Buffalo Sabres have officially hit rock bottom after blowout loss to Oilers
The Buffalo Sabres have had a lot of low points over the past eight years. Their latest blowout loss against the Edmonton Oilers might be their lowest one yet.
It has been a long eight years for the Buffalo Sabres. That’s how long it has been since the team last made the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2011. Ever since then, the Sabres have been rebuilding. This year’s team got everyone excited thanks to a 10 game winning streak. But the Sabres’ play since then has caused it to evaporate. After a 7-2 blowout loss to the Edmonton Oilers, it has all but disappeared.
On paper, the Sabres have a 23-17-6 record. They’ve won precisely half of their games and got a point in six losses because they lost in overtime or a shootout. Though the Sabres currently don’t occupy a playoff spot (as of Jan. 15), they’re darn close to one.
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The 10 game winning streak made people think they were a legit Stanley Cup contender. But even then, Buffalo was significantly outperforming their numbers. Seven of those wins came in either overtime or a shootout. The Sabres only won by more than one goal in one of those games (a 7-3 win over the Philadelphia Flyers).
If we take away one of the weirdest winning streaks in NHL history, the Sabres have a record of 13-17-6. With 32 points in 36 games, that’s good for a point percentage of 0.4 (repeating). Over an 82 game season, this point percentage would give the team roughly 73 points.
This begs the question – how much have the Sabres really improved from last season? They had 62 points last season. If you ignore the winning streak, they’ve improved by about 10 points. Granted, there are still 36 games left in the season. A lot (both good and bad) can still happen. But if the Sabres are looking for improvement, it’s hard to see where it has come from.
The glory days of November, when the Sabres had that epic 10 game winning streak, seem far away. Since the winning streak ended, Buffalo has a dreadful 6-11-0 record. Only one of those wins has come against a team currently in the postseason.
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Who’s To Blame?
I’m not sold head coach Phil Housley is a significant part of the problem. Yes, he trusts certain veteran players more than he should (Marco Scandella, Zach Bogosian, and Vladimir Sobotka come to mind). But this issue isn’t exclusive to Housley. It’s a league wide issue. Ask any fanbase and you’ll hear an airing of the grievances.
That said, he’s done very little to prove he’s the guy who can take them to the next level. Especially when you consider there’s a guy who could very easily do so (Joel Quenneville). Housley might have to fall on the sword for his team, but the Sabres issues lie much deeper than their coach.
Most of them revolve around the failures of former general manager Tim Murray. The Sabres, who were a rebuilding team under Murray, only drafted two full-time NHL players from 2014 to 2016. Both of them (Sam Reinhart and Jack Eichel) were second overall picks. That’s simply unacceptable.
It’s hard to rebuild when your pipeline is dry. Murray left it as arid as Death Valley on a hot summer day. Jason Botterill deserves credit for improving it.
But even he deserves part of the blame for not getting a very solid return for Ryan O’Reilly. Sobotka hasn’t been good. Patrik Berglund terminated his contract. Luckily, Tage Thompson has been promising and they also got a first-round pick. This might tilt the trade towards the Sabres. However, Buffalo isn’t much better off even after “changing their culture” with the trade. This suggests the Sabres’ culture of losing runs much deeper than O’Reilly.
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There’s only one way to rebuild – be patient. Murray’s failures at the draft set the Sabres back a long way. Botterill’s going to have to climb his way out of that black hole. And it’s going to take a while. Much like a desert mirage, the Sabres who won 10 straight games merely two months ago aren’t what they appeared to be.