I’m kind of a drama queen when it comes to the Sabres (although oddly, I’m not a drama queen in any other area of my life), so I felt a little bit of vindication when I made my morning blog rounds today. It seems I’m not the only person who thought that that was THE WORST HOCKEY GAME IN THE HISTORY OF TIME AND SPACE. I mean, I’ve seen the Sabres suck plenty of times before, but that game last night was an abomination. I’m not sure that either team successfully completed a pass all night. I will forever remember that game as ten guys standing in the middle of the rink kicking the puck around randomly with their skates. For all I know, they didn’t even USE hockey sticks last night.
But the details about last night are neither here nor there. The main point is that the Sabres are not a good hockey team. I’ll admit, I’ve lost ALL patience for waiting around for this particular group of guys to pull it together. It’s not going to happen. Drastic steps must be taken.
I’m not ordinarily the type of blogger to play the role of GM. I don’t feel very confident with my hockey analysis, but this situation has inspired me to go out on a limb and write a serious post about what I would do if I were the GM of the Sabres. In my opinion, this team needs a major shake-up.
Here are the moves I would make:
Tim Connolly should be retired and sent to a farm to live out his remaining years grazing peacefully. It’s the most humane solution at this point.
Drew Stafford should be traded for Evgeni Malkin.
Derek Roy‘s talent should be surgically extracted and implanted into Paul Gaustad. This is a dangerous scheme because there’s a risk that Goose could be infected with some of Roy-Z’s personality as well as his talent (that, of course, would be disastrous/tragic), but I’m sure we can all agree that a Goose/Roy-Z hybrid would be a useful player to have around. I think it’s worth the risk. After the talent transferring procedure, the now talentless Derek Roy can become Goose’s personal assistant. Everyone wins….except Goose, who now has a talentless Derek Roy following him around all the time.
Ryan Miller needs his glass eye removed and replaced with a real eye. He’s done pretty well with one glass eye, considering, but it’s clear that he needs two good eyes to compete in the NHL. He might as well get his wonky eyebrow re-cocked while he’s at it.
Jason Pominville needs to be taken off the point on the power play.
Henrik Tallinder and Toni Lydman need to be sent out into the deep forest and each be given a match, a single bottle of water, and a penknife. They have 48 hours to hunt and kill the other. Whoever comes out alive gets to keep his job.
Thomas Vanek should be paid $7.1 million dollars per year for the next six years.
Clarke MacArthur should be traded to the Blackhawks for Patrick Sharp and Patrick Kane.
Max Afinogenov and Ales Kotalik should be melted down and then recast as Christmas tree ornaments which the Sabres wives and girlfriends can then sell in the concourse to benefit charity.
Andrew Peters should be waived and Adam Mair should start actively practicing punching people and being punched in return.
Patrick Kaleta should be sent to Portland, and Danny Paille should start actively practicing being really, really annoying.
Nathan Paetsch should be traded for Nicklas Lidstrom.
Craig Rivet should be returned to the San Jose Sharks. This is a mercy trade made of behalf of Rivet who is probably looking at his old team with extreme longing right about now. This poor dude was living a perfectly happy life in California a few months ago, and now, through no fault of his own, he’s the CAPTAIN of this train wreck. Poor dude. I want to set him free.
Mark Mancari, Nathan Gerbe, and Tim Kennedy should all be given trial jobs with the Sabres, but they should be FORBIDDEN from socializing with any of their elder teammates. Everyday after practice they should be chauffeured to their grim apartments at the Extended Stay America off the 290, and supervised for the remainer of the day. If any of them even glances wistfully at Chippewa St, they should be automatically fired/executed.
Teppo Numminen should be compelled to retire so that he may begin some sort of job which involves him standing behind the bench with James Patrick looking foxy in a well tailored suit.
Jaroslav Spacek should call a press conference and then bite the head off the pigeon so that we never have to hear about that dumb thing again. (This isn’t so much of a personnel move as it is a personal request from me to Jaro.)
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So that’s what I would do if I were GM.
Toni Lydman made it a lot farther in this competition than I thought he would. I have no idea why, but I kind of like this fella. I suspect that my affection for Toni Lydman is based on two things:
Tim Connolly is a little too pretty for my tastes. Something about those luscious lips just don’t say “Favorite Sabre” to me. Also, all I ever hear about is how Timmy is only one concussion away from needing to hire a full-time drool wiper. His delicacy scares me, and I don’t think I can handle a year of watching him play while peeking through the fingers over my eyes. The Sabres have high hopes for Tim Connolly, and I hear that if he can put together a full, injury-free season, it’s possible he’ll make us forget all about Daniel Briere. Hell, yeah, is all I have to say about that.
Derek Roy reminds me of so many boys that I have known over the years. He’s that guy that you used to hate in your math class, but then when you hung out with him in art class, he was almost kind of cool. You’ve known him since you were both little kids. For years your best friend had a crush on him, and (even though you warned her that he was a punk) she finally made out with him at the homecoming dance. Of course he was really rude to her in the halls after that, and so you had to pretend that you hated him even though you didn’t. Frankly, your friend was kind of an idiot, and he really hadn’t done anything that horrible…..he was just being Derek. And then, years later you ran into him in a bar, and he brought her up (your friend) and he told you that he had always felt badly about how he treated her, and that he had only ignored her because she made him so nervous. You admitted that you didn’t think it was that big a deal, and that you never really had, and you apologized for siding so strongly with your girlfriend all those years ago. So you guys had a laugh about how stupid everyone was in high school, and you suddenly realized that you had known Derek Roy for twenty years, but until that moment, you had never realized that you two were kind of friends. For a brief second in the bar you thought, “Whoa, am I hot for Derek?” But thankfully, you quickly came to your senses, because…..eww. No.
The Willful Caboose 
