Every business owner has the right to run his business the way they see fit. In sports the direct result of how it's run plays out on a yearly basis in a win/loss record and most predominantly who's left standing at the end of the playoffs. From great sports franchises like the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers under the Rooney family (six Super Bowls with only three head coaches since 1969) and the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers (11 NBA titles since 1979) under the Buss family to the struggles of the Cleveland Browns, NY Knicks, and the Buffalo Sabres, what ownership does and how they run their franchise m ..read more

You may have heard the expression "in like a lion out like a lamb" used to describe how the month of March goes weather-wise. When it came to the Buffalo Sabres place in the National Hockey League it was "in like crippled lamb out like overcooked mutton" in March. Buffalo finished a rough month of February by being shut out 3-0 by the Philadelphia Flyers in consecutive games at home. It dropped them down to a tie for 31st in the league with only six wins on the season and if you watched them on the ice the listless, apathetic play surely was a sign that head coach Ralph Krueger had lost his te ..read more

It's taken a few weeks, but the Buffalo Sabres have gotten rid of the stench left by former head coach Ralph Krueger. The defensive, systemic load that Krueger shoveled for the entirety of his 97 games as Buffalo's bench boss has been sent to the incinerator of extreme ineptitude and has been replaced by a refreshing dose of speed and puck control with an emphasis on driving play and creating offense.  And Sabreland couldn't be happier. Yes, they'll miss the playoffs for the 10th straight season, thus tying a record for National Hockey League futility but they're sure looking good right ..read more

Taylor Hall is said to be ready to waive his no-trade clause, which isn't too surprising as who wouldn't want to get out of a situation in Buffalo where the Sabres have totaled six wins on the season.  Yeah, it's been a hellaciously devastating ride for Buffalo this season, which was far worse than the .500 mark suspected here after the NHL placed the Sabres in the toughest division in hockey, but they can reboot in the off season. As long as franchise center Jack Eichel is still on board there's hope and when you add in Dylan Cozens as their No. 2 center next year, Buffalo has their one ..read more

In 1956 the New York Football Giants won the NFL Championship and for five of the next six seasons they made it to the NFL championship game only to lose. Regardless of that fact the Giants were considered a model franchise but after their 14-10 loss to the Chicago Bears in the 1963 championship game, New York went 17 consecutive seasons without making the playoffs and got progressively worse (4-23-1 in 1973 and '74 combined) before stagnating well below the .500 mark until the 80's. Football fans largely ignored the Giants and in a pre-ESPN era where game highlights were mainly shown via loc ..read more

It's the perpetual question in Sabreland, how many failures will we go through before this organization to finally gets it right? It gets tiring having to revisit the amount of turnover that's existed since Terry Pegula bought the Buffalo Sabres in 2011 so we'll make it as quick as possible: numerous changes in upper management including a very brief, four-month stint for a hockey operations vice president, a fourth general manager, this one with no pro hockey administrative experience and after a recent firing of their head coach, the Sabres are on their seventh bench boss who is interim stat ..read more

If you can make it through these numbers without hurling your latest meal, God love ya for it. Rather than me harp on the play of this club in February, let's let the words of 22 yr. old defenseman Rasmus Dahlin speak after the Sabres finished the month with back-to-back shutout losses at home against the Philadelphia Flyers. A Flyers team, by the way, that came into the weekend with the eighth-worst goals-against averaged (3.25) in the NHL. “I’m very embarrassed,” said Dahlin. “This is not acceptable. This sucks. It’s the worst.” Out of the mouths of (relative) babes. Rasmus Dahlin has onl ..read more

Anyone in the Buffalo media following the Sabres has had a front row seat to the Ralph Krueger/Jeff Skinner saga which began last season. Skinner was coming into the 2019-20 season fresh off a career high 40-goal campaign armed with a recently-inked 8yr./$72 million contract after skating on the top line with captain Jack Eichel and his trusty sidekick Sam Reinhart. In a training camp move Krueger, Buffalo's new head coach, decided to shift Skinner down to the second line for more scoring depth. The premise for Krueger's decision, it would seem, was based upon the 2018-19 season where the Sabr ..read more

From the get-go we knew here that this was going to be a very difficult season for the Buffalo Sabres. Buffalo was moved into a newly formed MassMutual East division designed by the league to limit exposure in the world of Covid-19. The Sabres and their Atlantic division foes, the Boston Bruins, were thrown into a group of Metropolitan division heavyweights featuring the Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers and NY Islanders. The NY Rangers and New Jersey Devils, both up-and-coming teams with young talent topped by first overall draft picks, round out the division. The ..read more

Record: January  4-4-2 Heading into this shortened, 56-game season featuring 8 games each against division foes in the newly formed MassMutual East, the Sabres wanted to improve in some specific areas that looked to have accelerated their fall last year. First and foremost was the penalty kill. Buffalo missed the expanded playoffs by a couple points in the shortened 2019-20 season and the PK was the primary culprit. Their 74.6% kill rate was only .30 of a percentage point better than the Detroit Red Wings, by far the worst team in the league. As the saying goes, your goaltender should be ..read more