Things Are Going Great In Buffalo Right Now With Fights Breaking Out At Sabres Practice
It was December 2018. The St. Louis Blues were in damn near last place in the NHL, they had fired their head coach, and a fight between Robert Bortuzzo and Zach Sanford had broken out at practice.
The St. Louis Blues had hit rock bottom. But the good thing about rock bottom is that there's nowhere to go but up. And for the Blues that year, they went all the way up. They ended up finishing the season in 3rd place in the Central division, took down Winnipeg, Dallas, San Jose and finally Boston in 7 games to win their first Cup in franchise history.
The Buffalo Sabres are 1-3 to start the season. They haven't made the playoffs since 2011, and haven't won a playoff series since 2007. It's fair to say they've been stuck at rock bottom for a few years now, and desperately need to find a way to get themselves moving in the right direction. So why not take a page out of the Blues' playbook? Clearly it worked for them, so maybe there's a chance it works for the Sabres too. Rasmus Dahlin takes a run at Peyton Krebs, catches him with a huge open ice hip check, gets up and immediately starts throwing hands.
Not the best fight in the world, but at least it's something to get the boys going. Now this thing can go one of two ways--either it lights a fire under their asses and turns things around for the Sabres to go on a crazy Cup run, or it does absolutely nothing but cause more friction and chaos within that Sabres locker room. Either way, I think this is a win-win for Rasmus Dahlin. Either you spark your team to go on an incredible run and win the first Cup in franchise history, or you get to beat the shit out of a teammate that you clearly don't like. Seems pretty good to me no matter which way you slice it.
The Sabres don't play again until Wednesday night against the Penguins. It should be pretty easy to see which way this thing is going to go after that game.
Sidenote: The Edmonton Oilers are only a few more practices away from having a full blown donnybrook out there. 0-3 to start the season, and they haven't even been close. Outscored 15-3 in those 3 games. Yikes.