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Hawks welcome Kaner's hometown team after finishing up that foofy red carpet stunt. And boy, did they ever suck last year, with only 150 goals on the entire season, some kind of near-historic low. One of the things that sort of stinks about the NHL is that historically great and historically awful teams are even fewer and farther between than in the other leagues. I think it was the 1975 Capitals and 1980 Jets that went damn near winless, but those were expansion teams (or in Winnipeg's case, a merger team that had to forfeit almost all its players for the hockey treason of existing), and the game's inherent randomness combines with the salary cap/floor system to make that hard to do now. So when the Sabres finished with their 52 points (40 without inflation) and 150 goals, that was probably the closest thing we're ever going to see to, say, the '03 Tigers, '12 Bobcats, or '08 Lions.
The crazy part is that between hanging on to Ryan Miller for most of the year and firing the disgustingly dumb Ron Rolston, they had this historically terrible season without ever 100-percent committing to being bad! If they had dumped Miller early, gotten rid of Christian Ehrhoff, or not brought back notorious redass (if you'll, um, pardon the expression) Ted Nolan, hoooooly shit, they may have never won a game all year! I'm serious! All they would have done was have five fights a game and lose 7-1 every night. Even without pulling out all the stops, they still had the worst season of the last nine years and got the #2 pick in the draft. Sigh. What could have been.
The feeling has been that this year is going to be another tankjob, this time with their sights set on best-prospect-since-Crosby Connor McDavid, but between the new lottery odds, salary floor, and a dead-cat bounce, I don't think they can swing it. They brought Matt Moulson back in after loaning him to Minnesota, got Josh Gorges and Brian Gionta from Montreal, and have a bunch of good prospects coming in, #2 overall Sam Reinhart having the highest upside. Make no mistake: this is a really awful team. I just don't think they can recreate the magic from last year. I look around the league, and the Coyotes look worse, the Hurricanes look worse, the Jets look as bad and maybe worse, and the Senators are one more Erik Karlsson injury away from sounding the air raid sirens and evacuating the entire Capital Region with radioactive badness. There's also the fact that there's only so much patience you can ask for from Western New York, where people's lives tend to suck before you even take their sports teams into account. They've been good sports about this rebuild because the new owner is basically redeveloping downtown Buffalo himself and just dropped a bil and a half to keep Jon Bon Jovi from moving the Bills to Toronto, with Ralph Wilson's family ultimately donating half the proceeds of the sale right back to Buffalo anyway. Even without McDavid (who's playing out his junior career 'round the lake in Erie PA), there's still enough there to make this a good team again soon, especially with First Nations Thibodeau behind the bench.
Hawks should win this handily against the Backup On The Edge Of Forever, Jonas Enroth, and whoever else is in front of him. After sort of letting the Stars dictate the pace on Thursday night, the Hawks should dominate the possession numbers tonight. I sort of remember both games last year being close before the Hawks realized this was rather cruel, but I could easily be confusing these two games with like the other 50 games the Hawks played where they coasted most of the night. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And they don't want the world to see Teuvo, 'cuz they don't think that we'd understand:
Sharp - Toews - Hossa
Saad - Shaw - Kane
Bickell - Richards - Smith
Carcillo - Kruger - Morin
Keith - Seabrook
Hjalmarsson – van Riemsdyk
Oduya – Cumiskey (no way Rundblad dresses after his game with the Stars)
Crawford
Raanta
When everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who the Buffalo Sabres are:
Matt Moulson – Tyler Ennis – Drew Stafford
Marcus Foligno – Sam Reinhart – Chris Stewart
Cody Hodgson – Zemgus Girgensons – Brian Gionta
Cody McCormick – Brian Flynn – Torrey Mitchell
Josh Gorges – Tyler Myers
Mike Weber – Rasmus Ristolainen
Andre Benoit – Andrej Meszaros
Jonas Enroth
Michael Neuvirth
Keep Rick Jeanneret in your thoughts as he recovers from throat cancer.
_________________ Molly Lambert wrote: The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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