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Wednesday, October 1, 2014


Since the 2005-06 NHL season, the Pittsburgh Penguins have won the Stanley Cup once. The Los Angeles Kings and Chicago Blackhawks have each won the Stanley Cup twice in that same period. Sidney Crosby’s first NHL season was the 2005-06 season when he scored 39 goals and notched 63 assists for a total of 102 points. The Penguins did not win the Stanley Cup in 2005-06. They actually won the Stanley Cup in 2008-09 when Crosby scored 33 goals and added 70 assists for a total of 103 points.

What does this have to do with anything?

One of the more annoying topics of discussion I have been hearing from clueless Buffalo sports fans for the past few months is the idea that the Buffalo Sabres should tank the 2014-15 season so that they can draft Connor McDavid in the 2015 draft. Why? Because Connor McDavid is supposed to be the second coming of Sidney Crosby and McDavid is going to lead the Sabres to the Promised Land.

What does this have to do with Sidney Crosby?

The prevailing notion among hockey fans is that the 2003-04 season (the 2004-05 season was lost to a lockout) was a tank job by the Penguins to insure that they would get the first overall pick and use it on Sidney Crosby. Then the Penguins supposedly tanked again in 2005-06 to be able to draft Evgeni Malkin.

These are the events that clueless Buffalo sports fans point to as justification for asking a team of professional athletes to lie down and purposely throw away an entire year of their careers. This is the line of logic people are using to justify their open disdain for winning and their giddy excitement at the possibility of finishing dead last again in the NHL. My response is that since the Penguins have not won the Stanley Cup every year since Crosby was drafted, then a lot of professional athletes gave up their pride for nothing.

First of all, there is a draft lottery that prevents the worst team in the league from getting the first overall pick automatically. The Sabres lost that lottery and used the second overall pick in the 2014 draft to get Samson Reinhart. Remember Reinhart? Many clueless fans were so happy to get Reinhart and now no one even talks about him.

Secondly, Connor McDavid has not played a minute in the NHL and there is no way of knowing how good he will be until he gets here. No, there is no such thing as a “guaranteed” superstar in the NHL. McDavid will have to prove himself like everyone else, no matter who he plays for.

Thirdly, thanks to some excellent maneuvering by general manager Tim Murray, the Buffalo Sabres have three first round picks in the 2015 draft. The worst case scenario is that the Sabres could trade all three of those picks to whoever gets the first overall pick and then grab McDavid. But I seriously doubt that Tim Murray is that stupid.

If you are a “fan” who wants your team to lose so that your team has a 20 percent chance at getting an unproven kid who may or may not become the cornerstone of your franchise, then you are just another disillusioned meathead. A championship team is built with rookies and veterans. Tim Murray is trying to put together a dynasty and you don’t do that by gambling everything on one, unproven player.

This is my take on the idea of tanking the 2014-15 season. If Tim Murray and Terry Pegula can actually convince people like Brian Gionta, Ted Nolan, Bryan Trottier, Tyler Ennis and Chris Stewart to lay down and throw away an entire season on someone who has never played in the NHL, then I would get behind the idea. But I seriously doubt that those intense professionals, who base everything they do on winning, will accommodate such a ridiculous request.

The Penguins have been outplayed in the Sidney Crosby era by the Chicago Blackhawks and the Los Angeles Kings. The Kings didn’t tank for anyone and the Blackhawks finished 26th the year they drafted Patrick Kane. That means that the Kings and the Blackhawks just played their games, built their teams and eventually won two Stanley Cups each. That is the way to build a championship franchise.

The Buffalo Sabres will not be a good hockey team in 2014-15. That is to be expected. But there is no way that Ted Nolan is going to risk one of the years on his three-year contract just to try and help Tim Murray draft a kid that may or may not work out.

The team will play hard this season and the team will lose more games than it wins. But that is what happens during a rebuild. If you expect the Sabres to simply lay down and lose for any reason, then I think that Ted Nolan and his crew are prepared to seriously disappoint you.

Nick Oliver is a Niagara County resident who is prepared to tank his column for no reason whatsoever. His column appears every Wednesday and is not read by Sidney Crosby.



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