NHL: Buffalo Sabres vs Edmonton Oilers – A Tale Of Two Terrible Teams
By Mike Majeski
Both the Buffalo Sabres and the Edmonton Oilers will finish in the bottom of the NHL standings, but the franchises are headed in opposite directions.
Prior to the start of the 2014-15 NHL season the Buffalo Sabres were the consensus pick to finish 30th overall in the league. The Sabres did very little to address holes in their roster during the offseason. Therefore suspicions grew that they were tanking the season even before it started – so much so that the NHL quietly modified the draft odds to make it more difficult for the worst team to earn the number one pick. While they denied they were tanking, the Sabres were terrible out of the gate, winning only two games in the month of October and just barely cracking double digits in the shot count on several occasions. The Sabres were a complete embarrassment.
Everyone agreed that the Sabres were going to be bad, but the opinion regarding the Edmonton Oilers differed. Some expected them to continue to struggle, while others felt that this would finally be the year that the Oilers would emerge from rebuild mode and finally make a run for the playoffs. One coaching change later and a firm spot in the NHL’s basement, it appears that the second group was correct. The Edmonton Oilers have somehow found a way to be a bigger failure than a team that the NHL itself thought was mailing it in.
NHL: Buffalo Sabres vs Edmonton Oilers – A Tale Of Two Terrible Teams
The Buffalo Sabres were in-theory constructed to fail and land them Connor McDavid. What they didn’t plan for was head coach Ted Nolan and the level of play he gets out of his players. The Sabres began to slowly show some improvement in the month of November, but have really started to hit their stride this past month. Over their last 10 games the Sabres are 5-4-1 and have jumped to 27th overall in the standings with 29 points, just one point behind the New Jersey Devils and the Philadelphia Flyers.
Looking at the current playoff picture the Sabres are just nine points out of the second Wild Card spot — hardly a position anyone expected them to be in this season. They do have a minus-43 goal differential, but some of that stems from a recent rough patch where they were outscored 10-2 in two games. Those losses to the Winnipeg Jets and the Colorado Avalanche dampened some of the talk of the Sabres somehow slipping into a Wild Card spot and served as a reminder that this is still a team that will finish in the bottom of the NHL.
The Sabres may be bad this season but you get the feeling that they have a plan going forward. Ted Nolan is proving that he can get results even out of a poorly constructed roster. Give him the right kind of talent and the Sabres could quickly become a playoff contender. That is a direct contrast to the Edmonton Oilers who have turned themselves into a raging dumpster fire that only a Vancouver Stanley Cup loss could produce. When the Oilers fired head coach Dallas Eakins last week it was their fifth coaching change in as many years. How can a franchise hope to have any semblance of stability if there is a new coach every season? The Oilers are the Cleveland Browns of the NHL — keep changing the people in charge and the personnel, but never get to the root of what is causing the franchise’s issues.
Every year the Oilers fail to address their terrible defense and instead try to win by offense. Sure they upgraded their goaltending this season, but even Jonathan Quick would struggle in this defensive “system”. Then you have the organizational circus — Craig MacTavish holds a press conference trying to deflect all of the blame but states a coaching change will not solve anything. One week later he fires head coach Dallas Eakins. Forget any accusations of the Oilers tanking; while the Sabres might actually have the organizational ability to pull that off, I have zero confidence in the Oilers front office in being able to orchestrate something like that. No, the Oilers really are this bad.
And that’s the big difference between these two teams. As I said earlier, you feel like the Sabres have a plan in place. Call it tanking or call it making the best decision for a rebuilding franchise – the Sabres knew they were going to be bad this year. However, you feel that brighter days are ahead very soon for this team. If they can add a McDavid or an Eichel, that turnaround could come much sooner.
With the Oilers, you feel like if they had either of those two players, they’d still manage to screw it up and finish in last. As GM Craig MacTavish said in his press conference after firing Eakins, the Oilers struggles go beyond coaching, it’s deep rooted. Just like the Browns, the Oilers have established a culture of losing and poisoned the well. The only real option is to clean house in the front office and re-start the rebuild. The Sabres were smart enough to put in a smart front office and a head coach who can get results. While they may lose a lot this season, that culture of losing will never take root in Buffalo.