Sabres 2018-2019 Season

[Jorcus]

Last night we blew by another drought milage post on the highway to the playoffs The 2018-2019 Sabres ended up 2018-2019 with a record of 33-39-10. In a weird way that season seems like a mirror image of this one. We had the much discussed 10 game win streak in November which popped us up to first place only to go into a prolonged tail spin that got worse and worse as the season went on. ending up near the bottom of the NHL.

We never should have had much hope in the first place that year. We think of ourselves as a young team still but that team was very young in the forward group. We were a one line team Eichel, Reinhart and Skinner. Our older core was Okposo, Pominville and Sheary. Two notable youngsters were disappointing, 21 year old Thompson and  20 year old Mitts. Both would spend time in Rochester the following year to work on their game. I remember a comment attributed to Coach Housley about having to spend practice time teaching basic fundamentals like how to pick a puck off a wall. Of course the 18 year old Dahlin would be another student at that point. The goaltending was below par with Hutton and Ullmark. The end of the season was awful They sandwiched a shoot out win with a 7 game losing streak and an 8 game losing streak. 

Looking back we had a lot of talented D men on that team but too many young ones and not enough depth to replace the injured. Only 3 players scored more than 20 goals. Eichel 28, Reinhart 22, Skinner 40. With Skinner being a UFA and no other apparent replacement the gun was at the head of Sabres management to give the giant contract to Skinner after the season. Certainly a season to forget. The last 2 months were about as bad as it got during the drought. 

2016-2017 is the next stop.