It’s not easy to be a Buffalo Sabres fan. You are forced to watch and adjust to the fact that your team stinks. To make things harder on fans this season could be the year of the tank job. But, not so fast, or at least not for the moment. The Sabres are in danger of messing up the tank job that so many people around the NHL thought was happening. Over the past ten games the Sabres have gone 5-5; beating some of the NHL’s better teams along the way. The Buffalo Sabres are no longer in last place in fact they have jump up four spots. I guess no one told Ted Nolan they should be losing.
In all reality this ten game stretch is just a hot streak and every NHL team will have one or two during the season, but currently the Sabres are playing the style of hockey their coach is known for. If this season is to be historically bad the Sabres need to stop going on hot streaks. Here’s the thing; there is no tank job. There is no losing on purpose. I will agree that this roster was put together with less talent than is needed to truly compete over the entire season, but I really don’t believe in tank jobs.
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Sabres players and the fans have been told this was coming for years, and now that it is here we are all thinking the worst. Frankly I think the reason tank job talk got started is because this current roster had underperformed, and the on ice product for the most part has been nothing short of insulting. Fans and the league alike needed a reason they could live with. So, that allowed the tank talk to gain speed and grow.
The Buffalo Sabres have created a slight divide within their fan base, and people on Buffalo are looking at friends and other fans wonder what side of the divide they stand on. Side one is the fan that wants to compete and try to win. Losing is acceptable to this fan, but looking like a high school team just took the ice will never be acceptable.
Side two is completely the opposite. This side of the fan base also wants the best for this franchise, but they want it to start happening after the 2015 NHL Draft. Fans who are currently calling this side of the divide home want nothing more than to see the Sabres land dead last in the league, and they couldn’t care less how bad the team performs as long as that happens.
In the big picture the Sabres are most likely the team Sabres fans watched the first month of the season, but it is worth asking what kind of Sabres fan are you?
With all of that being said if any team in NHL history is going to mess up a tank job it would be the Buffalo Sabres, after all the NHL really doesn’t want the Sabres to hold the number one draft pick do they?