When You Are The LAUGHING STOCK Of The NHL

When You Are The LAUGHING STOCK Of The NHL

what’s up guys welcome back to the channel i hope you’re having a fantastic day today we’re going to be talking about the buffalo sabres from their recent draft selections the jj purka trade all the way to some of the negative stuff that’s been surrounding the franchise but before we get into that just a few housekeeping things for starters if you enjoy the content be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe i have some more content coming out this week not only on the nhl draft but a specific piece on the utah mammoth with a special guest and i think you guys are really going to like that so do all that good stuff now really helps support the channel and again thank you guys so much for all of the love second thing we’re going to get into your comments of the day but in a recent upload i did a different style for my video with a guest coming on helping me break down the anaheim ducks and the trevor zaggers trade and there were a lot of positive comments on that so first off again thank you guys so much and second off i hear you we’re going to be doing some more interviews with today featuring yet another guest zack from checking from behind but before i kick you guys over to that interview let’s get to your comments from that last video all right so these are all comments coming off my most recent upload with ducks game day breakdown talking about the zagger’s trade and the future of anaheim and the first comment comes from at manetas william bcn who says “this is a great deal for the flyers there is no risk possibility of getting a top six forward or you just trade him at the end of the year if it doesn’t work out looking forward to seeing him with mechov huge improvement for the flyers i think this is a totally true statement zagris is going to be an rfa at the end of the year if the flyers don’t like the fit with mechov they can move off of him but really this is a no- risk trade for philly the next comment comes from at hockey fan panthers who says “i’m excited for philly but i don’t think ziggress is actually going to change the team.” i kind of disagree i think ziggress has a lot of upside and if he can stay healthy i think playing with a guy like mechov really will complement his game and i really do think that sometimes a new opportunity is what it takes to get a player back to being at their highest potential so for ziggress i could very well see him getting 60 points this year if he can stay healthy with the flyers under the next comment comes from at southern california life who says “if the ducks sign mner or robertson even if they don’t make the playoffs verbique will save his job just don’t give away our future stars.” um maybe i i think there’s a chance i think if he can bring in a top free agent like mitch mner it will buy him a little bit more time but i really do feel like verbique is on the hot seat especially after trading arguably the face of your franchise in ziggris for practically nothing and the last comments just come from the majority of opinions from that video just basically saying trevor ziggress is overrated you can see a bunch of them right here and i think that some of you guys need to kind of refresh your takes on this kid he was playing with anaheim he wasn’t being given a lot of opportunities with an old school head coach who just really didn’t like his game and i heard a lot of rumors about when he was signing that contract with the ducks especially from ducks game day breakdown that verbique was just not a fan of how he handled those negotiations or his style of play so let’s see how trevor ziggress bounces back when he’s healthy in this new system under a head coach who i think is going to complement him quite nicely but again thank you guys so much for commenting on that video for this one i’m going to give you guys a bit of a prompt since we’re doing interviews like this now what’s one creator or player that you would like to see featured on this channel who would basically be your dream guest for me to bring on an interview drop your thoughts in the comments below and with all of that being said let’s finally kick it to my interview with zack talking about the buffalo sabres uh as you guys have requested you wanted more interviews we’re going to do a few more last time we did a full in-depth interview with ducks game day breakdown talking about the anaheim ducks today you guys are going to see someone who’s been on my channel kind of often now he’s become a recurring guest this is uh zach from the checking from behind podcast uh i know you guys have seen him a couple times but we’re going to give you a little bit of a brief insight to what he’s doing on his channel how he got into hockey some background on him and then we’ll also get into talking about his favorite team the buffalo sabres and kind of their downfall so first off what’s up zack how you been today
what’s going on thank you for having me on again and i know it’s been a few times like you said and always a pleasure to be on and i guess we’ll start with my hockey background and then get into the podcast stuff so i’ve been a hockey fan and hockey my entire life since i’ve been able to walk i’ve been able to skate and my dad who was playing hockey all the way up through high school and he was 18 he put me in skates the second that i was basically born and also on my mom’s side as well all my uncles and my cousins were into hockey as well also not only was i surrounded by hockey on one side it was both sides of my family so of course growing up in a big hockey family i didn’t play a lot of competitive hockey growing up though because it got so expensive for me and my brother that i just went into other sports but i still stayed a hockey fan still played on the odr every single winter and up here in buffalo winners like half the year so it’s pretty easy to play hockey half the year on an odr and now i was like i like talking about hockey with my friends why don’t i just start a podcast and it started two years ago originally we were called the deep dive podcast that was a that was a failure complete failure i rebranded to the checking from behind podcast and decided to focus just strictly on hockey because i had a passion for talking about hockey and i found that most of the content on the deep dive podcast was hockey talk now it was originally formulated around talking about like football and baseball when those seasons were going on i felt like you might as well just stick to one niche so i went with what i was passionate about brought on one of my buddies and now we have the checking behind podcast that i found at times originally it didn’t have the growth that i hoped for but again i was doing it as a hobby i loved it and then as i started to kind of i guess take the next step within the brand i was like okay like i’m meeting new people i whether it’s content creators whether it’s fans of the game whether it’s media personalities everything in in between and now i’m here and the nhl off season is off to a crazy start and overall i’m i’m excited to see what it has for us growing up so you said you played hockey uh since you were probably able to put on skates and stuff so did you grow up in buffalo and what kind of inspired you to get into hockey outside of your parents like did you like watch a game when you were younger a player that just like kind of stood out to you and that kind of just made you fall in love with the sport
thomas vanic i grew up idolizing he was my guy i was kind of obsessed with him and i want like as like a five six sevenyear-old growing up and at that time i was playing like some house league hockey nothing too crazy until i think like at the end of third grade and i wanted to be like him i wanted to be in front of the net get in the dirty areas and score goals and do all that stuff and so he was the guy that kind of brought me in and yeah i’ve grown up in buffalo my entire life in the same not the same neighborhood but like the same suburban area my entire 23 years and overall just being able to go out and having go on my uncle’s odr that he had up until probably about 14 or 15 when my older cousins moved out i being exposed to the game of hockey not only kept things fresh but also it kind of helped me learn about the game too growing up watching the sabres be good and now as we know 14-year playoff drought but it definitely did help having the sabres in ‘ 06 07 2010 2011 making the playoffs and making some deep playoff runs so having a good team around does help and we’re kind of seeing like a decline in hockey players i work at an ice rink at the moment and it’s kind of hard to find some teams from time to time because the sabres are so bad and i think a lot of that has to do with the influence of the sabres as a younger self and also just being exposed to the game throughout my family and everywhere else
uh now that we’re kind of done talking about your background and stuff obviously you mentioned you’re a big buffalo sabres fan and they’ve been in a little bit of negative news lately so why don’t we start by talking about um the negative stuff and then we’ll get into whether or not you feel positively about their draft start last night but jj perka was traded to utah um for i think it’s michael kessler and uh josh stone i believe was the package back
um i’ve seen some mixed reviews about this i’m on the side of thinking that this is a bit of a bad trade obviously i know there’s some upside with getting a right-hand defenseman who’s kind of big um still young what do you feel about this with buffalo are you feeling a bit of dja vu are you optimistic or are you just full-blown ready to go to dallas at this point
so i kind of overreacted the trade i’m not going to lie i i woke up at 6:00 a.m to my phone being blown up that we traded jj purka and i’m like “okay didn’t really expect it like this what’s the return?” i’m like “i’m assuming some like fourth overall package or like maybe we’re getting somebody like gothier although that would be hard to prime from utah but player like jj purka you never know.” and i see michael kerling and josh stone don’t get me wrong kerling is exactly what the sabres needed a 6’5 or 6’6 right-handed defenseman who i’ve seen some people compare him of the ta thompson of on the blue line dude’s lengthy he’s huge and his awareness he’s not necessarily physical but he he can shut down opponent’s lanes he can get inside of passing lanes and he can overall use his long reach to really break up plays whether it’s in transition off defensive zone and he can even move the puck too in the offensive zone and up the ice on a breakout and now that i’ve had a couple days to really think about it i don’t necessarily think it’s a bad trade i think utah wins it because they get the best player in the trade and i will live by that that in any trade if there’s one clear player that is the best player that team wins the trade especially for a team like utah that i felt like could use a guy like jj purka they already have a great core around them and now you just add a guy and they didn’t really have to give up a ton especially because they do have a couple more blue line prospects coming up through the system that should be ready very soon so kerling a 25-year-old main pieces of detroit trade coming back to buffalo of course probably gonna stick him with owen power and i think mission successful getting a true defensive defenseman in a way and michael kerling to play with owen power now the only question is how are you going to fill jj peters’s void offensively superstar i think he has close to 80 point potential i’ve seen some people where they think he might already hit his peak by now offensively he can go ghost at times but when he is going he’s like he’s so he’s so good and i wouldn’t necessarily put him in the elite category yet i think he’s an emerging star now the one problem i get with jj purka is his defensive game he was horrible defensively but again you don’t pay every single guy in the league to play defense you pay a lot of guys to score and where are most of the players that are getting paid right now they can score sure of course you have a lot of two-way players that are really good and you see a lot of the stanley cup teams or contending teams have a ton of two-way guys i totally get that but jj purka just defensively he was a ghost and he wasn’t good and if he wasn’t contributing offensively you didn’t notice him for games on end and i think that’s where you run into the problem and also i’ve heard some stuff where jj purka would be out partying until like 4:00 or 5:00 a.m sometimes even the night before a game going out to bars when he has to be up at 10 11:00 for morning practice so that’s all i’m going to say on that i have heard a couple other rumors i don’t want to spread false information about jj burka that i can’t quite confirm right now um but overall i think it was a win in utah’s books but i’m not necessarily upset on the sabres end why don’t these players want to resign in buffalo it’s less about why is buffalo trading these players because we know why buffalo’s trading these players they don’t want to stay we saw with jack eel we’re seeing the same thing with jj purka the culture there the front office they don’t seem to click well with these young stars and they’re way too quick to just give up on someone with potential because maybe there’s something outside of their play if we look back at jack eel it’s the surgery right they don’t support the player the player gets upset he wants to leave jj purka now maybe they were bugging him about him doing stuff off the ice which in my eyes if you have a 70point player what do you care what he’s doing off the ice i don’t think that jj purkal was the reason that buffalo was a worse team this year than they were years prior i think that there’s an underlying issue with their front office so if you had to summarize this like as quick as you probably could to say who is the most responsible for the culture set in buffalo and how does that change what would your response be cuz there’s probably a million pieces right
there there is i’m i’m going to tie these two together terry beigula and kevin adams
okay
terry beigula it just feels like he doesn’t want to spend money and i i know kevin adams in interviews has said that there’s no internal cap i’m calling on that i think terry he doesn’t want to spend money if he doesn’t have to um and then i think kevin adams he just says the wrong things and again like you said the organization gives up on players too quickly they think they’re this stern organization that sets their foot down and is like “you’re not going to do this you’re going to listen to us.” and then when the players get upset they have no problem getting rid of them for you know a bag of chips so that’s just my take on it
yeah and i think it’s fair to kind of address this if you’re a buffalo fan like really think about the stars that they’ve had like i’m sure you saw in my post the other day the players that buffalo has gotten rid of and i can list them off just the top of my head we’re talking about sam reinhardt jack ryan o’reilly lena smark and the list continues to go on and on with jj purka and dylan cousins being the latest pieces and to me a trend that i’ve been noticing on this list is offensive players don’t want to stay in buffalo why do you think that is why can they retain defenses and why does their defense look so solid but their offense continues to get worse and worse no matter how well they draft uh i wish i could answer that with a solid question i mean a solid answer i think part of the defensive part is i think the coach that they have right now i know it goes pat before lindy ruff but it feels like lindy ruff is trying to bring in tougher guys and he has a big say in who comes in via whether it’s trade or free agency who we saw last year his first off season back with buffalo bringing in guys like a mloud who he was great off defensively in edmonton but offensively he was kind of sputtering at times and sure he found his game in buffalo putting up a careerhigh by a wide margin 50 plus points but i think part of the reason is they want to play a more defensive style game they were 30th in the league in goals against per game how much of that can you put on uklukan and sure you can put some of it on but it doesn’t help when the sabers are one of the worst team and expect the goals against too and all like these high danger shots against and all like these underlying analytics that they weren’t great at and then offensively i don’t know because you’ve had guys like ta thompson sign an extension who is one of the most prolific goal scorers in the league and you can’t seem to build around him and a guy like alex tuck and at one point you had quinn cousins and purka two seasons ago not even probably 16 months ago being talked talked about a potential 10 plus year second line that could play behind a guy like a tae thompson and eventually jj purka and now your top line consists of koolage benson and thompson and i i like koolage and benson for sure for sure they’re not topline guys right now and you had topline potential guys on your roster for the past four or five years and you’ve just gotten rid of them and sam reinhardt i i’m making an article right now about the sabres culture in fact sam reinhardt wanted to commit to buffalo longterm and kevin adams just gave him a one by $3.5 million deal and they tried to work out a long-term deal and buffalo kept actually they kept trying to work out a deal they kept throwing short-term deals at sam reinhardt and reinhardt’s like i’ve had enough of this i’m not resigning with you guys if you’re just going to give me a three-year deal and then florida gives him the three-year deal after the trade and of course now he signed the 8-year deal last off season so i think the front office has just not put the great pieces around ta thompson or alex tuck and it’s shown right now and jj purka it felt like he just didn’t want to be here because i don’t think he was buying into lindy ruff’s system and i think it just ends at that
okay and uh now last night they were in the top 10 again for the draft what are your thoughts about their selection what do you think about this piece going in i believe they drafted a defenseman in the first round again so what what’s the thought process here right we’re trading for defenseman you have a pretty solid blue line i would say not sure if they’re getting rid of bow and byum at this point or not he’s still kind of being rumored so where does this kid fit in where does it fit in with buffalo’s projections at this point
he’s not going to be on the nhl team this year i don’t think he’s even going to be at training camp
but he has second pair of potential i did a little bit of a scouting report on redeem murka when i did one of the sabres targets going into the draft and he was my top defenseman if he was available at the ninth overall pick he was they take him love him huge lengthy defenseman he can move the puck he kind of reminds me of a more physical michael casterling actually and it feels like the sabres are attempting to build around rasmus stallene and owen power as the two main offensive defenseman and then get two defensive defenseman to pair with them now of course you can pair pretty much almost anybody with dalene and he’ll excel we saw him with bowen byron last year and that pair is pretty good then bowen byum away from dalene was actually not great so that just goes to show you rasmin stalin can play with almost anybody in terms of owen power it feels like right now he’s taken a little bit longer to develop than what you may like but getting him the right partner who can just let him play his game and let i guess power get into the play more offensively and kind of have some more defensive help and not have a rotating d partner it feels like every single week will definitely help his development and i think murka is going to fit in well with them i’m hoping they don’t use him as a trade piece because their defensive prospect pool isn’t great and seen a lot of push back about is mora gonna help us score 30 goals and replace that for jj part first off whoever they would have drafted at ninth overall up front was not playing this season so i don’t get that even if they went and got a victor ecklund who had a phenomenal goalcoring season in the swedish hockey league he was not going to be in buffalo this season on the roster so i think defense was the perfect mix you have frozen you have oslin you have consta coming up through the system so you already have a bunch of forward prospects who whether you use them as trade pieces or whether they have roster potential on the sabres defense was the right choice i honestly don’t mind the america pick
okay now let’s go through some uh quick hits real quick just kind of talking about the offseason and then the future for the sabres so just quick hits for this one in the first one where do you think buffalo’s going to finish next season sixth in the atlantic division i don’t think they make the playoffs i think the only bottom two teams that finish below them potentially i think the bruins finish below them sorry jimmy um and i think
come on we got hagens bro
i i love that pick for you guys and i think the red wings have a shot to finish although getting gibson definitely does help their case
okay and uh if you could sign one head coach to replace lindy ruff right now who would it be
peter dbor love that answer i was hoping you would say that i know you’re a stars fan so you’re a closeted stars fan so i knew that let’s go uh and then if there’s one player you could sign in free agency one dream player that’s not mitch martin because he’s not going to buffalo it’s be realistic here who would be the one player you think would be perfect either pair with taage thompson or just add for a depth piece
nikolai eers i i i’ve i’ve gone back and forth between eers and besser and i look at eers i think he fits better than brock besser i think the sabres they might already have a couple guys like a brock besser i think eers bringing what he can from the winnipeg dutch to buffalo i think would be a great fit up front
cool cool and last question where’s mitch martner signing it’s not buffalo
mitch no it’s not buffalo um i’m still sticking with my guns i’m still saying carolina i’ve i’ve rode this train
ever since it came out that he was going to not resign with the maple leafs i said carolina hurricanes first said his second and i’m saying it a third time carolina
wow that that one shocked me i think i’m still la or vegas but carolina would be pretty cool i think it would be a good spot for him so yeah appreciate you again for coming on guys uh this is zach again from checking from behind do you want to shout out any of your socials we’re obviously going to have them in the description but any last words you want to say um yeah if you guys just on every single platform go check out checking from behind on tik tok instagram youtube and also my personal youtube channel it’s just zach berto you can just look it up in the youtube search bar and thank you again jimmy for having me on always a blast as always all right guys i hope you enjoyed this conversation between me and zach again all of his handles are going to be in the description below so be sure to go give him a follow again let me know what you guys think about these interview styled videos are you enjoying them and who would be the i guess dream guest you want to see me bring on and interview for this channel thank you guys so much for watching if you enjoyed the video give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel i also have some more content right here on the screen if you’re bored and want to watch some more hockey as we go through the off season again thank you guys so much for watching i will see you in the next episode

Today let’s delve into one of worst hockey teams of the past quarter century the Buffalo Sabres. Joined by special guest Zach Bertha, we discuss all things Buffalo Sabres, from the recent trade of JJ Peterka, to the top 10 draft pick, all the way to front office issues and the teams poor trading history. We also discuss Zach’s start in hockey media, his come up, and what it’s like to be a lifelong Buffalo fan in today’s NHL. Let’s breakdown and analyze the Sabres to explain how they became the laughing stock of the NHL. Subscribe to Jimmy Hockey for more NHL News and Breakdowns.

TikTok:

@jimmyhockeyy

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/jimmyhockeyy/

Follow Zach and Checking From Behind:

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@UC_hxGzOah0JKhfjmf-WMtrQ

Zach’s YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@UCv1UpkbAS8fHT27_nykU8lw

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/checkfrombehind/

Timestamp:

0:00 Intro
1:05 Reading Your Comments
3:31 Interview With Zach
8:10 JJ Peterka Trade
12:08 Culture Issues In Buffalo
17:07 Buffalo Draft Analysis
19:46 Quick Takes
21:57 Outro

#nhl #hockey #stanleycupplayoffs #icehockey #hockeyhighlights #montrealcanadiens #hockeyvideos #goldenknights #edmontonoilers #nhlplayoffs #nhlhockey #connorbedard #chicagoblackhawks #vancouvercanucks #nhltradedeadline #mikkorantanen #bradmarchand #bostonbruins #edmontonoilers #connormcdavid #buffalosabres