Alaska John

Interesting that there's nary a word about this on the nhl.com website. That doesn't mean it's not happening just that the league doesn't know what to say about it. And be called the Missionaries. No telling how well they'll do, or what the Missionary position will be in the standings.

So after losing to Dallas they're 6 points out, riding a two game losing streak. They're not going to match last year's fingernail finish. My guess is they'll end up 8 points behind the final wild card team, a little worse than I guess when I started this thread.

Imagine if they'd beaten the god-awful Anaheim Ducks in both games, instead of losing both games.

There's a really good book (and a not quite so good movie) called The Art of Racing in the Rain, where a race car driver says you can't win the race in the first turn, but you can sure lose it in the first turn. The Sabres consistently manage to lose their race to the playoffs in the first turn, by having a lousy record out of the gate. For this there's no culprit as obvious as the coaching, which doesn't have the team ready to compete when the games start counting. Granato acts like training camp is just a tryout process, and that keeps on going for 10 or 20 games. When the Sabres finally get down to business, the race is over. There was an article in The Athletic in late 2023 about the Sabres going into one of their patented early-season swoons, where it said "It's happening. Again." And that was on the money, except it could have said "It's happened. Again." Really the question is whether the team is willing to watch in happen again this fall.

Last year the Sabres were one point behind the final playoff team. They're currently four points behind the Flyers. Assuming their usual fools-gold late season surge continues, how close do you think they'll be before failing once again? Yeah, I'm a bitter fan, but my guess is they'll slip a little from last year, and finish three points behind the final team.

Any team that can lose twice to Anaheim and give up 5 first period goals to Ottawa is not going to get me interested in watching. And they gave up the first two to New Jersey and scored none in the first period tonight. Just too slow out of the gate, both in games and in the season.

The difference is that Reinhart wants to be there. He didn't want to come to Buffalo and he never consistently put forth full effort.

The Sabres while still mathematically alive are clearly not going to make the playoffs. Facing facts, they should be tanking to get the best draft position possible. And based on the third period against Edmonton, it looks like the Sabres got that memo. It would be better not to bring any Rochester players up so they're not in the locker room while this is going on. Toxicity is contagious.

It isn't stressful to cheer for the Sabres. It's masochism. Tease me, tease me, never please me.

Losing twice to Anaheim will probably turn out to be the difference. Can't do that if you're on the edge of the playoffs.

Tuch is the guy ready to take leadership.

Groundhog Year. We see this year after year. The days get a little longer and the Sabres start playing well. Not well enough and not soon enough, but enough to see some tickets for the next year.

I didn't see the game. Was the officiating in the Florida game particularly egregious or just standardly egregious?

A rule's a rule every day, until someday it isn't. Happy for the Sabres.

We already were, back when we cared.

Next Gen stats would ask what the Sabres record against any team is this year, after posting a monumental two-game win streak. Hint: It's 0 for whatever.

I honestly don't know who the Sabres play next but since they've won two in a row, there is no way in hell they win the next one. Not this team, not this year.

What was Detroit's plan? Seems like they were good, then got bad, then got good again, all in the time Buffalo has continued to miss the playoffs.

Thanks for all that info. I remember the Peca holdout of course and that was just an embarrassment for the organization. I had not idea that Hasek did what he did.

ROR, Eichel, Reinhart, and Barrasso all wanted out of Buffalo for one reason or another, and Hasek was traded for non-hockey issues that I still don't understand. At least the Reinhart trade brought in Devon Levi, and we got more than nothing for both ROR and Eichel. It's too early to tell whether in the long run the Sabres won or lost those trades. Barrasso was too long ago for me to remember how that trade went.

You guys are going about this all wrong. What we need is to get the Elders to curse all the other teams, with a worse curse than the one on the Sabres and Bills.

Well I hope you're right that the culture isn't deadly yet. I also hope that it doesn't get that bad again.

My fear about this team is that they're rinsing and repeating the culture mistakes. Eichel and Reinhardt didn't come to the team with defeatist attitudes. Neither did O'Reilly. These players, who were top talents on the team, just got worn down, disgusted, and had to go. A year ago KA was crowing about having players who wanted to be here and who respected the Sabres logo. Now all those top picks are looking at each other and seeing another year of their careers going down the drain. They HAVE to be looking at other teams and wondering if there's a way to get somewhere else.

Someone explain to me how smart it was to let Linus Ullmark go to the Bruins as a FA. He's been playing great since he got there (aided no doubt by Boston's great team defense) and it's easy to see how the Sabres would have made the playoffs last year with Ullmark in goal.

Son of a gun. I was right. This team drives me nuts.