DGB (Down Goes Brown, aka: Sean McIndoe of The Athletic) has a great column from the 20th on whether the Sabres are the best bandwagon-jumping team in the history of the NHL.
He does give us a shout-out (“Any Columbus Blue Jackets team, including this year’s, is a decent option, but Buffalo has a 30-year head start on them”) but settles on “yes”.
And then he asks the important question that nobody else has the [redacted] to ask: “Sabres fans: Do you want this?”
He breaks it down into two options: yes, of course, but respect the fans who wore the sweaters when the team was the joke of the NHL; and no, micturate elsewhere, please & thank you, they deserve this, where were you when Eichel & Reinhart wanted to leave?
Why?
Possibility Number One: The Goat-Heads are better.
Let’s face some numbers. The Sabres have a 44-20-6 record and lead their division after being the second-worst team only last year. They are +15 points in the standings right now, and they’ve twelve games remaining in the season. If they go 0.500 the rest of the season, they’ll be +27 points ahead of last year’s team.
The Jackets are at 85 points with 13 games remaining, which is a very respectable, um, -4 standing points over last season—but if we go 0.500 the rest of the way, we’ll have 98 points, which would be +9 points better. And the way the East is going right now, we’d probably—let’s change the topic, k?
Possibility Number Two: poor commuting options to major media centres.
One of the reasons that Buffalo was the joke of the NHL is that they hold the NHL record for futility—missing the playoffs 15 consecutive seasons is hard to do, even if it’s something that you’re actively trying to do. Look at how many times the Vancouver Canucks, a NHL franchise whose main focus, at least for the owners, often appears to be to manipulate land values to help their real estate/development company make more money. “Winning is cool and all, but I wanna build condos!” (Don’t sue me, bro, I’m poor.)
But Buffalo has one advantage over all of the other sad-sack teams that have popped up and faded away as futility franchise possibilities. If you want to fly to Buffalo from Toronto, seriously, don’t bother. It’s an hour forty-five by car. If you want to fly from New York to Buffalo, you are probably clinically depressed and should talk to your physician about [hey, PD, do we take product placement ads from pharmaceutical companies? We could slip one in right here, it’s on topic and everything.] Columbus is literally not on the radar unless we are actually in the playoffs. And you can’t jump onto the bandwagon if you don’t know where it is. And the hockey media, for better or worse, barely knows where the Jackets are (except Matt Larkin. He’s on our side.)
So maybe Sean is right, and the Goat-Heads are the GOATs. Or not. But I will concede him this: maybe the Buffalo Sabres are the current bandwagon best option—the generally optimal underdog team.
Yeah, I think that’s a better descriptor. I’ll just bite the bullet and say it—the Buffalo Sabres are the GOUT of the NHL Playoffs.
Hmmm.
That doesn’t sound as good as it did in my head.
Maybe I’ll have a think about this one later.
Anyway, byeee!