot to his coach-which I had never seen him do.

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  4. oops...

    regier dismantled "the hardest working team in the nhl" and fashioned a team that was "built for the 'new-nhl'"...when the style (d)evolved into more of a pre-lockout style, he was very slow to react and didn't seem to know how to adapt...

    can anyone say that they have, or had, an emotional attatchment to this team--as a whole--over the last 3+ seasons?...maybe with individual players, but not the team as a whole...in fact, the reactions i've read range from "meh" down to "hate"

    regier's ultimate demise may well be his unwavering devotion to "la core" and his inability to draft and/or sign top-end players who can play in any style nhl...

    regier is what he is...even if he were able to manage unfettered, would he land a mike richards, eric staal or loui eriksson?...or would it be more like a joe thorton, marc savard or johnathan cheechoo?...

    it's the ole' leopard changing his spots thing for me...

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  5. if y'all want more reading material concerning regier and ruff, click on their lables...

    i unloaded my brain a few times so there's alot of reading material...perfect for a layoff that takes us to this friday ; )

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  6. any chance of an upgrade in the comment section, so we can be more like some other site that wants your cell phone number?

    other then that, solid!!!

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  7. appreciate the props as well as all the plugs on the other site, homie...

    brings a smile to my face...

    solid!!!

    as for the "upgrade," hmmmm, never really thought of it

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  8. yeah, you're right...

    pretty cool havin' y'all come over to the site...

    i always said that if i could find a site with similiar interaction, i'd head there...

    obviously haven't found one yet...that's why i'm here

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  9. Awesome blog boos! I never saw the Regier quotes. Very glad you put up this post. Keep up the good work.

    and I agree with Homie. Get some message boards/upgrade the comments section and I'll never touch HockeyBuzz again.

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