The Buffalo Sabres have gotten throttled as of late after holding the WC2 spot late last month. So was this season nothing more than a mirage?
The Buffalo Sabres suffered yet another blowout loss. Over the past eight periods, they have played like one of the league’s worst hockey teams, and now that they’re 2-6-2 in March, they look like a team that’s already collapsed.
Gone are their playoff chances (mostly). And gone is the high-octane team that once led the league in scoring at multiple points of the season, or have at least graced the top three. The dreadful teams of the recent past, those that served their fans fools gold time and again are back – they just came a little later this season.
But you know what? I don’t completely agree. This is a better hockey team than we saw in the late 2010s, early 2020s. Sure, their defense has been miserable lately, and have been marginal, at best, all season. Yet bad hockey teams don’t lead a 32-team league in scoring, and even now, following bad performance after bad performance, they’re still, overall, one of the higher-scoring units, even if they haven’t scored consistently.
The Buffalo Sabres are better than those teams of the past
In 2018-19, Buffalo had a red-hot November, before they stagnated their way to a 33-39-10 finish (76 points). The Sabres were 9-2-2 in 2019-20, only to falter to 30-31-8 (21-29-6 between October and March 2020), and well out of the playoff bubble.
Of course, 2020-21 was a complete wash. But even last season, 2021-22, the Sabres started off 5-2-1, only to, yeah, struggle mightily between November and February. But at least March and April 2022 were fun.
Then this season, as mentioned, the Sabres once held a WC2 spot. Now, they (probably) won’t end up in the postseason. So what’s different between the 2022-23 squad and those of years’ past?
They were fun to watch, and really, at least a middle-of-the-pack team, between October and February. Yeah, November was rough, but overall, this team was winning games, and they even went on a couple of remarkable runs, especially in December and January.
Yeah, they’re collapsing, and once again, they’ve technically given us fools gold. But this team remained competitive far longer than some of their recent incarnations. And that’s, at least in my eyes, reassuring. Oh, and there’s still a few weeks left at least righten this ship. Let’s see if they can do it.
(Information provided by Hockey-Reference)