Expectations versus hope in Sabres training camp
Is Buffalo flying under the radar headed into the season or are they off the screen the way some believe they should be?
BUFFALO — Not all training camps are the same. Expectations vary year to year; players grow and evolve while others start the turn down the other side of the hill in their careers. Some are contenders, others are definitive pretenders. The Buffalo Sabres haven’t been contenders in nearly two decades and in that time, they’ve watched numerous young players take their careers forward to varying levels of success.
As these Sabres begin their season under new-old coach Lindy Ruff, they exist in a kind of purgatory in which escaping from it is as much of a goal as making the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
They’re loaded with young talent capable of tremendous feats and bound for massive personal success and brimming with potential that’s been apparent for a few players over the past few seasons. Other even younger players enter the year with the idea that they’ll take another step into the future and begin to fulfill the expectations that came with where they were taken in the NHL Draft however many years ago.
All that hopefulness is slapped in the face of the realism of the situation. The Eastern Conference is a murderous gauntlet to get through and with the divisional playoff format, the difficulty of the Atlantic Division and the stacked competition at the top of it dampens even the most optimistic hopes.
But a new season always starts with hope and the Sabres dream of finally ending their seemingly forever long playoff drought stays is alive until proven otherwise. With Ruff in charge and a new gameplan and systems in place, the skepticism surrounding their ability to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs that overwhelms the hockey world outside of KeyBank Center finds no quarter within it.
The Sabres’ cadre of top prospects set the table during the Prospects Challenge and now with camp fully underway and Ruff amping up the speed and pace of play along with a system that has forwards forechecking intensely and seeking to force turnovers deep in the defensive zone, the mood is vastly different than in many of the previous seasons.
“The guys that they brought in… a very different style and have a lot of compete and have a lot of different experiences,” Alex Tuch said. “So, I think that’s going to be really good for our group. But yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever played looking over our shoulder or anything like that. I think we’re going to go in and we have a group that’s going to play fast and physical, and we’re going to try to step on teams’ throats each day, day in and day out. So, that’s the type of hockey that we’re going to try to play, and it’s going to be good.”
More ahead on what we’ve seen through the first few days of camp, Jiri Kulich, and Rasmus Dahlin’s injury putting a scare into the start of the new season.
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