Buffalo Sabres Need To Get Past The Rebuild And Just Start Building
Time to start thinking like Loews in the 716!
All right, Tim Murray. Let’s shift gears, please.
Look: I’m as patient a Buffalo Sabres fan as you’re going to find. I’m not one of those guys who lives and dies by living vicariously through professional sports. I didn’t always used to be this way – I remember terrifying some people back in my college days due to my rabid intensity during the playoffs of both professional and college sporting events – but my father had a history of heart disease, and before his ticker finally gave out, he told me to stop getting so excited over the things in life I could not control.
So I like to think I’m a pretty chill guy at this stage of my life, someone who is not in a rush to see the Sabres become a bona fide playoff hockey team. Which is why the fact that this current “rebuild” is starting to tick me off ought to concern you.
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See, if I’m starting to get antsy, that’s your first clue that the process is taking too long. Some fans never want to endure a rebuild, but the majority of us understood it was the necessary step required to get the Sabres back into playoff contention. And sensible fans understand that rebuilding a team takes time – but at some point, you have to move past the “rebuilding” stage, and actually start, you know, building something meaningful.
Allow me to provide you with an example: let’s say my house was burned completely to the ground. Or torn to pieces due to a violent tornado. Or ripped to pieces by a horde of angry Maple Leafs fans who had somehow managed to find out where I lived. Either way – my house, it’s a no more. Naturally, I’m going to have my house rebuilt. If I’m smart, I won’t rush the process – I’ll pick a design I like, materials that will make it as strong if not stronger than before, and I’ll let the professionals in charge of the job complete the task in a timely, but not hurried, manner.
What I won’t do, however, is demand that all of the wood being used in my house be made of pine . . . only to change my mind a few months into the process and have the contractors tear everything down just so I can switch to fir. And even if I did set the process back a few months by doing that, I certainly would not wait until my house was 85% complete and then decide that, heck, maybe the floor plan that had been my second-favorite when all of this started was now actually my favorite. And even if I did THAT . . . .
I think I made my point. Look: the Buffalo Sabres did what they had to do when the writing was on the wall. First, the team shipped out Jason Pominville in order to kick-start the rebuilding process. Next, they got rid of Thomas Vanek. Then came Ryan Miller. And Christian Ehrhoff gets bought out. Then Steve Ott, Drew Stafford, Tyler Myers, Joel Armia, Jhonas Enroth, Chris Stewart, Michal Neuvirth, Mikhail Grigorenko, and Nikita Zadorov were sold off to the highest bidder. Now there’s talk that Tyler Ennis could be traded, or Chad Johnson, or . . . .
Where does the “rebuild” end, and the build toward a tangible goal begin? Sure, some of the names I listed had to go – Pominville, Vanek, Miller, Stafford, just to name a few. Out with the old, in with the new. But the problem is, an awful lot of the names I listed were prospects or players who were supposed to come in and become the next generation of Buffalo Sabres. Armia, still only 22, has recently started to see an uptick in his minutes with the Winnipeg Jets. Zadorov, a left-handed defenseman no less, has logged over 19 minutes of ice time in his last four games with the Colordao Avalanche. Neuvirth is 10-5-2 with a .936 save percentage and a 2.05 GAA for the Philadelphia Flyers.
While I cannot complain about the move that brought Ryan O’Reilly into the 716 – excuse me, I was one of the first bloggers to even discuss this topic, a full two years before it happened! – Buffalo Sabres fans have seen too many players shipped out of town before they were given a chance to show what they could do. And from the sounds of it, we fans are in for another round of swapping players for prospects or picks, which means another batch of young players whose impact will not be felt for another 2-3 years, if they even stick around that long.
The Buffalo Sabres are a better team this year than they were last season, and while they are not perfect, they have clearly managed to make fans excited about hockey in Buffalo once again. So do me – do us – a favor, Mr. Murray: make a trade or two if it makes the Sabres a better team NOW, but instead of hording more promises of “the future,” hold off until the 2016 NHL Entry Draft and the summer of 2016, when an impressive UFA class is released into the waters.
After all – the saying’s not, “If you rebuild it, they will come.”