The End of the I'll Show You Era

Maybe it was doomed from the start to end like this. Maybe.

Maybe instead it was doomed from the moment on December 3, 2024 the Colorado Avalanche tied and then scored the go-ahead goal to erase Buffalo’s 4-0 first period lead. It was only their 4th loss in a row, but by that point, the good feelings of being in a playoff spot at Thanksgiving were negated. After an overtime loss to the Jets came the palm trees. Five games after that, a pregame visit in Montreal, followed by 6 goals in 40 minutes to make it 11 in a row on their way to a 13 game losing streak.

At that point, it certainly felt like It Wasn’t Going To Work. Something was going to have to change, and of course that came in the form of Dylan Cozens being traded at the trade deadline. JJ Peterka has also since been moved via trade, but Cozens got a letter and was the center of the line whose performance arguably is what has differentiated having been a game out of the 2023 playoffs and the regression of the team in the standings during each of the next two years. Between the adamance of the answers being in the room and not making a trade just to make a trade, the same adamance of the health of Josh Norris at the time of his arrival only to reveal he was playing through a different injury that needed him to be shut down, and then how that attitude carried into the summer with what seemed like being offended that someone would ask about anyone on the coaching staff’s contract situation and job security after dropping back under 80 points, everything that has happened in the last 12 months became a crescendo of (too much?) confidence that at any point it was simply going to all snap into place and that THIS would simply be the year it all came together because of how it appeared on paper, all while playing the “Want to be here” hits one more time, and the last time at that.

Or…

Maybe instead it was doomed from the moment Garnet Hathaway and Dylan Cozens dropped the gloves on November 3, 2023, as the Sabres dropped to 5-6 after a 5-1 blowout? That was also the score on opening night when all of the excitement of being on the doorstep of the playoffs six months prior. The rocky start saw them have more wins than regulation losses after one game for the entire first five months of the season, a 3-2 win at home over the Wild on November 10th to improve to 7-6-1. They’d lose the next 3.

Was that fight a point of demarcation that October wasn’t a rocky start, and that the commitment to transition to the focus on “playoff hockey” was ultimately something that was going to keep them out of said playoffs because the team wasn’t built to not have success on the rush?

What happened to the confidence that being on the bubble meant that the natural growth was going to get them over the top by sticking with it? During the Floriday Panthers playoff run, Kyle Okposo spoke about how something felt off right off the jump for the 2023-24 Sabres. How did the season not last 30 days before it turned out that the roster lost all of the confidence in where they finished the season before and were going backwards? At the end, it was only 3 less wins than the year before, but did anyone not feel like it was significantly worse of a year?

So…

Maybe instead it was doomed from the moment they elected to not make That One More Move to get them a more solidified forward to be both a more flexible style of player for when teams locked the transition game down.

The process from the 2023 trade deadline through the start of the 2023-24 season followed good enough logic. Part of the logic of bringing Jordan Greenway in was to have a guy with term who had the skills to counter teams that forced them into dump and chase zone entries on a team filled with guys who were better in a system of carrying the puck in with speed, and at least in year one, Greenway was a positive impact on their team defense in 67 games played. Connor Clifton could come over from a crowded Bruins blue line and add to the RHD depth chart, and Erik Johnson could provide the grizzled veteran role. It was the kind of stretch where you think “okay those are great steps. Now how about one more move to solidify these guys as a playoff team.”

And then crickets.

With the benefit of hindsight, that need went from an aspiration to a necessity the moment Jack Quinn went down with his offseason injury. They were fortunate enough to have Zach Benson in a position where he earned a spot out of camp as an 18 year old, but did they convince themselves that an 18 year old lottery pick was going to be the life boat? Was it the same the same rationale that led them to thinking that Devon Levi’s April cameo was going to defy the traditional trajectory of rookie goalies, let alone those that were 7th round picks?

There aren’t questions about if that confidence in linear growth applied to the rest of the roster. Not just in the “your 21 year old second line center will drop from 31 goals to 18” way, but in the way that if playoff hockey (defensive-coded) is the direction the team needs to go, that the now-22 year old center would become a defensively competent two-way option over the course of a single offseason in a way that won’t also lead to a trade off of offensive productivity, especially with linemates of the same offense-first build.

(Again with the benefit of hindsight) Maybe if Casey Mittelstadt wasn’t someone they were going to give a longer term extension to and were likely to end up shopping him, maybe that trade could’ve been part of a package for that One More type player, especially if they didn’t want to spend too much of the cupboard? Or maybe we’ll find out they convinced themselves Pat Kane was going to come to Buffalo after Quinn went out, I don’t know.

But regardless, we all know what happened next: An offseason of focusing on building a new bottom six and not touching the defense, followed by an offseason of focusing on the defense, all while handing out multiple two year deals to numerous members of that bottom six, creating the log jam that has come up multiple times this season, needing injuries to not make tough decisions, most recently seen with the send down and recall on the same west coast trip for Noah Ostlund.

That itself is a fitting end to this era: The confidence that the three goalie tandems of the last 4 years wouldn’t blow up in their faces, the confidence in the linear growth of their core, the confidence that each fork in the road could be easily addressed with the extra experience, the confidence in the wrong support players because of that extra experience. And not to mention the confidence that a coach would alone snap everything into place, including the powerplay drop off, all while the only member of the 2023-24 coaching staff not still in the organization is that team’s head coach.

At every point since the end of 2023, they have been under the impression that there were only minor tweaks needed to get to the playoffs. And now here we are, looking down at the most major change in 6 years because they waited too long to correctly address that need, missing that extra piece while Alex Tuch’s time in the core is probably over in a couple of months.

Speaking of how he joined the organization though…

Maybe it was doomed from this moment instead. Or probably, huh…

Imagine my surprise when I started making calls today and heard Jack Eichel trade rumours, including unverified chatter he may have at some point recently requested a trade out of BUF and that NYR were amongst interested teams. This, of course, required further investigation.
— Bob McKenzie (@TSNBobMcKenzie) September 28, 2020

But that’s okay. We were only two points out of a playoff spot. Sure it was an extended bracket, but Montreal and Chicago both won their first series! It’s not helpless yet. We’ll show Jack!