While watching the Washington Capitals bumble their way to a four-game sweep at the hands of the New York Rangers and continuing to wonder how they sneaked into the playoffs ahead of the Sabres, Pittsburgh and Detroit, there was one thought that kept entering my mind.
Lindy Ruff might have the easiest job in the NHL next season.
Ruff and General Manager Kevyn Adams will vociferously disagree with me, but the Sabres shouldn’t be mentioning Stanley Cups at all going into the 2024-25 campaign. That’s not their goal. To loosely quote one of owner Terry Pegula’s original catchphrases, this franchise’s reason for existence next season is simply to get into the playoffs. To end the civic distress and the organizational embarrassment tied to the longest playoff drought in NHL history.
Ruff’s troops need to get into the postseason, take some five-game loss in Round 1 and then we can all get on to the process of aiming toward much longer hockey springs around here. And he’ll be a hero.
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You might argue that’s a pretty low standard to have and you’re right. But that’s simply the reality of where this organization is.
At this point in their history, you can equate the Sabres to where the Bills were in 2017.
You might have forgotten that before Josh Allen arrived on the scene, the Bills were in the same pickle as the Sabres. And their playoff drought had stretched for 17 years, tied for the fifth-longest in NFL history.
It ended on Dec. 31, 2017, as I was in a New York City hotel room getting ready for the NHL’s official welcome party for the Sabres-Rangers Winter Classic the next day at Citi Field in Queens. The Bills had won in Miami and you remember the rest. The favored Baltimore Ravens needed simply to beat the Cincinnati Bengals at home and the Bills were toast again.
But on a fourth-and-12 play from the Ravens’ 49, Andy Dalton hit Tyler Boyd for a touchdown with 44 seconds left to win the game and get the Bills into the playoffs. It sparked celebrations back home, in Miami and made for a night of revelry in New York, where Buffalo’s Goo Goo Dolls were the musical act at the NHL party.
Bills’ fans flooded Dalton’s charity with $17 donations in honor of the end of the drought, an all-time organic celebration by a fan base.
What happened next for the Tyrod Taylor-led Bills? They lost at Jacksonville, 10-3, in a nearly unwatchable wild-card game. Almost no one remembers and that’s OK. The season was over but so was the drought.
By the time we know if the Sabres are going to make the playoffs next April, they might have the longest drought in the four major professional sports. The New York Jets’ last playoff game was in January 2011, just over three months prior to the Sabres’…
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