Buffalo Sabres: WTF?

by Steve

After years and years and years oh and years of begging, pleading and praying for Darcy Regier & Lindy Ruff to be fired they are still employed by the Buffalo Sabres and may have made their best case yet to be dismissed. Some how.

What does Lindy Ruff have over this city and its hockey team that he is more indestructible than Teflon and cockroaches? The guy is a career loser who is poison to almost any player brought into the organization. Star goalies, top line talent, big free agents, high draft picks and luck coming out of a year long lock out. None of these things have been good enough for this guy to win a championship in the National Hockey League. Yet fifteen years of failure is not enough of a track record to warrant a firing? Has he secretly promised to develop the waterfront or bring back Bethlehem Steel and we just have to wait fifteen more years?

The Buffalo Sabres in 2011/12 have been the most embarrassing Buffalo sports team since at least the 2002 Buffalo Bills. Even the 3rd worst-in-the-league 4-12 2010 Buffalo Bills weren't as pathetic as this squad. They are dead last in the conference, fifteenth out of fifteenth after forty-eight games! They have won two of their last eleven games and haven't been competitive since Ryan Millsie Miller got ran by Milan Lucic back in early November.

If there has ever been a professional sports team begging more for significant changes from the head coach on down I would love a list. Players playing well below expectations? Check. Quit on their coach and just ignore him? Check. A coach with no answers and saying they will need their goalie to stand on his head just to win one game? Check. Outraged and nearly ambivalent fan base? Check.

The situation is so dire, pathetic and sad that they might as well wait until the offseason. No one wants them to fire Lindy Ruff now and have the team play .500 the rest of the season. Clearly they are a 100% pretender with glaring problems. Lose as many as possible, play for a draft pick and clear house April 9th (the Monday after the season ends).

The only real question at this point is did fan boy owner Terry Pegula really believe the sole reason this team has been playing pitiful for the past 3+ months is because of injuries? What professional franchise would allow their season to disintegrate while doing nothing for months and months?

Anyone with DirecTv or Fios has seen for weeks that something, anything needed to be done to change the team. 9-24 over their last 33 games and nothing could be done to at least try and shake things up?

This pitiful stretch shouldn't only shake the fans' belief in Dracy Regier and untouchable Lindy Ruff (if for some reason you still had some hope) but it should force us to reexamine the fanboy owner Terry Pegula.

If this fly by night savior was willing to sit around and let these scrub losers ruin another season when exactly would he step in and demand change? Less than a year into his ownership tenure and he has already destroyed his credibility? Actually maybe that was already done at the introductory news conference when he spoke about the unassailable Ruff. Or when he allowed Regier to rebuild the team yet again.

Who would have thought this is where this franchise would be right now? When do Bills OTA's start?

#timetodie