It appears that our friend Bucky Gleason, of the Buffalo News, will never give up on the Drury and Briere thing. It is now January and they left in July, enough already. It seems that Bucky Gleason is on a personal quest to get Larry Quinn fired although he'll never admit it. In his latest installment of the "Bash Management Chronicles" Bucky criticizes management for asking the NHL to investigate whether or not the Flyers contacted Briere before July 1.
The Buffalo Sabres were well within their right to ask for an investigation and I'm not sure how anyone could blame them. It is a rule in every major sport that you are not allowed to have contact with a player who is under contract with another team, the NHL is no different. Instead of bashing the organization for protecting their team we should be commending them for trying to protect their investment. After Marty Biron was traded to Flyers he publicly stated that he and Briere had discussed playing in Philly when they became free agents, he also said he would try his best to get Briere to sign with the Flyers.
I can't figure out why people continue to bash management for this whole thing and they do not put any blame on Briere who had definitely made up his mind where he wanted to play. Here is a quote from the Gleason article...
"They kept going around with the same questions of ‘Do you have any recollection of this?’ and going back to different dates," Haney said. "I didn’t pay attention to dates. It was two girlfriends hanging out and talking while the kids were on the playground after school. I didn’t pay attention to anything other than there was a chance they could be moving somewhere. That was the extent of it."
Did that conversation take place prior to July 1st? Probably, it is not a surprise that Danny was going to be playing somewhere else, I think we all assumed that he would.
It's the fan reaction that has me completely confused. Here are some posts on Sabres message boards regarding the reaction to this article.
From SabresSpace.com
I hope everyone reads the part of how the Sabres cried to the league about Briere leaving and forced the NHL to open an investigation into Philadelphia tampering with Briere. The housewife that was interviewed said it best..."Why can't they just leave people alone and learn how not to screw an entire hockey organization into the ground?"
Next, Quinn is going to accuse Ottawa of pumping in drugs to the visiting lockerroom.
This article both made me angry and made me laugh. This was the freakin money quote though!
"It’s foolish," Haney said. "Would they just let them be? The simple fact is the Sabres need to take a step back and see what the heck they’re doing now. They took a perfectly great team and screwed them into the ground. They should stop trying to point fingers at everybody else and get their act together." Precisely.
Apparently, you need not understand hockey to see the obvious.
From SabreSFans.com (including some strong language)
i hate larry quinn. i hate golisano.
you could have had both for five per and you found a way to fuck it up!
i can't deal with this imcompetent shit anymore, get them out of here NOW!
In order to be fair I will say that not all of the posts regarding this situation were negative and there are some people who actually wish that Bucky would stop bashing the team. If you think the Sabres were the first team in professional sports to ask the league to investigate possible tampering, you are completely naive. In most cities the local news rag won't make a teams request public, in an attempt to discredit management. I beg you Bucky, write about the games instead of why management SUCKS. I tried to get this answered privately to no avail so I will try here, why do you hate Larry Quinn so much?