Tonight the Sabres closed this pathetic season with a 5-4 win at home against the Flyers, capping off yet another terrible season of being one of the worst teams in the East, with no real hope for the future.
Alex Tuch, who’s bobblehead got handed out to everyone in attendance, opened the score, 4:33 into the game. He snuck behind the Flyers defense for a simple tip in from the crease setup in transition with Jason Zucker. The Sabres made it 2-0 with 6:11 to go in the first period, with Peyton Krebs getting a breakaway shorthanded, going forehand, backhand, and in the back of the net. The Flyers got on the board just over a minute later on that same power play, just over a minute later, on a rip from Matvai Michkov in the middle of the zone. Buffalo took the two goal lead back with 3:50 left in the first, with Jack Quinn cashing in on a beautiful move and pass for Ryan McLeod. Fun, fast paced first 20 minutes for this last game of the season.
The Sabres made it 4-1 just 1:24 into the second, on a quick shot from JJ Peterka on a two on one with McLeod. Michkov scored his second of the game to lead rookies in goals this season, giving me at least a push on the over, getting wide open next to the net for an easy tap in, making it 4-2 with 12:49 left in the second period.
15 seconds into the third period I hit my over, with the Flyers making it 4-3 on a tip in from Tyson Foerster from Noah Cates. A nice goal that was very similar to the Tuch goal earlier tonight. JJ Peterka picked up his second goal of the night, with a tip that went off the goalies skate and into the net to make it 5-3 with 3:26 left. It got reviewed for goaltender interference and came off the board with Jack Quinn making contact in the crease upon farther review. Ryan McLeod scored on the empty net to make it 5-3 Sabres with 47 seconds left in the season for his 20th goal of the year. With 18.2 seconds left, the Flyers scored again though on a slap shot by Bobby Brink from the blue line to keep it a one goal game.
The Sabres win it to end the season and Lindy Ruff gets to 900 career wins as a head coach.
FINAL: Sabres 5, Flyers 4
Good win for the Sabres to close out the season tonight with a fun game. But at the end of the day, who gives a shit.
This was year another disappointing, terrible season. 14 straight years that this franchise has missed that playoffs. That’s a lot of losing and a FAR ways away from Terry Pegula saying 14 years ago when he bought this team that our goal for existence was to win the Stanley Cup. This year alone we took a huge step backwards in goaltending, and a step back from offense from two years ago when we just barely missed the playoffs. I know this team is still very young, but that isn’t an excuse when for 14 years you haven’t seen the postseason. This year we went on a pathetic 13 game losing streak and sat at the bottom of the Eastern Conference for the majority of the year, without a sniff at the playoffs. Terry Pegula’s been an awful owner, and that was exemplified by that in the midst of all those losses he and Kevyn Adams, who’s absolutely the worst GM in the league, went into the locker room and said the “solution was in that room”. It absolutely was not, and won’t be when your GM is blaming state taxes and the lack of palm trees on the reason why players don’t want to come to Buffalo. It’s that this is a pathetic organization that yearly barely spends past the cap FLOOR and just runs re-treads through the door year after year. Then at the deadline they do next to nothing, trading one lousy contract in Dylan Cozens for another bad contract for Josh Norris, who’s barely played for us, out with continued injuries. I truly believe that will never change until Terry sells this team and it’s sad. You watch good teams play hockey night in and night out around the league and see how far behind the Sabres are from that winning culture. Every night I sit here watching this team lose games, and they look so uninspired and lazy. Then here and there they pop with impressive wins and it shows they have the talent to do so, but can’t sustain it. Last offseason, rather than hiring a coach that could actually change something, instead Terry decided to bring back nostalgia in hiring Lindy to come back, thinking he’d sell tickets. No one thought that they were going to win because of that move. It just showed what Pegula actually cares about, which I said right away in my blog when he got hired. 14 fucking years. And even after we were eliminated from the playoffs officially, then we win seven of eight games, even fucking up the draft pick for next year. Not that it really matters. We had two first overall picks in the span of a few years, and its not like Dahlin and Power, while both good players, are making a big enough impact to get this team past the sticking point. It takes a whole team. Goaltending hasn’t been good since Ryan Miller, showing spurts of hope. All our superstars, after leaving here looking like shit, go on to making significant impacts on Stanley Cup winning teams, Ryan O’Reilly, Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart, and the list goes on. All Cup Champs after leaving Buffalo. That arena feels so dead every night. It’s not like the city doesn’t love sports. We invented party in the plaza that every team in the league does in the playoffs every year now. The Bills have the rowdiest fan base in the NFL. The Bandits, a professional lacrosse team, broke a record this year selling out the same arena this year that looks like a ghost town every Sabres game. This team is so far out in every position from being a contender that I don’t see us getting to the playoff before the drought is old enough to drown itself in the $18 beers as this horrible franchise just keeps on losing. Terry Pegula made a franchise that gave me my best memories of watching sports as a little kid such a sad team to watch in and out every night. SELL THE FUCKING TEAM TERRY.
Until next year…
Let’s go Buffalo.
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