Football fans largely ignored the Giants and in a pre-ESPN era where game highlights were mainly shown via local news broadcasts and in Sunday pre-game or halftime shows (think Monday Night Football with a national audience,) out of sight, out of mind. As the New York football Giants continued floundering through another lost season, just when you thought it couldn't get worse, it did. On November 19, 1978 with New York up 17-12 over the Philadelphia Eagles late in the game, the 'brain'-trust on the sideline scoffed at the thought of kneeling to run out the clock and 'boldly' decided to run a complicated play. Quarterback Joe Pisarcik's handoff to Larry Csonka was flubbed and Eagles cornerback Herm Edwards scooped up the fumble for the winning touchdown.
Why this story in a blog about the Buffalo Sabres?
It's about finding the bottom.
Sabreland was told in no uncertain terms that there would be near-term suffering as the team set a course towards two consecutive tank seasons, but said suffering, they were told, would be worth it as the franchise would land two top picks to lead them out of mundane mediocrity and into the Promised Land. The 2013-15 seasons were supposed to be the bottom as the franchise did everything they could to lose while indoctrinating the Sabres faithful into believing it was the correct path to future success.
It wasn't.
Although I'll defend a fans right to represent as he or she chooses, with a line drawn at overtly rooting for the opposition while decked out in Sabres regalia at a home game, and will also defending the owners right to choose the course of their franchise as I did during a tank, shame on the fans for believing in a savior and shame on ownership for promoting a tank based upon that notion.
In hindsight some five-plus seasons later, those tank years weren't even close to the bottom.
The Sabres would see their best post-tank season directly after drafting Jack Eichel as head coach Dan Bylsma led them to 81 points in 2015-16. Adversity would strike and the wheels began to fall off as Eichel missed the first 21 games of the 2016-17 season because of a freak collision at practice just prior to the season opener. Although the team would post a quasi-respectable 7-9-5 record without their franchise player, back-to-back wins upon his return with Eichel potting three goals and adding an assist looked like a harbinger of things to come.
It wasn't.
Buffalo would finish the season going 24-28-7 and with 78 total points would miss the playoffs for the sixth straight season. In the off season, owner Terry Pegula was said to have demanded the firing of Bylsma and when general manager Tim Murray would not follow his wishes, Pegula fired both.
The next phase featured an up and coming assistant coach hired by and up and coming assistant general manager. Phil Housley had mounds of success with coaching a modern, puck-moving defense in Nashville while Jason Botterill was a key front office element in the back-to-back Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh. This head coach/general manager combo was looked upon to bring an up-tempo, modern game to Buffalo. Their first year was a disaster as they finished in last place with only 62 points.
A mulligan was given for that season and after going on an 11-3-1 tear in November, 2018 it would seem as if that was justified. However, the giddiness of the streak soon gave way to the terror of the Sabres free fall. They would finish the season with a 16-32-7 record which included an incredibly inept 2-12-2 month of March highlighted by a streak of over three games (199 minutes 58 seconds) without a goal. It was the second such three-game goalless streak under Housley, something that hadn't been done, according to The Buffalo News' Mike Harrington, since 1929. Could it get any worse than this?
You betcha.
Housley, of course, was fired and Ralph Krueger was brought in. The "outside-the-box" hire featured a worldly man who'd written a motivational book and had coached in the NHL to limited success in the 2012-13 lockout-shortened season. He'd also motivated talent-challenged international teams to overachieve with Team Europe getting plenty attention as he coached them to the finals of the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. And it worked for a bit.
In 2019-20 the Sabres got off to a blistering 8-2-1 start and the Krueger hire looked like a stroke of genius. Finally this would be the year of the upswing. Right.
It wasn't.
Buffalo tumbled from the top after that and Krueger's coaching started coming into question, most notably with winger Jeff Skinner who found himself in the coaches doghouse despite scoring 40 goals the previous season and signing an 8yr./$72 million contract prior to the Krueger hire. Under the new coach Skinner would be playing second-line minutes (or less) with limited second powerplay unit duties. His stats plummeted and so did the Sabres as they went 21-29-5 to close out a season where they'd miss the playoffs for the ninth consecutive year despite an expanded playoff field due to a season shortened by Covid-19.
How on earth could this Sabres team miss the playoffs when 24 of 31 teams made it?
It doesn't matter. They did.
GM Botterill was fired in a slew of moves that purged the hockey department in unprecedented fashion in June 2020. Covid-19 had wreaked havoc on all the entities of Pegula Sports and Entertainment and had devastated the energy business where Terry Pegula assured fans he'd dig another well if money was necessary for the Sabres success. It was a notion that had been put to the test since he purchased the team in 2011 with rumors abound stating that he'd lost tens of millions of dollars, maybe as much as $30 million in a single year, with his hockey club.
The plan was to "move forward effectively, efficiently and economically," according to Pegula at the June press call, and everyone knew that those "three-E's" meant cost-cutting measures, hence the hiring of Harborcenter manager and former NHL player Kevyn Adams as their new general manager. Adams oversaw a skeleton hockey department that oversaw the 2020 draft but the team pulled off a couple of shockers in the off season. Adams was able to make a trade for aging yet still effective top-six center Eric Staal and with the help of Krueger's personal relationship with Taylor Hall, they signed the former league MVP to a 1yr./$8 million deal.
Even with those additions to the offense, this team was slated for some rough and rocky travelling as the NHL devised a shortened 2020-21 season with realigned divisions. Unfortunately for Buffalo they, along with arch-nemesis Boston, would be placed amongst the powerhouse franchises of the Metropolitan Division--Washington, Pittsburgh, the NY Islanders and Philadelphia--along with the up-and-coming NY Rangers and New Jersey to form the MassMutual East division. Getting to a .500 points record would be a task in and of itself and what would follow would turn out to be an unmitigated disaster.
Eichel suffered an upper-body injury in camp and was never himself but even so, thanks to some early series against the Rangers and New Jersey and a Washington team that took a while to get up to speed, Buffalo managed a respectable 4-4-2 record to start the season. Then Covid hit, six games were postponed and any momentum they gained in the second half of January (3-1-2) was obliterated. The Sabres came out of their break listless with a three-game losing streak (two goals for, nine against) and had a brief moment of success while riding goalie Linus Ullmark. In a game against New Jersey that was played without Eichel on the ice, Ullmark went down as well, and so did the team. That overtime loss would set them on a dismal slide (0-14-2) as they're tumbling unbridled towards NHL ignominy.
The rash of injuries to hit Buffalo was devastating to a team whose place in the middle to lower part of the division was tenuous at best. First to go down was Will Borgen a 24 yr. old, stay-at-home rookie defenseman whose style of play seemed to fit very well with an offensive-minded skater like Rasmus Dahlin, whom he was successfully paired with prior to his injury. He's been out 18 games. Physical defenseman Jake McCabe, whom many believed was the best, most consistent player on Buffalo this year has also been out 18 games. Then came the Ullmark injury and after 15 games on injured reserve he was just placed on long-term injured reserve. Eichel, who'd been playing injured all season has been on the injured list for nine games, and for as much grief as Carter Hutton has deservedly gotten, at least he was a borderline NHL goalie with many games in net. His last start was March 18 against Boston and he's now out with an injury leaving Dustin Tokarski as the Sabres primary goaltender after Jonas Johansson, who was an NHL flop anyway, was traded to the Colorado Avalanche.
With his Sabres team having quit on him some 11 games into their current winless streak, Krueger was given the heave-ho on March 17 with assistant coach Don Granato being named interim head coach. When Covid struck the Sabres in early February, Granato, a cancer survivor considered at high risk for the virus, was placed up in the press box to coach from above upon the return to action. A month later he was behind the bench and was pulled from the game last night against the Pittsburgh Penguins, along with new assistant Matt Ellis, under NHL Covid-19 protocols. Both coaches missed that 4-0 shutout loss to the Pens as Adams took the reigns behind the bench. It was the second time the new coaching staff had Covid protocol problems. New assistant coach Dan Girardi missed his first game because of them.
Whew.
Despite the depths this franchise has now reached, there's more falling involved. Without Eichel and Ullmark, as well as McCabe, this team will struggle against the Rangers and New Jersey and doesn't have much of a chance against Washington, Pittsburgh, Boston the NY Islanders and Philadelphia of which they have 19 more games remaining. Add to that the impending trade deadline where it's assumed pending unrestricted free agents like Hall, Staal and defenseman Brandon Montour may well be on the move for futures, if any team wants and/or can fit them into their post season plans, and bleak just got bleaker.
When all's said and done this season, has this franchise hit a Joe Pisarcik/Giants low? It's hard to see them going any lower but if they trade Eichel in the offseason they'll test new lows, although they can't go much lower.
Or can they?
No comments:
Post a Comment