Tonight the Buffalo Sabres take to the ice in the land of meth labs and man-eating sinkholes to attempt to do something they haven’t done once during this mercifully shortened season: win their fourth hockeypucks game in a row. If Winnipeg and Philadelphia win their games in regulation, the Sabres will suddenly find themselves one point removed from the final playoff spot with a game in front of 13,000 empty seats on deck Thursday night in the Everglades. Ten of their final fourteen games will be played at home and, despite all of this, some of you are despondent, downtrodden, terrified that they might win, that they might turn that puncher’s chance into a playoff berth.
Why is this case? Well the prevailing logic seems to be that the team is better served by finishing with a top three draft pick, buttressed by the sweeping assumption that if the Sabres sneak into the playoffs, Darcy Regier will be rewarded with keeping his job and this team will be thrown into some sort of perpetual mediocrity as true as our orbit around the sun. I can’t say I don’t understand this logic; the idea of giving this general manager a second crack under Pegula at assembling a roster would accomplish little more than hemorrhaging the fanbase and leaving us a few more years closer to death without a sniff at a cup. What I don’t understand is how people are willing to assume that this is black and white, that wins equal the general manager staying. Because drive-time radio pronounces it true? Because a WGR beat reporter who spent the entire football season telling you Chan Gailey wasn’t going anywhere is now saying the same about Darcy? Because TBN staff members that haven’t broken a team story since the Ford administration pronounce it true? For shame.
I don’t know what the owner thinks about the general manager’s future. Neither do you and neither do any of the local media. What I do know is management espoused a three-year plan to win a Stanley Cup (that has been shot to shit) and pledged to win multiple Stanley Cups under the new owner. I know the owner allowed or ordered the firing of a coach that had been involved with the team for the better part of three decades. I know that perennial eighth place finishes and first round exits are quite removed from the sixteen wins that it takes to win a championship. I know that no one who builds a business worth more than a billion dollars does so by accepting continuous underachievement and incompetence.
I also know that telling the fans that they’re being neglected, ignored and mistreated sells papers and ad space, and allows fans to wallow in the “woe is us” attitude that gets ingrained into your DNA at conception in this region. I know it’s the safe column to write, the safe position to take. I know Pominville, Vanek and Miller have contracts that expire after next season and the general manager himself has already bucked tradition and stated to local and national outlets that any changes that will be made will be focused on next season.
My point is that there’s at least enough empirical evidence to argue that the general manager is gone no matter what happens short of a conference finals appearance, right? There’s more than enough evidence to support the idea that columnists and radio hosts are trolling the fanbase by using Darcy as a boogeyman to get you to tune in or use one of your ten free page views (I’m not silly enough to assume any of our readers are also TBN subscribers).
Making it harder to accept even a slight run of success is the fact that we had finally embraced, welcomed the idea of hitting rock bottom. After half a decade of mediocrity this was going to be the year we finally said “fuck it,” and took the losses laughing instead of crying. We were ready, and then these, these ASSHOLES had to go and start winning! God can’t they do anything right!?
I know the counter to that is “but {Mackinnon, Drouin, Jones} though!” This is yet another unknown that is being placed above winning tonight, winning Thursday, winning any games the rest of the season. Will they all contribute? I don’t know, probably. Will one of them become a superstar? I don’t know, maybe. I know Edmonton hasn’t been decent since the Sabres were one of the best teams in the league and they’ve had a top pick nearly every season. I know Columbus still has a 0-4 franchise playoff record. I know Colorado for all their young talent has still lost more often than the Sabres do this season. I think assuming that any visit to the bottom of the league will end with one top pick before rising like the Phoenix is pretty twisted - the schedule pretty much ensures you have to be pretty fucking terrible to get those top picks and by that point it’s unlikely that one player, regardless of who he is, will lead to a meteoric rise the following year. At what point does rooting for so many unknowns - rooting for opaque, muddled concepts of “success” and “rebuilding” - begin to materially warp the very concept of being a fan? I mean, I know we’re there with the Bills but with the playoff drought old enough to legally marry in southern states, that’s understandable.
With the Sabres, I don’t know where one begins to lose their way as a fan. I just know when people on twitter are defiantly posting dismal figures regarding playoff chances and already mourning Seth Jones after a shootout win, it certainly feels like we’re almost there. I hate that. I hate people trying to make me feel guilty for cheering for the team. Thursday's and Saturday’s wins were the first ones I’ve enjoyed since the first two games of the season, and fuck off if you’re going to make me feel guilty about them tonight.
I’m going to close this meandering stream of thought section with this: all fans want to feel like they’ve been rewarded for all the time, the money, the emotional investment they have made of the years regarding their favorite teams. I know a young superstar is an easily-identifiable and tangible example of what a “reward” for all this recent disappointment may be. But being a fan isn’t that simple and instead of cheering for so many unknowns, I think I’ll cheer for what I know, the team wearing the away jerseys in Tampa tonight.
Yesterday afternoon’s announcement of Jon Cooper as the new Lightning coach put a merciful end to the thirty-six hour PANDA WATCH Lindy watch that sucked in far too much discussion than was warranted. There was more discussion about Tampa’s coaching vacancy here than there was in Tampa (mostly because Tampa-area discussion consists of UV Forecasts or 2-for-1 margarita specials and little else) which I found peculiar considering there were very, very few who didn’t want him ridden out of town on a rail until his farewell presser made us all (yours truly included) feel a little sad for having been so angry at the guy. Everyone knows Lindy Ruff is going to have another coaching position and yes that is news in the way any former coach having a new team is news, but do we really need to start breaking down rosters and determining how compatible they are for a guy that NO LONGER WORKS WITH THE SABRES? This team has enough issues to discuss ("hey why does Myers play like a concussed baby giraffe?" for instance) for us to get distracted every time some team whose games can only be seen with Center Ice has a coaching vacancy.
It certainly wasn’t surprising though, not on the heels of Bucky’s TBN article which is better addressed here because I’m 1,300 words in and we’re not criticizing every example of the TBN’s inability to let go of the past because Sully just mentioned Drury and Briere while criticizing Pominville again and shit I’m already behind. It’s hacky, simple, safe, and it caters to fans insecurities and I still see copies for sale where I buy beer so I guess it works for them. If national sports media has taught us anything it is that catering to the lowest common denominator is never a poor business decision. What’s worked for the History Channel has worked for ESPN and works here in Buffalo and who gives a shit if credibility and professionalism goes out the window at the same time because hey, ad space.
I suppose that’s the non-tweetable point I was making when I claimed to hate our media and noted deeg hater and accomplished wet ferret Mike Harrington decided to strike. It should be said I haven’t looked at that twitter feed or any of his columns in nearly a year because I save my ten page views for HOT FOOD TRUCK TAKES but apparently he must have been riding the Lindy thing hard because, well: hacky, simple, safe. I’m not sure what it should say that someone who writes for a living and claims to be a professional stalks bloggers on twitter (he claims the tweet was “forwarded” to his attention but that’s unlikely), and confronts them over generalities, but whatever, our profiles aren’t private and ultimately anyone enjoys their opinions reaching the most eyes/ears as possible.
The “journalists v. bloggers” thing is a tired argument that seems only to be continuing in the minds of certain journalists. There are writers at TBN that I enjoy and as much as I’ll tease about their profession as a dying medium, I’m the idiot who went to law school so who am I to talk about professional decisions? The thing is, with a platform, a microphone of that size, you have the ability to deem what is important and what is not. In a week with Canisius and Niagara in the NCAA hockey tournament, the NHL trade deadline approaching, an interim head coach, a general manager on the hot seat, what got deemed important was a former coach and a bunch of former players who should, apparently, all be working for the Sabres immediately. That’s sad, and that should be criticized, just as ESPN’s decision to air reruns of “First Take” instead of those NCAA hockey tournament games themselves deserves to be criticized.
Last night, I was pissed that some hack who over the course of his career has called both of my degrees “worthless” in print went after me on twitter. I was going to use this post to go all Scizz on the guy but as I sat down to write this morning I just didn’t have it in me, aside from that wet ferret comment, because come on, that’s funny. We have plenty of writers in this area that write meaningful posts about important topics; articles and posts that spark thoughtful conversation about issues that matter to our region and those who have once or will always call it home. We appreciate those guys and gals, mostly because we’re just a bunch of professional assholes spouting nonsense. But to have one of the “journalists” with the farthest reach - farther than any of those others at the moment - use that reach to do little more than troll, antagonize, creep on bloggers, that’s just…what’s the word that comes mind? Oh yeah.
Pathetic.