AIDAN POLLARD
Staff Writer
There’s the Sabres I know.
After some decent performances last week and some good buildup of momentum, the Sabres have started a new losing streak with three straight losses this week. The Sabres fell to the New Jersey Devils in a two goal deficit on Tuesday and then lost to the Florida Panthers and the St. Louis Blues on Thursday and Saturday, respectively.
At this point in the season, all the Sabres can really do is hope for some good draft picks and work on making good trades going into next season.
At their core, the Sabres have a set of strong hockey players, but their coordination just isn’t there at all. For a team that has an all-star like Jack Eichel and other extremely strong players like Matt Moulson and Kyle Okposo, it’s hard to look at the program and fault the players for all of the failure the franchise has seen. This is a program that has better years when it is trying to tank for good draft picks than it does during years when the franchise is actually trying to become successful.
After this past week, it is hard to decide whether the Sabres should keep trying to pull themselves out of last or just let this tank happen, because at this point, the playoffs aren’t much more than a fever-dream.
The Sabres management and coaching need to take a good hard look at the way this team is being run and start to figure out where they are going so wrong. If these kinds of seasons keep up, once any good players’ contracts are up there is little to no chance we will see them continue a career with the Sabres.
It’s not like the Sabres have much of an easy lineup going into this week either. They are going to have to face-off against the Ducks, the Islanders and the Bruins, none of which are easy wins by any means.
The Islanders have been on quite a bit of a comedown lately, but the Sabres haven’t been high enough this season for that to make enough of a difference to predict a Sabres win against New York.
As far as the Ducks and Bruins are concerned, it would feel silly to put the Sabres ahead of either team in their matchups this week. Of course the Sabres always have that chance to turn around and reverse this backwards momentum, but at this point it is far too late in the season for Buffalo to do anything truly worthwhile.
The Sabres will play the Ducks first this week in a Tuesday game that will have already been decided by the time this article is released, and then Buffalo will go up against the Islanders on Thursday, followed by the Bruins on Saturday.
Hopefully there will be some type of improvement of play over these last months of the NHL season, but the Sabres’ year seems pretty set in stone at this point. On the bright side, home games only cost about $30 now.