Can These Sabres Break the Drought? Part 1

It’s been 10, about to be 11 years since we last saw the Buffalo Sabres as a playoff team. Thomas Vanek led the team in scoring (32/41/73). Drew Stafford put up 31 goals in just 62 games as a 25 year old. The 20 year old Tyler Myers coming off his Calder wining rookie year put up 37 points. It was their 4th playoff appearance in 6 years. Things were looking bright again in Sabreland. There is not a soul out there that back in 2011, the year Terry and Kim Pegula bought the Franchise, thought we’d be in this position. It’s 2022 and we’ve never been back. I still remember way back in my first year of college when the Sabres were skating around with the puck for the final minutes of the tied game vs the Flyers because they just needed a single point to clinch the playoffs and they did it! The team finished the final 24 games on a 16-4-4 run to grab the 7th seed in the playoffs.

To better explain just how long ago this was here are some things that happened that year. The iPhone 4S debuted, Prince William married Kate Middleton, Osama bin Laden was killed, and the final Harry Potter film was released. All of those things happened in the same year the Sabres last made the playoffs. I will be 30 next month. That means I will have went my entire 20s without seeing my hockey team in the playoffs. I have never been able to go out to a bar with all my friends on a Saturday night to watch the Buffalo Sabres, my favorite team since I was 3, compete in the Stanley Cup playoffs. There are children who will be turning 11 this year who have never known what that arena sounds like with a potential playoff team playing in it.

Before we can look towards the future, I think it’s important to go through the last 11 years and see how we got here. The 2011/2012 season was the last year the Sabres had a winning record. That year the team fell 3 points shy of making the playoffs for the 3rd straight year but there was one moment in that season that stands out to me, and I think was the start of the collapse that we are still in today. Buffalo v Boston. Milan Lucic runs Ryan Miller and not a single player comes to his defense. I can say the name Lucic and the first image you think of is Miller on his backside, no helmet, swinging his stick at Lucic as he continues to skate to the corner. No Sabres team has had a record above .500 since that season.

The shortened 2012/2013 season: Yes, that’s right, the Sabres drought predates a lockout! A 48 game season. Team starts 6-10-1 and Lindy Ruff is fired after 16+ years behind the bench. AHL Head Coach Ron Rolston takes over and leads the team to a 21-21-6 season. This is the last time the team finished .500. The Rolston Era lasted just 51 games and he was fired along with General Manager of 16 seasons, Darcy Regier, after a 4-15-1 start to the 2013-14 season. In comes Ted Nolan for his 2nd stint as Sabres HC. Pat LaFontaine is hired as President of Hockey Operations. His first move is to hire Tim Murray as his General Manager. Flash forward just over 3 months and LaFontaine resigns in a move we still do not know the details about to this day. Murray trades Ryan Miller and that seals the door closed on the 2005-2007 Buffalo Sabres.

The 2014 offseason was the calm before what became a Buffalo Sabres debate storm. They took Sam Reinhart 2nd overall in the draft. Terry and Kim Pegula expand their ownership to now include the Buffalo Bills. At this point the focus is put not winning games but instead on tracking 2 stud prospects that will be making their way to the NHL the following year, Conner McDavid and Jack Eichel. The team that finishes last will be guaranteed one of the 2 guys. Everyone in Buffalo just refers to this season as the tank year. T-Shirts were made and fans signed up for text alerts on how the Arizona Coyotes games were going. March 26, 2015, fans flocked to the arena and rooted against the Sabres to try and lock up that last place finish. It’s a year that no matter if you were pro or anti-tank, you remember. Sabres finish last but lose the lottery and their pick falls to 2nd where they select Jack Eichel.

2015/2016: The prospects challenge was moved from Harbor Center to the Arena because of the demand for tickets to watch the future of the Sabres in action. Stanley Cup winning coach Dan Bylsma is hired to lead this team. They traded for Robin Lehner, Ryan O’Reilly, and Evander Kane. The team missed the playoffs, but it was their best finish since the 2011/2012 season and everyone’s expectations were high leading into the next year. Those expectations were short lived when the team regressed from 81 points down to 78 and both Bylsma and Murray were fired after the season.

In the 2017/2018 offseason Jason Botterill is hired as the new GM and he hires former Sabres star blue liner Phil Housley as HC. The team finishes dead last in the league once again. The positive takeaway was that they won the lottery and selected star defenseman Rasmus Dahlin. Things are looking up to start the 2018 season. On November 27th, 2018, they are the first team in NHL history to lead the team in points after 25 games after finishing last the year prior. Jeff Skinner is on a tar scoring 20 goals in his first 27 games. Then December and January hit and the team has what I can only describe as the worst 2/3 of a season I have ever seen. It was bad enough to get Housley canned after just 2 years.

So, if you are doing the math with me, Rolston got 51 games, Nolan less than 2 years, Bylsma got 2 full seasons, now Housley is gone after 2 seasons. Enter in Ralph Krueger the summer before the 2019/2020 season. I like to call this next year and a half the dark days. Not only did we have to live through a pandemic, but we had possibly the worst duo of Head Coach and General Manager in the history of sports. Sure, the guy led the team to a 30-31-8 record, but they didn’t make the playoffs the year they were expanded to 24 teams! Botterill is fired and Kevyn Adams takes over prior to the 2020/2021 shortened season. During a 12-game losing streak in March 2021, Adams makes the call and fires Kreuger, the worst coach in the history of the Buffalo Sabres.

Not including this current season, the totals for the previous 10 seasons are as follows: The team has played 747 games, their record is 275-377-95, and they got 645 of a possible 1494 points. That means they have gotten at least 1 point in 43% of their games. I’ll be honest, that’s better than I was anticipating. But that is nowhere near the level you need to be in to even sniff a playoff race.

Let’s look at some players that were around the 10 years prior to this season again. I know, the title of the article is can they break the drought? I promise this is the last look back before I give my answer. I went back and collected the numbers from all the players that played during the drought. I wanted to build a top 10 lists of sorts. These are the top 10 point scorers from 2011-2021. I broke down the order by Points Per Game.  Here’s how the skaters did:

Going in, I assumed Eichel would be the leader in most of the categories, so it wasn’t a big surprise to me. What was surprising was seeing a guy like Drew Stafford, who was my favorite player at the time, be in the top 10 in points since the drought started. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a knock on the player. That’s more of a knock on the 7 years’ worth of players since he was traded in 2015. Seeing only 2 guys with over 73 goals was also very surprising to me. There has been a lot of turn over and a lack of point producing players and I think that contributes to the repeated problems of the past years.

Now for the goalies, I have 6 of note. There were others I could have added in but I don’t think they really reached the number of games played to make the list.

Any list where you have guys like Chad Johnson and Carter Hutton make the top 6 is a list with problems and I think it says a lot about where the organization has been. I think this also illustrates the Sabres’ issues in net since trading one of the best goalies to ever wear the jersey back in 2014. I can see why they have had issues the last 3-4 years. What goalie would want to come to this team that has been a bottom feeder for years unless they just want to start? Unless you draft and develop a true #1 goalie, the players in front need to be addressed first.