The calendar has flipped to March, which in Buffalo means it’s time for First Spring, then Second Winter, then 75 degrees for two days followed by soggy April. For the Sabres, March means an absolutely grueling stretch against some of the most talented teams on their 2021-2022 schedule.
It couldn’t have come at a worse time as the Sabres have lost six in a row after appearing to have turned a corner with two wins in a row against Montreal and the New York Islanders two weeks ago. But like the first few days of spring-like weather in Western New York, that was followed by an ice-cold stretch to remind us that the Sabres are an awfully long way from sunny skies.
The next eight games on the schedule for the first half of March is a murderer’s row of talent with Buffalo playing Minnesota, Los Angeles, Florida, Vegas, Edmonton, Calgary. They also play the Toronto Maple Leafs twice, once in Toronto, and once outside in the elements in Hamilton, Ontario. Here are the records for the upcoming opponents, as well as average record compiled from the sum of those teams.
Toronto 35-14-4 Minnesota 31-16-3 Los Angeles 29-18-7 Florida 35-13-5 (Las) Vegas 29-20-4 Toronto 35-14-4 Edmonton 29-21-3 Calgary 31-14-6 Average Record 32-16-5
There’s not a cupcake in the bunch.
That average record of 32-16-5 for that hypothetical team would be good for 7th in a top-heavy Eastern Conference and would be a third-place team in the Western Conference. Those 69 points would put them atop the Pacific Division, ahead of the Calgary Flames.
The two “worst… teams on that schedule in terms of record are the Edmonton Oilers – who have the best player in hockey – and the Vegas Golden Knights, the team that has an extremely motivated Jack Eichel who would undoubtedly love to blow the doors off his former squad at home. Beyond those two, you have the offensively gifted Toronto Maple Leafs and Calgary Flames, as well as Sam “The Forgotten One… Reinhart and the Florida Panthers. It’s honestly difficult to decide which of the games will be the hardest as there are so many different motivating factors across the eight contests.
To make a tough situation even tougher, the Sabres will play these eight games in 16 days, meaning that they essentially will play a game every other night. That’s not a lot of time to recover from a tough game and meaningfully prepare for the next game.
The good news is that the Sabres will have Jack Quinn back with the team following his prolonged absence due to injury.
Wait.
I’m being told that he’s been assigned to Rochester and the Sabres will likely continue to regularly dress John Hayden, Cody Eakin and Anders Bjork who have a combined 20 points in 144 games with a -34 rating which makes total and complete sense.
There exists a very real possibility that the Sabres win one or two of those eight games, and there’s a non-zero chance that they regularly get blown out en route to an 0-8 record for the first half of the month. Granted, this is hockey after all, and sometimes puck luck can swing in favor of a team for a couple of games that they win when they shouldn’t. That said, this gauntlet could get very ugly, very quickly, and it could stay that way for the duration.
Now is the time that fans will be able to see if Don Granato can keep his squad together rather than totally flying apart at the seams. The team is playing for nothing but pride which has to be in short supply after another brutal year. How they exit this stretch may very well determine the opinion of the head coach moving into next year, and therefore how much rope he will get when the next season begins.
Back when the Sabres had a general manager who appeared on the radio with some regularity, Jason Botterill was fond of talking about “meaningful games in March,… meaning that the Sabres goal should be to have interesting games that are worth watching during the month of March. That hilariously low bar was never met in his tenure, nor has it been in the first two seasons under current general manager Kevyn Adams. Instead, it’s been a slog to get to the trade deadline at which point the Sabres can yet again slough off some of their underwhelming unrestricted free agents.
Speaking of which, the conclusion of this ridiculous stretch of games (March 18th against the Calgary Flames) will coincide almost perfectly with the March 21st trade deadline, so the Sabres should be well-and-truly ready to divest themselves of whatever they can to acquire whatever draft capital they can.
There will plenty of time to discuss the trade deadline as it nears, but suffice to say for now, the goal needs to be to get some of their injured pieces back healthy, and to keep their healthy pieces available to be traded. Colin Miller is scheduled to come back ahead of the deadline. Vinnie Hinostroza looks to be available for some contests perhaps as soon as this weekend, and with his production of 17 points in 36 games, he’ll have a chance to write his own ticket out of town if he can keep up his half-a-point-per game scoring pace.
Buckle up for a bumpy ride over the next two weeks. It’s about to get wild.