BUFFALO SABRES: FROM FIRST TO WORST LEAVES FANS REELING
Peter Andrew Sacco, Ph.D.
January 24, 2008
Have you ever seen the movie How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days starring Matthew McConaughey? It´s a fun, light-hearted, feel-good movie most would enjoy. I am sure many Buffalo Sabres fans would much more enjoy the chick flick movie rendition versus the new life-imitating art version of how to lose a President´s Trophy hockey team in 6 months. Given the proverbial "crap hitting the fan" at the beginning of July of 2007 and the bottomless tailspin occurring within the next six months, you get the picture. In the McConaughey movie there is a happy ending. In Buffalo-- perhaps Sabres fans are hoping the writer´s strike comes to an end soon and the TV shows and movies fans use as distractions from June to September, when there is no hockey can ease many broken hearts starting at the first sign of spring when Sabres´ fans realize there isn´t going to be a playoff run unless something drastic, magical and totally "out of character" for management happens. And it better happen soon!
For starters, I am a Sabres fan. I have been a Sabres fan for some 35 years. That is a long time to go without ever seeing your team win the big prize. The last two years have been the most promising fans have witnessed since the mid 1970´s. The future looked bright. The Sabres were indeed a team to be reckoned with. It seemed only a matter of time greatness might find its way to Buffalo in the form of the Stanley Cup. This time it would not only come for a "cup of coffee" as it had the other two times the Sabres made the finals. Oh no! It would be here to say and there would be champagne… and lots of it! Buffalo had turned the corner and appeared to want to win, or so fans thought.
Over the last few months I have spoken with many Sabres fans, hockey fans, members of the media and some former NHL hockey players to get their take on things. As a fan who has spent lots of money on tickets, jerseys and other memorabilia over the years I would hold off passing judgment until the new year. Well, the new year is here and so are the Sabres who get progressively worse as evidenced by a recent 10 game losing streak and a current 8 game road losing streak. From what I have heard on several radio talk shows over the last few weeks, fans want answers. The question is…will fans ever get satisfactory answers which make any semblance of rational thinking? You be the judge!
Most fans and media are pointing to management as the culprit. Management was brilliant in preparing for the new NHL post-lockout version. Buffalo had created an amazing team which could compete and win any given hockey game. There are no such things as dynasties in "salary-capped" sports anymore even though some could make an argument that the New England Patriots are just that. You wouldn´t get much of an argument from me on that one. With that said, some teams create perennial Stanley Cup contenders, like Detroit and Ottawa. They are always there and they are always competitive. In my mind, the Sabres had created something just as good if not better. They were knocking on the door to greatness. They were creating a "core" group of players to carry them into the future and to carry on the torch of success they were achieving. That was until management misunderstood the definition and meaning of "core".
Core means strongest point or center of strength. Any hockey analyst or true fan of the sport would tell you Chris Drury, Daniel Briere, Jay McKee, Mike Greer, Brian Campbell, Ryan Miller, Derek Roy and Paul Gaustad were the core of the team. These are the players this team should have been built around. Gone are Drury, Briere, McKee, Greer, and it looks like Campbell might not be too far behind. A year from now, are they looking at Miller being in the same position?
How does a team lose these players…core players, superstars? Superstars in the NHL do not grow on trees. This league is saturated with mediocrity and parody. When you find a real talent you hold on to it tooth and nail. The Sabres didn´t do it. What was the reason? Ah, the salary cap. I don´t buy it! How is it Ottawa finds a way to keep Daniel Alfredson, Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza, Mike Fisher and Wade Redden? The answer is foresight. Management realizes these players are superstars, and identify true talent. They know their core players as they have brought the team success, and most of all, they negotiate during the season when they can lock them up before they hit the open market. Guess what? Many of these players stay for less than what they can get on the open market because believe it or not, loyalty does exist within some athletes who are committed to a winning cause, and when management reaffirms they are wanted. The same can be said of Detroit. Look who they have signed…Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Nicklus Lidstrom (arguably the leagues´ best defense man) and Brian Rafalski (signed this year as an unrestricted free agent). How is it that these teams can do it, but not Buffalo? The "core" players the Sabres had were very good. With that said, they are not as good as the superstars on either Ottawa or Detroit. Yet, these two teams get their "core" players signed. They identify success and don´t tinker with what isn´t broken. If Buffalo would have started negotiations a long time ago, they could have easily had Drury, Briere, McKee and Campbell locked up for 4 or 5 years. They could have made all of these players fit within the salary cap. Don´t buy it? Tell that to Detroit and Ottawa. They have the same salary cap ceiling as the Sabres. Perhaps they read the book The Secret.
The Thomas Vanek deal had to be the worst signing this team has ever made. I like Vanek. I think Vanek is a good player. Vanek is a better player with Briere and Drury on your team because they draw the best two lines from the opposition. Vanek, Derek Roy and Maxim Afinogenov most nights last year got to see other team´s third lines. Is it any wonder for their inflated point totals and plus/minus ratings in 2006/7? Can you imagine Heatly, Spezza and Alfredson playing against other teams third lines? Just imagine their point totals. Actually, when you think about it, this year they are playing against the Sabres former third and fourth lines which might account as to why they feed on the Sabres and beat the Sabres!
Hind sight is always 20/20. I don´t believe it so, when it comes to success and knowing what you have. Good hockey scouts and people around hockey see trends and identify talent. I have asked many Sabres fans and other team fans the question, "Would you rather have Drury and Briere, and a boatload of draft picks instead of Vanek"? The responses are a resounding "yes"! If the Sabres wouldn´t have matched Edmonton´s offer sheet for Vanek, they would have received several really good draft picks. It might not have even come to that. If you sign the former mentioned players sooner when they are all honestly saying they want to remain Sabres, you probably sign Vanek for a lot cheaper. At best you lose him, get your draft picks and guess what? Your "core", the strength of your team is still in tact! How come Brian Burke, the Anaheim Ducks GM knows this, gets it and wins? It´s not a magical formula! You have to have chemistry and heart to be successful. Management tore out its heart (Briere and Drury) and jeopardized the team´s chemistry.
I am an Oakland Athletics MLB fan as well. Ouch! At least this year could prove to be a big ouch! The GM of the A´s traded away all of the A´s superstars, all-stars and best talent for prospects. I once heard someone in the media refer to the Sabres GM Darcy Regier as the NHL´s version of Billy Beane. They couldn´t have been more wrong in their assessment. Beane is a smart, cunning and calculating GM. He also has great foresight. Only time will tell with this latest sell-off. With that said, Beane trades away "about to be" unrestricted free agents and actually gets not only something, but something of value for them while they are still under his watch. The greatest criticism of Regier getting nothing for a heck of a lot! He never replaced Briere, Drury, or Dainius Zubrus with any free agent signings. I keep hearing the Sabres like to draft and develop their own young talent as they believe that is what will make them win. Okay! Tell that to the Duck´s who signed Scott Niedemeyer and traded for Chris Pronger and then went on to win the Stanley Cup! The year before that, the Carolina Hurricanes traded for or signed a plethora of free agents. And they won the Cup! Regier is a smart man. He is a very good general manager. Why does he stand pat?
Buffalo needs to change their management strategies, set paradigms and mission for what they are really hoping to accomplish. Any fan knows that when you lose the players they lost you are going to be a worse team. Even more so, to not even try to replace them with outside free agents and promote unknown, third line commodities and expect them to be stars is an irrational stretch. Furthermore, to ask this team to compete with the already good teams and now the teams on the "good" cusp such as Washington Capitals with Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstomr, Mike Green and Alexander Semin, or Pittsburgh Penguins with Sidney Crosby, Evgenis Malkin, Jordan Staal is just insane! These bottom and middle of the pack teams are rising because they now have promising superstars. Buffalo had superstars and let them walk. Something just doesn´t add up!
The only signings Buffalo made this year were Nolan Pratt and goalie Jocelyn Thibault. Pratt has been a healthy scratch for many games and Thibault for the most part has looked bad. Interestingly, they didn´t sign goalie Ty Conklin who they traded for at the deadline last year. He went to Pittsburgh, has beaten the Sabres twice and went on a 10-0-1 winning streak. Wow!
The Sabres lack leadership, heart and a commitment to winning. I have the NHL Center Ice package and I watch on average 3-4 games per night. Buffalo is a shell of what they were last year. You can´t blame it on "key injuries" to Tim Connolly or Afinogenov because they weren´t lighting it up before they went down. In fact, Connolly has been mediocre at best and Afinogenov has really missed Briere and Drury! I watch a lot of the New York Islander games, coached by former Sabres coach Ted Nolan who was run out of the organization 10 years ago. Nolan doesn´t have a lot of talent or any real superstars on his team, but they show up and play for him every night. Bill Gerin, captain of the team and a free agent off season acquisition has done a great deal of providing leadership. The Sabres could have tried signing him, but passed. I could name a handful of others that were available but they passed. They didn´t want to disrupt the team chemistry. Former Sabres captain and once beloved Michael Peca wanted to play for this team and relatively cheap. They passed on him. Funny, the Columbus Blue Jackets signed him and his is a wonderful leader for that team. Buffalo could have picked up Mark Recchi, released from the Penguins two months ago. Recchi has a couple of Stanley Cup rings and can still skate like the wind and hit like a "wrecking ball". The floundering Atlanta Thrashers picked him up and since then have climbed the standings into playoff contention and Recchi has become a point-per-game player. Wow! With Gary Roberts out and now Sid the Kid, I am guessing Penguins management is having some Recchi regrets.
Sabres fans are fed up and they should be! They have made certain every home game has been a sellout for the last two years. They made Sabres jerseys the hottest selling commodity in both the USA and Canada. I reside in Canada and have been following the mess the Toronto Maple management is in. Honestly, from what I am seeing and how the Sabres are performing, the two teams look like QEW mirror images of one another. I keep hearing that hockey is a business and sports are a business. That is very true, however with that preposition, most owners buy teams for their love of the game and their competitiveness. Many don´t buy teams to make money because they are already wealthy as Fort Knox! Thomas Golisano was wealthy as heck before buying the Sabres. Ironically, the Sabres value as increased and it has only made him wealthier! Fans are consumers. We pay for the service and the product. Professional teams only exist because of fans. At what point will the Sabres give the fans what they want? Did they not see the number of jerseys fans have purchased with their hard-earned income over the last 2 years which sported the numbers 23, 48, 30 and 51? The fans of Buffalo as well as many Americans and Canadians have developed a passionate love affair with this team. Will management and ownership not exude the same love and passion for their team and want to win? Say what you will about George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees or Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys. They may come across as cocky, arrogant and meddlesome. However, at the end of the day, they give the fans what they want because it is also what they want… A winner!
If the Sabres current trend of not signing players holds up, fans of the team might find another classic movie comparison… Titanic! Some might even go so far as to cite the movie 28 Days starring Sandra Bullock as an addict in recovery as a better example. Addicts often use the definition of insanity as, "engaging in the same behavior repeatedly and expecting a different outcome". Watching this Sabres team now past the halfway point of the season, observing them in a catatonic state ¾ of the time and expecting a different outcome is bordering on insanity! This has been the worst team in the NHL for the last month…period! Management can only be patient for so long and realistically hold the same deck of cards they are looking at. Unless, they are playing Old Maid, or Solitaire and thinking the cards are magically going to reshuffle and provide a winning hand, this is insane. Lindy Ruff is a great coach. One can´t play forth a winning hand if they don´t have players who are tenacious and truly want to win.
I believe management did an amazing job in creating the post-lockout Sabres team and making them into a perennial contender. The creation of that team was masterful. They were pioneers in the new NHL, innovators for how the game would be played and created a blueprint for other teams to follow. "If you build it, they will come!" The Sabres created a majestic, entertaining team. The people of Buffalo were once again talking proud. Fans made sure the HSBC arena was sold out. No team in the NHL, not even hockey town Detroit created the same synergy, magic and excitement this team and management created. This team had risen from obscurity to national recognition. And then something crazy happened on the way to the fair! What the heck happened to the dream, the promises? Simply, fans want to know… Why?
It is like being offered an "amazing book" to read. You had read books in the past but they were never very good. You really don´t like to read. The person offering you the book convinces you it will be good. It will be promising, "Just wait and see!" You finally crack open the book and slowly begin to read. You know this book will require the investment of your time and energy. As you flip through the pages, it captures your interest. As you move through chapters now, it excites you. You long to read more and make sacrifices just to read the book. As you progress, the author entices you with hope. The notion of reaching the climax tickles your fancy and promises to be both satisfying and overwhelming. The plot points, characters, conflicts and resolutions inspire you even more to continue reading. This is the best damn book you´ve ever read! Then suddenly, you wake up one morning to finish reading the book and it´s gone. The person who gave you the book takes the book back from you, depriving you of the chance to see how it ends. Sound familiar? Sabres fans wanted to finish reading the potential Pulitzer Prize winning book Sabres management created!
I am an eternal optimist. I am hopeful Sabres management can fix what has turned into a major disappointment. If they were able to do it once, what´s to stop them from doing it again, right? Besides, there are really no such things as mistakes, rather life lessons to learn from and build on. Hopefully, they will take these lessons into account as well as the feelings and best interest of the fans. Right now they need to know what direction they are headed in. If they are not going to sign Brian Campbell, then they might want to trade him, and fast while they can get the most for him. An even greater debacle would be losing him and yet again get nothing back. Addition by subtraction is great. Destitution by subtraction is the recipe for disaster. The Sabres have tasted this home-cooked meal within the last year!
Buffalo needs to find teams rebuilding, or on the playoff cusp as well. Furthermore, they need to shake the bushes and trees and look for "superstar" players on teams going nowhere and who are also in worse situations, disgruntled or just having bad years. I can think of a couple of teams to the far south of Buffalo, both to the east and the west. Also, I would toss any reservations aside that Buffalo has "untouchable" players. If the likes of Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Wayne Gretzky, Brett Hull and Danny Gare can be traded away, so can anyone on this current Sabres roster. The goal is to get better!
A year ago Sabre fans were watching Briere, Campbell and Miller start for an all-star team coached by Lindy Ruff. The future looked so bright and it was only winter. It´s funny how this year´s mild winter and the prospect of spring just around the corner feels so ominous and cold. Truly, what a difference a year makes and who would have thought it could come to this? Who would have also thought the hundreds of dollars spent on lettered Sabres jerseys are now obsolete? Funny, the theme song of the Sabres last year Better Days by the Goo Goo Dolls has proven prophetic. Sabres fans are hoping for better days soon!
For starters, I am a Sabres fan. I have been a Sabres fan for some 35 years. That is a long time to go without ever seeing your team win the big prize. The last two years have been the most promising fans have witnessed since the mid 1970´s. The future looked bright. The Sabres were indeed a team to be reckoned with. It seemed only a matter of time greatness might find its way to Buffalo in the form of the Stanley Cup. This time it would not only come for a "cup of coffee" as it had the other two times the Sabres made the finals. Oh no! It would be here to say and there would be champagne… and lots of it! Buffalo had turned the corner and appeared to want to win, or so fans thought.
Over the last few months I have spoken with many Sabres fans, hockey fans, members of the media and some former NHL hockey players to get their take on things. As a fan who has spent lots of money on tickets, jerseys and other memorabilia over the years I would hold off passing judgment until the new year. Well, the new year is here and so are the Sabres who get progressively worse as evidenced by a recent 10 game losing streak and a current 8 game road losing streak. From what I have heard on several radio talk shows over the last few weeks, fans want answers. The question is…will fans ever get satisfactory answers which make any semblance of rational thinking? You be the judge!
Most fans and media are pointing to management as the culprit. Management was brilliant in preparing for the new NHL post-lockout version. Buffalo had created an amazing team which could compete and win any given hockey game. There are no such things as dynasties in "salary-capped" sports anymore even though some could make an argument that the New England Patriots are just that. You wouldn´t get much of an argument from me on that one. With that said, some teams create perennial Stanley Cup contenders, like Detroit and Ottawa. They are always there and they are always competitive. In my mind, the Sabres had created something just as good if not better. They were knocking on the door to greatness. They were creating a "core" group of players to carry them into the future and to carry on the torch of success they were achieving. That was until management misunderstood the definition and meaning of "core".
Core means strongest point or center of strength. Any hockey analyst or true fan of the sport would tell you Chris Drury, Daniel Briere, Jay McKee, Mike Greer, Brian Campbell, Ryan Miller, Derek Roy and Paul Gaustad were the core of the team. These are the players this team should have been built around. Gone are Drury, Briere, McKee, Greer, and it looks like Campbell might not be too far behind. A year from now, are they looking at Miller being in the same position?
How does a team lose these players…core players, superstars? Superstars in the NHL do not grow on trees. This league is saturated with mediocrity and parody. When you find a real talent you hold on to it tooth and nail. The Sabres didn´t do it. What was the reason? Ah, the salary cap. I don´t buy it! How is it Ottawa finds a way to keep Daniel Alfredson, Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza, Mike Fisher and Wade Redden? The answer is foresight. Management realizes these players are superstars, and identify true talent. They know their core players as they have brought the team success, and most of all, they negotiate during the season when they can lock them up before they hit the open market. Guess what? Many of these players stay for less than what they can get on the open market because believe it or not, loyalty does exist within some athletes who are committed to a winning cause, and when management reaffirms they are wanted. The same can be said of Detroit. Look who they have signed…Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Nicklus Lidstrom (arguably the leagues´ best defense man) and Brian Rafalski (signed this year as an unrestricted free agent). How is it that these teams can do it, but not Buffalo? The "core" players the Sabres had were very good. With that said, they are not as good as the superstars on either Ottawa or Detroit. Yet, these two teams get their "core" players signed. They identify success and don´t tinker with what isn´t broken. If Buffalo would have started negotiations a long time ago, they could have easily had Drury, Briere, McKee and Campbell locked up for 4 or 5 years. They could have made all of these players fit within the salary cap. Don´t buy it? Tell that to Detroit and Ottawa. They have the same salary cap ceiling as the Sabres. Perhaps they read the book The Secret.
The Thomas Vanek deal had to be the worst signing this team has ever made. I like Vanek. I think Vanek is a good player. Vanek is a better player with Briere and Drury on your team because they draw the best two lines from the opposition. Vanek, Derek Roy and Maxim Afinogenov most nights last year got to see other team´s third lines. Is it any wonder for their inflated point totals and plus/minus ratings in 2006/7? Can you imagine Heatly, Spezza and Alfredson playing against other teams third lines? Just imagine their point totals. Actually, when you think about it, this year they are playing against the Sabres former third and fourth lines which might account as to why they feed on the Sabres and beat the Sabres!
Hind sight is always 20/20. I don´t believe it so, when it comes to success and knowing what you have. Good hockey scouts and people around hockey see trends and identify talent. I have asked many Sabres fans and other team fans the question, "Would you rather have Drury and Briere, and a boatload of draft picks instead of Vanek"? The responses are a resounding "yes"! If the Sabres wouldn´t have matched Edmonton´s offer sheet for Vanek, they would have received several really good draft picks. It might not have even come to that. If you sign the former mentioned players sooner when they are all honestly saying they want to remain Sabres, you probably sign Vanek for a lot cheaper. At best you lose him, get your draft picks and guess what? Your "core", the strength of your team is still in tact! How come Brian Burke, the Anaheim Ducks GM knows this, gets it and wins? It´s not a magical formula! You have to have chemistry and heart to be successful. Management tore out its heart (Briere and Drury) and jeopardized the team´s chemistry.
I am an Oakland Athletics MLB fan as well. Ouch! At least this year could prove to be a big ouch! The GM of the A´s traded away all of the A´s superstars, all-stars and best talent for prospects. I once heard someone in the media refer to the Sabres GM Darcy Regier as the NHL´s version of Billy Beane. They couldn´t have been more wrong in their assessment. Beane is a smart, cunning and calculating GM. He also has great foresight. Only time will tell with this latest sell-off. With that said, Beane trades away "about to be" unrestricted free agents and actually gets not only something, but something of value for them while they are still under his watch. The greatest criticism of Regier getting nothing for a heck of a lot! He never replaced Briere, Drury, or Dainius Zubrus with any free agent signings. I keep hearing the Sabres like to draft and develop their own young talent as they believe that is what will make them win. Okay! Tell that to the Duck´s who signed Scott Niedemeyer and traded for Chris Pronger and then went on to win the Stanley Cup! The year before that, the Carolina Hurricanes traded for or signed a plethora of free agents. And they won the Cup! Regier is a smart man. He is a very good general manager. Why does he stand pat?
Buffalo needs to change their management strategies, set paradigms and mission for what they are really hoping to accomplish. Any fan knows that when you lose the players they lost you are going to be a worse team. Even more so, to not even try to replace them with outside free agents and promote unknown, third line commodities and expect them to be stars is an irrational stretch. Furthermore, to ask this team to compete with the already good teams and now the teams on the "good" cusp such as Washington Capitals with Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstomr, Mike Green and Alexander Semin, or Pittsburgh Penguins with Sidney Crosby, Evgenis Malkin, Jordan Staal is just insane! These bottom and middle of the pack teams are rising because they now have promising superstars. Buffalo had superstars and let them walk. Something just doesn´t add up!
The only signings Buffalo made this year were Nolan Pratt and goalie Jocelyn Thibault. Pratt has been a healthy scratch for many games and Thibault for the most part has looked bad. Interestingly, they didn´t sign goalie Ty Conklin who they traded for at the deadline last year. He went to Pittsburgh, has beaten the Sabres twice and went on a 10-0-1 winning streak. Wow!
The Sabres lack leadership, heart and a commitment to winning. I have the NHL Center Ice package and I watch on average 3-4 games per night. Buffalo is a shell of what they were last year. You can´t blame it on "key injuries" to Tim Connolly or Afinogenov because they weren´t lighting it up before they went down. In fact, Connolly has been mediocre at best and Afinogenov has really missed Briere and Drury! I watch a lot of the New York Islander games, coached by former Sabres coach Ted Nolan who was run out of the organization 10 years ago. Nolan doesn´t have a lot of talent or any real superstars on his team, but they show up and play for him every night. Bill Gerin, captain of the team and a free agent off season acquisition has done a great deal of providing leadership. The Sabres could have tried signing him, but passed. I could name a handful of others that were available but they passed. They didn´t want to disrupt the team chemistry. Former Sabres captain and once beloved Michael Peca wanted to play for this team and relatively cheap. They passed on him. Funny, the Columbus Blue Jackets signed him and his is a wonderful leader for that team. Buffalo could have picked up Mark Recchi, released from the Penguins two months ago. Recchi has a couple of Stanley Cup rings and can still skate like the wind and hit like a "wrecking ball". The floundering Atlanta Thrashers picked him up and since then have climbed the standings into playoff contention and Recchi has become a point-per-game player. Wow! With Gary Roberts out and now Sid the Kid, I am guessing Penguins management is having some Recchi regrets.
Sabres fans are fed up and they should be! They have made certain every home game has been a sellout for the last two years. They made Sabres jerseys the hottest selling commodity in both the USA and Canada. I reside in Canada and have been following the mess the Toronto Maple management is in. Honestly, from what I am seeing and how the Sabres are performing, the two teams look like QEW mirror images of one another. I keep hearing that hockey is a business and sports are a business. That is very true, however with that preposition, most owners buy teams for their love of the game and their competitiveness. Many don´t buy teams to make money because they are already wealthy as Fort Knox! Thomas Golisano was wealthy as heck before buying the Sabres. Ironically, the Sabres value as increased and it has only made him wealthier! Fans are consumers. We pay for the service and the product. Professional teams only exist because of fans. At what point will the Sabres give the fans what they want? Did they not see the number of jerseys fans have purchased with their hard-earned income over the last 2 years which sported the numbers 23, 48, 30 and 51? The fans of Buffalo as well as many Americans and Canadians have developed a passionate love affair with this team. Will management and ownership not exude the same love and passion for their team and want to win? Say what you will about George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees or Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys. They may come across as cocky, arrogant and meddlesome. However, at the end of the day, they give the fans what they want because it is also what they want… A winner!
If the Sabres current trend of not signing players holds up, fans of the team might find another classic movie comparison… Titanic! Some might even go so far as to cite the movie 28 Days starring Sandra Bullock as an addict in recovery as a better example. Addicts often use the definition of insanity as, "engaging in the same behavior repeatedly and expecting a different outcome". Watching this Sabres team now past the halfway point of the season, observing them in a catatonic state ¾ of the time and expecting a different outcome is bordering on insanity! This has been the worst team in the NHL for the last month…period! Management can only be patient for so long and realistically hold the same deck of cards they are looking at. Unless, they are playing Old Maid, or Solitaire and thinking the cards are magically going to reshuffle and provide a winning hand, this is insane. Lindy Ruff is a great coach. One can´t play forth a winning hand if they don´t have players who are tenacious and truly want to win.
I believe management did an amazing job in creating the post-lockout Sabres team and making them into a perennial contender. The creation of that team was masterful. They were pioneers in the new NHL, innovators for how the game would be played and created a blueprint for other teams to follow. "If you build it, they will come!" The Sabres created a majestic, entertaining team. The people of Buffalo were once again talking proud. Fans made sure the HSBC arena was sold out. No team in the NHL, not even hockey town Detroit created the same synergy, magic and excitement this team and management created. This team had risen from obscurity to national recognition. And then something crazy happened on the way to the fair! What the heck happened to the dream, the promises? Simply, fans want to know… Why?
It is like being offered an "amazing book" to read. You had read books in the past but they were never very good. You really don´t like to read. The person offering you the book convinces you it will be good. It will be promising, "Just wait and see!" You finally crack open the book and slowly begin to read. You know this book will require the investment of your time and energy. As you flip through the pages, it captures your interest. As you move through chapters now, it excites you. You long to read more and make sacrifices just to read the book. As you progress, the author entices you with hope. The notion of reaching the climax tickles your fancy and promises to be both satisfying and overwhelming. The plot points, characters, conflicts and resolutions inspire you even more to continue reading. This is the best damn book you´ve ever read! Then suddenly, you wake up one morning to finish reading the book and it´s gone. The person who gave you the book takes the book back from you, depriving you of the chance to see how it ends. Sound familiar? Sabres fans wanted to finish reading the potential Pulitzer Prize winning book Sabres management created!
I am an eternal optimist. I am hopeful Sabres management can fix what has turned into a major disappointment. If they were able to do it once, what´s to stop them from doing it again, right? Besides, there are really no such things as mistakes, rather life lessons to learn from and build on. Hopefully, they will take these lessons into account as well as the feelings and best interest of the fans. Right now they need to know what direction they are headed in. If they are not going to sign Brian Campbell, then they might want to trade him, and fast while they can get the most for him. An even greater debacle would be losing him and yet again get nothing back. Addition by subtraction is great. Destitution by subtraction is the recipe for disaster. The Sabres have tasted this home-cooked meal within the last year!
Buffalo needs to find teams rebuilding, or on the playoff cusp as well. Furthermore, they need to shake the bushes and trees and look for "superstar" players on teams going nowhere and who are also in worse situations, disgruntled or just having bad years. I can think of a couple of teams to the far south of Buffalo, both to the east and the west. Also, I would toss any reservations aside that Buffalo has "untouchable" players. If the likes of Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Wayne Gretzky, Brett Hull and Danny Gare can be traded away, so can anyone on this current Sabres roster. The goal is to get better!
A year ago Sabre fans were watching Briere, Campbell and Miller start for an all-star team coached by Lindy Ruff. The future looked so bright and it was only winter. It´s funny how this year´s mild winter and the prospect of spring just around the corner feels so ominous and cold. Truly, what a difference a year makes and who would have thought it could come to this? Who would have also thought the hundreds of dollars spent on lettered Sabres jerseys are now obsolete? Funny, the theme song of the Sabres last year Better Days by the Goo Goo Dolls has proven prophetic. Sabres fans are hoping for better days soon!
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