Buffalo Sabres Playoff Push Must Begin In Earnest Tonight In Montreal
The Buffalo Sabres had the playoffs circled on their calendars before the 2016-17 season began; now, it’s time to go “All in” beginning with a division road game.
Buffalo Sabres fans, please indulge me for a quick second:
My 11 year-old son plays hockey for a small association here in the state of New York. It’s not a big team even when everyone is healthy – they skate six forwards and four defensemen, so they log more minutes than the majority of the teams that they play – and the last few weeks they have been playing down a kid, which typically forces the coaches to move a blueliner to forward and roll out just three defensemen over the course of a game. This weekend, his team headed to what turned out to be a five-game tournament, with one kid on crutches with a sprained ankle (he still skated) and one kid coming down with a fever over the weekend that caused him to miss a game (he returned for the tournament championship).
Making matters even more interesting is the fact that our team is competitive enough that it has to play up a tier against teams with deeper talent pools, larger budgets, and more clout – our kids get a lot of “What are YOU doing here?” looks at tournaments.
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Long story short, our under-manned, banged up and supposedly over-matched kids ran the table this weekend, going 4-0-1 and allowing only 8 goals in five games to win a tournament that no one expected them to win, raising their record to 21-6-4 on the season. Yes, our kids are talented, but so were all the teams in the tournament. What gave our kids the edge? They hate to lose, and they play as hard as they can for as long as they are on the ice, no matter the situation.
Isn’t it funny, then, to watch the Buffalo Sabres, a professional hockey team, repeatedly disappear for 20-minute stretches as a time, despite the fact that every point matters at this time of the season? Jack Eichel hit the nail on the head earlier this year when he told John Vogel of The Buffalo News “All these guys have probably been winners their whole life” following a loss to the Boston Bruins. Of course they were: to make it to the NHL, the players on the Sabres roster had to be the cream of the crop wherever they hailed from, and spent countless hours developing their skills so they could beat any and all challengers to the throne. At some point, the work ethic, the focus, and the willpower of a champion was inside each and ever player . . .
. . . yet there have been too many nights this season where these Buffalo Sabres come out flat, or let a team take them behind the woodshed for an entire period, for me to believe that this team is made up of players who want to win badly enough to bring playoff hockey back to the 716. Every team has an off-night here and there, certainly . . . but the Sabres have burned through their allotment of stinkers and appears to be borrowing extra bad game slots from the competition, who are more than happy to share with Buffalo.
All of which brings me to tonight’s game against the Montreal Canadiens. The Buffalo Sabres start tonight 7 points behind the Boston Bruins for the 8th spot in the Eastern Conference, which isn’t as close as it sounds, but is still within reach. This team is mostly healthy, has been scoring 3.33 goals per game since the beginning of the new year, and will finish the month of January with a winning record, the first time the Sabres have owned a winning record in a calendar month since Calvin Coolidge was President, honest to goodness.
Next: Buffalo Sabres Schedule Revisited: February
There are no more excuses.
There can be no more flat starts or periods off.
There can be no more Charmin-soft goals allowed.
Win or lose, this Buffalo Sabres team needs to remind us that they were once winners, and that they would like to become winners once again. Each player needs to burrow deep down into his memory bank and remember what it was like to be my son’s age so they can feel that burning desire that the best youth hockey players have all over again. Win or lose, I just want to spend the rest of the season watching the Sabres fight for their playoff lives, which shouldn’t be too much to ask for a team that brought up the playoffs talk all on its own during the offseason.