Are the Sabres finally going to get this right? If there’s any solace here, it’s that their cousins, the Buffalo Bills, went through the same torment for years, and they finally got on the right path. That said, I’m not totally buying into the possibility that the Sabres won’t turn a decade and a half into two.
But the clock’s ticking, for sure, and it’s not slowing down any. Overall, the Blue and Gold spent the previous three seasons regressing, even if they, theoretically, looked better on paper. So, what happened, exactly, and why does this keep happening?
For one, it seems like a pattern, and it’s not a good one. When the team can score on anyone, they can’t stop anyone, and that occurred in 2022-23, and this past season. In 2023-24, the Sabres weren’t half-bad defensively, especially since Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was viable. But they forgot how to score in the process.
Seriously, what’s the problem with the Sabres these days?
For what it’s worth, they don’t have many players with adequate playoff experience. Yeah, there are some, like Alex Tuch, Ryan McLeod, Jason Zucker, and Connor Clifton, but that’s not the case for many.
Tage Thompson, JJ Peterka, Jack Quinn, Mattias Samuelsson, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Rasmus Dahlin, Zach Benson, and Owen Power have yet to experience what it’s like to play in the NHL Playoffs.
That’s eight players or over one-third of the entire 23-man lineup. Yeah, there are outliers, like the Montreal Canadiens, who boast a young team with little postseason experience. But the difference is, the Habs drought was substantially shorter than the Sabres. Heck, that’s even the case for the Ottawa Senators.
Kevyn Adams needs to find a few more skaters who can bring a winning culture to town. Yeah, bringing in the likes of Zucker and McLeod helped, and the Sabres needed that. But clearly, it’s not enough.
I’m not saying Adams needs to revamp the entire roster, but don’t sit there and tell me the Sabres wouldn’t be a different team if he brought in a pair of free agents who just got off a deep postseason run.
Until someone can bring a winning culture to Buffalo…
I’ve mentioned something similar in a previous piece, but until someone can bring a winning culture to Buffalo, you can forget about the Sabres finishing any better than sixth in their division. This team’s been more than just plagued with losing - they’ve been scarred.
And this is what happens when you have a team full of talent and a head coach who’s seen almost everything in his five-plus decades in pro hockey. Yes, the Sabres have talent; they just don’t know how to leverage it. They can’t leverage it because losing’s the norm in the KeyBank Center.
So, get this organization a player or two who can help them break through that mental blockage and leverage that talent, and watch them win. And those players need at least 50-plus games of postseason experience, ideally in deep playoff run situations.
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