Are the Buffalo Sabres and Red Wings the NHL’s next great rivalry?
Halloween Night 2022 will be the first of many showdowns between the Adams-built Buffalo Sabres and the Yzerman-built Detroit Red Wings.
The Buffalo Sabres have had some heated rivalries in the past, and the Detroit Red Wings were historically not one of them. Then during the 2013-14 NHL Realignment, the Sabres and Red Wings found themselves in the same division, giving the two teams the possibility of sparking a new rivalry closer to a reality than ever before.
Problem is, these have been two of the worst teams in the NHL since the realignment, with Buffalo having missed the playoffs every season since 2010-11 and Detroit failing to win a single playoff series. The Red Wings have also gone six seasons without a playoff berth.
But that can change in 2022-23, thanks to Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams taking the time to build the organization’s prospects pool through the draft while trading for players and signing free agents as supplements. Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman did the exact opposite, trying to wheel and deal his team into contention as though he were playing an EA NHL video game.
With the two teams on the rise in the NHL forging their paths in polar opposite ways, a debate between the organizations, their respective general managers, and even fanbases will rage on until someone lifts a Stanley Cup. Or at least reigns supreme over the other.
Is a Ten-Year War brewing between the Buffalo Sabres and Red Wings?
For those of you unfamiliar with the term Ten-Year War, it stemmed from a rivalry between NCAA football coaches Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes, where two Big Ten powerhouses routinely clashed, often for conference supremacy. And now, that term may enter the lexicon of the Sabres and Red Wings.
In Detroit, the likes of Ville Husso, Ben Chiarot, Andrew Copp, Dominik Kubalik, Olli Maatta, and the ageless David Perron are hoping to more than just supplement a roster that already includes staples like Tyler Bertuzzi, Dylan Larkin, and Moritz Seider, to name a few. Overall, this Red Wings team looks lethal and more than capable of dominating the Eastern Conference.
But with so many guys thrown together, how quickly will they evolve and play well as a team? And can Ville Husso continue to repeat the success he showed last season as a member of the St. Louis Blues? If they can mesh, the Red Wings can certainly dominate. But if they don’t, Yzerman’s plan could backfire and he could be shown the door.
Adams’ plan is my personal preferred method. While he didn’t light up the league by bringing in top-notch free agents with all that cap space, he instead methodically has built a team growing more familiar working together by the game, even if it doesn’t always seem so.
While the Red Wings are focusing more on older, established talent, Adams’ Sabres have gone the younger route with an average age of just 24 this season. The obvious downside, and we have seen it on the ice, is that growing pains will be a regular part of this team’s short-term future.
But Adams is also grooming the team for long-term success. And if he nails it, then the Buffalo Sabres and the Adams Plan will run rampant over Yzerman’s Red Wings.
Overall, I’m giving the nod to Adams here. Not because I prefer the Sabres over the Wings, but because I’ve seen, in many cases, organizations taking the longer approach enjoying more sustained success as opposed to those trying to sign and trade their way into it.
The overall familiarity is one reason building through the draft and prospects pool reigns supreme in the long run. But you can expect the Red Wings to keep this group intact long-term, as while their squad is older, most are still in their late 20s, meaning they will become a familiar foe to the Buffalo Sabres.
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That said, expect, at least for the next few seasons, or 10 seasons, some hard-fought matchups. A new rivalry will be born, and it probably isn’t going to end soon unless one team suffers an epic collapse, which I don’t bet on happening. Buffalo and Detroit will be facing off often against one another, perhaps with the playoffs and the Atlantic at stake, in the not-so-distant future.
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