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Someday (hopefully) this team will remember the lumps they've been taking |
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The Buffalo Sabres head into tonight's matchup vs. the Philadelphia Flyers on a franchise-record nine-game regulation losing streak. Losing tonight for a 10th consecutive time would be nothing new to the team as they finished last season with seven losses (one in the SO) and opened up this campaign with a three game losing streak for 10 in a row. But losing a 10th game in a row in regulation is something that hasn't been done at all since 2006 when the Pittsburgh Penguins with rookie Sidney Crosby did it from January 6-23.
Pittsburgh, of course, won the 2005 draft lottery prior to the 2005-06 season and picked Crosby first overall. He would score 39 goals as a rookie and his 102 points would place him 6th in the league. Even with that production, as well as solid contributions from the likes of Sergei Gonchar, Mark Recchi and John Leclair, the Pens still could only manage 22 wins, one less than a 2003-04, pre-Crosby team which went 23-47-8-4 (eight ties and 4 OT losses.)
With their losses mounting and a bottom-dwelling finish in the offing for the second year running, the Buffalo Sabres have often been compared to the Pens as well as the Chicago Blackhawks of that era when both of those franchises were reaching bottom during their rebuilds. Both teams would eventually come out of depths to raise the Stanley Cup.
The Sabres are coming off of a 7-0 shellacking at the hands of the Minnesota Wild on Thursday night. Minnesota came into the First Niagara Center having lost six in a row, 12 out of the previous 14, although it sure didn't look like it.
Philadelphia is navigating rough waters right now as well. They come to Buffalo having a 3-7-1 record in their last 11 and have been shut out in back-to-back games going scoreless in their last 144:59 minutes. During that streak they've average 1.91 goals per game as opposed to 2.85 in their previous 34.
Lately Buffalo seems to be good for whatever ails teams as the Minnesota Wild can attest to. However bad it might be for Philly right now, they should be seeing light at the end of the deep, dark tunnel they've found themselves in lately, and the chances of it being a blue and gold freight train barreling towards them is pretty slight. Philadelphia has won eight of the last ten meetings vs. Buffalo including all three last season.
Sabres head coach Ted Nolan put the team through a hard skate yesterday without pucks and sticks to try and get through to them. “It’s extremely hard when you ask somebody to do something and they don’t do it,” said Nolan, whose Sabres have been outscored 39-9 during their losing streak. “What can you do? … You take the horse to the well, and it’s up to him to bend over and drink it. You can’t force someone to do something. You can ask him and ask him."
Nolan continued, "We have meetings. We talk about certain things then we don't do them. It's enough talking. It's enough yelling and screaming at each other," he said, "We've got an angry team. We've got a disappointed team, and we've just got to find a way to fight through it."
Fight hasn't been a word to describe this team since Tyler Ennis woke them up by jostling with Alexander Steen back on November 11, 2014. Although they lost that game resoundingly and lost the next game as well, it would seem as if he sent a message that "enough was enough" and the Sabres would soon find themselves on a 10-3 run.
Nolan has put the team through a bag skate before and with little affect, and he's trying it again. “The biggest thing is trying to relay a positive image, particularly with our young guys," he said yesterday. "Some of the older guys you’re not going to change. That’s just the way it is.”
Center Zemgus Girgensons, who's going through a particularly rough patch is one of those young guys Nolan's talking about. He gets it. “Punishment, learning all in one,” he said. “It’s definitely the right thing to do. We definitely need something to get us going. Maybe that will get in our guys’ heads because no one wants to do that every day, that’s for sure.”
Girgensons is one of three young pillars the team would like to build upon, the others being defensemen Rasmus Ristolainen and Nikita Zadorov. The inconsistencies that all have shown this season are to be expected, but for the most part they've played a solid game with consistent effort and they're learning every game including the feeling of a team running up the score on them.
From Jon Vogl of the Buffalo News, "Nolan unhappily noted that Minnesota, already holding a 6-0 lead, put out its best players for a power play with three minutes left. The Wild scored to make it 7-0. He hopes rebuild cornerstones such as Girgensons Ristolainen and Zadorov remember things like that.
'Hopefully Nikita, Ristolainen and Girgensons, they’ll remember that a year from now when they can give out the lumps instead of taking them all,' Nolan said. 'When you’re going through what we’re going through, you’re going to get a lot of bumps once in a while. You’ve just got to remember when you can give them back.'
Right now something like dishing out lumps is Greek to this squad. Especially with all the lumps this team has been taking.
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