Buffalo Bills: Why Your Football Search Ends in Chicken Wings
So Alex Tuch is making his preseason debut Saturday. The team is 2-1 in games that don't matter. They just got smacked around by Detroit's B-squad. Whoop-de-doo.
Every year, right around this time, the machine starts up again here in Buffalo, NY. The gears start grinding, the smoke starts puffing, and the local media starts churning out the same old hope-flavored sausage. “This is the year.” “The pieces are in place.” “The drought is almost over.”
Give me a break.
We’re staring down the barrel of a 15th straight season with no playoff hockey. A decade and a half. There are kids driving cars who have never seen this team play a meaningful game in late April. And yet, here we are again, supposed to get excited because Tuch is lacing them up for a glorified practice against the Red Wings.
The Best Team in the League, Until the Whistle Blows
The Statistical Absurdity
Let’s be real for a second. The core of this team is a statistical anomaly, a hockey unicorn that shouldn’t exist. For three straight seasons, the Buffalo Sabres have been the best five-on-five scoring team in the entire National Hockey League.
Read that again. The best.
You’ve got Tage Thompson, who, after a down year playing with a busted hand, came back and potted 44 goals last season—a league-leading 33 of them at even strength. You’ve got Rasmus Dahlin, who is, by any sane metric, one of the top five defensemen on the planet. He’s the engine, the guy who makes it all go. You’ve got Owen Power, the former first-overall pick locked into a massive contract. You’ve got Tuch himself, a 36-goal scorer.
They can skate with anyone. They can score on anyone. When the game is played five-a-side, they are an offensive juggernaut. It’s all right there on paper, a beautiful, perfect formula for success.
And then the referee raises his arm.
A Powerhouse with No Power
The Power(less) Play
The power play is a problem. No, a 'problem' is a leaky faucet—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire.
For the past two seasons, this team, this so-called offensive powerhouse, has had the 29th-ranked power play in the league. Twenty-ninth. Out of 32. It’s malpractice. It’s like owning a Ferrari and only driving it in school zones. How do you lead the league in scoring at 5-on-5 and then, when the other team gives you an advantage, you suddenly forget how to hold a hockey stick?
It makes no sense. It’s the kind of thing that breaks your brain if you think about it too long. They’ve got all this firepower, all this young talent, and for what… to pass it around the perimeter for a minute and fifty seconds before dumping it in? It’s a systemic, baffling failure that has persisted for years, and it ain't getting fixed by shuffling a few deck chairs. Moving Thompson from center to wing isn't going to magically teach these guys how to set up in the zone.
This is the whole story. This is the fatal flaw in the code. You can’t be this bad at something so crucial and expect to win.
Then again, maybe I’m the crazy one here. Maybe this is the year they hire a coach who can draw a power play on a napkin. But after 14 years, hope feels less like a strategy and more like a diagnosis.
The Definition of Insanity, but with Skates
And Then There’s the Net
Offcourse, we can’t talk about Sabres misery without talking about the goaltending.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, after a season where he looked like he might finally be The Guy, saw his save percentage crater from a solid .910 to a ghastly .887. And Devon Levi, the other supposed savior, hasn’t been able to make the jump. Goaltending is voodoo, I get it, but this team’s ability to find new and creative ways to have league-average-or-worse netminding is an art form.
So you have a team that scores at will five-on-five, can’t score to save its life on the power play, and has a giant question mark flapping his arms in the crease every night. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
It’s just exhausting. It’s like the city is in a collective trance. At least with the Buffalo Bills, the pain is acute and spectacular. You know the heartbreak is coming in the divisional round, not dragged out over an 82-game regular season death march. It’s a different flavor of civic suffering, sure, but at least it’s something. You can get together with friends, make some buffalo chicken dip, and watch the Bills schedule culminate in a memorable flameout. This is just… a slow, grinding purgatory.
Just Tell Me How It Ends
Look, I see the new names. Josh Norris, Josh Doan. I hear the talk about "depth" being a strength. It’s the same script, different actors. Every fall, we’re told this is the year the narrative changes. And every spring, we’re left staring at the draft lottery odds. Alex Tuch playing on Saturday is just another line in a story I feel like I’ve already read a hundred times. I just wish someone would skip to the last page and tell me if the ending is any different this time. I’m not holding my breath.
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