The Weak, the Soft, the Shameful
Thursday, March 4th, 2010 10:47 pm by mrenninger
So I believe it’s safe to say we’ve been had.
You know that girl that you dated in high school or college, the one that was funny, attractive and could go drink for drink with you, the one you felt might be the one? Then you heard she “crashed” at the baseball team’s house one night, then she started blowing you off for nights out with her “friends?” As Luke Wilson said in Old School:
True love is hard to find, sometimes you think you have true love and then you catch the early flight home from San Diego and a couple of nude people jump out of your bathroom blindfolded like a goddamn magic show ready to double team your girlfriend…
The disgusted/confused look Sabres games give me now.
Luke Wilson’s character is us, the girlfriend is the Sabres, and the two nude people? I don’t know, Crosby and Ovechkin maybe (disturbing image and not that good of an analogy but let it go, its been awhile)? The point is we allowed this team to make us believe that this year was different, that this year the team put it all together, that this year the men in that locker room took their collective skill and made a decision to go for it all. We smoked the Red Wings at home, came back from three goal deficits in back-to-back games, had a five-goal third period at home against Carolina and built up a 13 point lead in what seemed like a stacked Northeast Division. Macarthur was finally putting the puck in the net, Tallinder enjoyed a rebirth, Connolly got hot, even Patrick Lalime looked Miller-esque for a couple games near the end of 2009. It led me to say in a posting following the Pittsburgh comeback that this team was pretty damn good, suddenly it wasn’t just a playoff birth we were discussing, it was how far we would go in the playoffs, and for a time, would we win the conference?
An all too common sight: leaving our All-World goalie out to dry.
The answer to that silly question is, no.
Have you ever seen a team so uninspired in games of such importance? It’s not like mailing one in against the Islanders when you’re sitting in the 10-spot, this is a team that is on the cusp of winning the division and could even make a run at the 2-seed. From what we’ve seen since the midway point of the road trip the team is playing like it’s tanking for the top draft pick. It’s disgusting, a team of clowns with the complacency of a team of sloths. Does someone need to remind these guys they haven’t won anything? Would it really make a difference? Do they care that they haven’t won anything, does it look like they’re fighting to bring a Stanley Cup to Buffalo? If they can’t get up for Wednesday’s game against the Caps, with a 45-second ovation for Ryan Miller in their first game home in over two weeks, what in the world will they get up for? They’re not even good at hiding their lethargy, it could be spotted by a seven-year-old.
It isn’t an ineptitude that cannot be broken down to a couple players. It’s a virus, and nearly everyone is infected. No one wants to shoot the puck, and when they do it seems to miss the net by ten feet (cough, Pominville, cough), or it is a shot from 25 feet out that’s slower than Toni Lydman and hits one of five guys between the shooter and the net. I would have no problem with the passes if they were smart, crisp, passes for better shots, but they aren’t. It is always one pass too many (Vanek, Connolly), or a fifteen-foot saucer pass that flies past or over the intended receiver (Hecht, Grier).
Three of our leading scorers. Also three responsible for infecting our team with their soft play.
The Power Play? Tell me you didn’t sigh or snicker to yourself when I mentioned it. There seems to be as many scoring chances for the penalized opponent as there are for the Sabres. We’ve mastered the dumping part of “dump and chase,” but it’s not exactly a philosophy that can have one above the other, it doesn’t work as “dump and let the opponent have a chance.” When we’re not attempting that it’s the patented 1-on-4 entrance into the zone that I have seen work once this season (it didn’t lead to a goal), and nearly always ends with the puck on a defender’s stick above the faceoff circle. How do we fix it? Honestly I can’t tell you, and if Lindy Ruff had an answer, don’t you think we’d have seen that answer by now? I’m sorry but the sight of Sekera and Butler out there running the show doesn’t keep me glued to my seat for those two minutes, if anything it gives me two minutes to run to the bathroom.
If there is one recent image that personifies the joke the 2009-2010 season is beginning to devolve into, it is the sight of Steve Montador falling behind the net in overtime against Carolina, a move that immediately resulted in the game-winning goal. The 4-0 loss to Columbus was the worst game I had seen them play since a 2-0 loss to the Islanders last season. They have three wins in their last fifteen games, and I can’t see much changing as we disintegrate towards the playoffs. The ten points we have ahead of the eight seed may be enough- and I stress may- to clinch a playoff spot for the first time in three seasons, but do you really think this roster can dig down, dig in for big games? There isn’t anything for these guys to dig in to. Last year I played intramural floor hockey with a bunch of old, out of shape grad students that got ran all over by the undergrads nearly every game. If there was a week in which we didn’t play, I hated it, we all hated it. We talked about the next game at the bars, in the classrooms, as if it was never going to come, and when it did we were ready to play. We defended our teammates, getting into a brawl one game that had my friend’s jersey looking like Jackie Kenendy’s pink dress from Dallas. The point is, that was intramural’s, brother. These “men” are professional hockey players making millions of dollars in front of fans that fill the arena each night and cheer for them with a passion that is unmatched in the league. We respect the players, we give them their space around town, we give them plenty of time to grow into their talents (hear that Stafford?) and simply ask that they try their hardest. If this team can’t do it for the money, the fans, or themselves, what makes us think they’ll do it as we get closer to the playoffs?
I watched the 99 Sabres, I cheered for the 99 Sabres. You guys are no 99 Sabres.
This team has been compared recently to the Sabres teams of the late 90′s, the teams of Peca, Barnaby, Barnes, Sanderson, Ray, Ward and of course Hasek. The similarities between those teams and this current version start and end with the all-world goaltender. Those teams of the late-90′s were loved because they personified the city in which they represented, they worked their asses off. They knew most nights that they weren’t as talented as the team across the ice from them but they hit, they forechecked, they blocked shots, they played hurt, they played with passion. This team plays soft, plays sloppy, doesn’t forecheck, doesn’t block shots, doesn’t defend their teammates or their goaltender (maybe you can make an exception for Rivet, but even that’s a stretch). I watched the Olympics and couldn’t believe the amount of shots that were blocked by every team, from Canada to Switzerland, players who weren’t afraid to sacrifice their body for the better of a team, a country. It made me proud to be a hockey fan, and ashamed of the players I cheer for every night.
Any good news? Well we traded for a scrapy forward in Raffi Torres from Columbus and cast off empty vessels Nathan Paetsch and Clarke Macarthur, who my friends were ready to trade for a souvenir mini stick and a case of Lababtt’s. Sadly enough, Torres is suddenly our leading goal scorer, ahead of 40 million dollar man Thomas Vanek. I like this trade a lot, but he will not cure the virus that has infected the roster, the best we can hope for is that he doesn’t get infected himself. We can hope that Lindy and Darcy push to bring up AHL Superstar Tyler Ennis and fellow teammate Nathan Gerbe for a few games in hopes they can recreate some postseason magic that rookies like Pominville did once upon a time, when he played hard. Sure, I had hoped for a goalie at the deadline but really, does it matter by this point? Miller, Lalime, Enroth, when the team scores less than two goals a game it’s highly unlikely that losses will be the fault of the goaltender.
My thoughts exactly.
The Sabres have fourteen games left this month and twenty left total. There is a five game road trip ahead, and two games each against Ottawa, Montreal and Boston. There are many reasons Lindy Ruff is one of the best coaches in the league, one of them being the shiny gold medal he won in Vancouver, but I will not fault him if he can’t get this team of stiffs to give a full night’s effort. I will continue to cheer for this team because I loved the Sabres, have loved them since my Grandfather took me to our seats in the Oranges at the Aud, where I constantly worried about falling to my demise, loved them since buying a single ticket to Game 4 of the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals, the only home game the Sabres would win in that series. So I, like most of you, are stuck with these guys. May they surprise us? Of course, we have seen surprises before. Was a tiny motivation to write this article hoping for a reverse jinx on the team? You bet. But I also believe these are the ills of a team that is infected with weakness, complacency, and apathy.
All we can do is don our jersey or t-shirt, cheer on the team and hope for the best. Let’s just make sure we’re not blind to the fact that they aren’t the team we thought could be the one.