At some point you just have to ask: What the hell is going on?
This Sabres team really is something special. And by special I mean absolutely schizophrenic. Crazy cakes. Oscillation all over the place, baby. Come see what happens next.
No one seems willing to give an answer for what’s going on with this team, so it’s time to acknowledge what they are. The 2011-12 Sabres are a loosely affiliated group of ice-skating individuals. Nothing more. Interchangeable parts for a machine that was never designed to do anything and never really worked anyway. The team photo should just be a frowny face made of widgets and washers.
The Sabres are the Dyson fan of the NHL. Expensive of hell and kind of cool looking, with little to show for it. Sure, you can’t see the blades, but it’s just moving freaking air. You can go outside and get the same ‘invisible fan’ effect for much less. The science behind that is actually more interesting, anyway.
Dyson fans look pretty darn neat, but at the end of the day it’s just a fan. Get over yourself already, James. The Sabres, that team with matching jerseys and everything, are the expensive fan that looks cool and does the same thing it’s always done: play mediocre hockey.
Enough with the mixed metaphors, let’s get down to business. The Sabres are broken this year, this much is obvious. It didn’t take seven straight Flyers goals on Thursday night to realize that. We should have known on April 24 of last year, when the Sabres choked away a two-goal lead after two periods and lost Game Six when Ville Leino netted the overtime winner for the Flyers.
Let’s leave the soft glow of hindsight behind us and look at the facts. The Sabres were incomplete last season and went looking for a fix during the sunny months. Somehow, they got worse. So what happens next?
Change, hopefully. Who really knows what form it should take, but it has to be there. It’s gots to be, yo. I know we’ve said it after almost every substandard season of yesteryear, but there’s little reason to keep this sad-sack group together much longer. The sum is much, much less than the collection of parts. Let these poor guys go play better hockey with someone else and give it another go in the fall.
The Sabres, with a shiny new ownership group and the endless resources of fan support that just doesn’t know when to quit, now have the luxury to try this whole ‘Assembling a winning hockey team’ thing one, maybe ∞ more times if they feel like it.
Well, we’re waiting.