The Sabres Are Douchebags

Seriously. The Sabres are douchebags. And idiots. And jerks. Listen, you little bastards suckered me into thinking you were a talented young team last year. "No, no," I said when people insulted you and wanted to trade you and wanted to blow up the roster. "They're good, really. They're just adjusting. They're babies, they need time." I defended your sorry asses for an entire season. Well, no more! You are clearly a talented team. You are clearly capable of playing both offense AND defense. You are clearly capable of playing with the best teams in the Eastern Conference. You are also clearly petulant, immature little brats who insist on playing your way even when it means losing and losing horribly. I don't understand. Do you like losing? Do you dislike winning? Do you enjoy the overwhelming feeling of underachievement? Were you unhappy at the beginning of the season when you were all playing well and everyone loved you? If I were a Thrashers fan at least I could look at the roster and say, "They suck. Of course they suck. It's Ilya Kovalchuk and a bunch of other guys. They suck because they should suck." You guys should not suck. You are sucking by choice. You sucking by choice really sucks. It makes me want to kick all your teeth in and then collect all those teeth and stomp on them over and over until all I have is a pile of little tiny white slivers. Please spare me the "We're not playing terrible, it's just all going wrong right now," quotes. Do you know why it's all going wrong? BECAUSE YOU ARE PLAYING TERRIBLY! THAT'S RIGHT! TERRIBLY NOT TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE IS A FREAKIN' ADJECTIVE BUT SINCE YOU'RE (INACCURATELY) DESCRIBING THE WAY YOU'RE PLAYING THAN YOU NEED A FRIGGIN' ADVERB! I will keep watching you guys because by some cruel twist of fate I married someone from Buffalo and not Detroit so that's what I do but I am not happy. Not at all. You're a bunch of losers and I hate everyone not on Jochen Hecht's line tonight. (You guys can keep your teeth. For now.)

(Also on the STFU list tonight is John Vogl. Can you please quit complaining about having to write the blog ON THE BLOG? You're complaining to the audience that the blog is intended for. That's uncouth and also more than a little annoying. You hate the blog. We get it. I hate eating lunch with my kids every day. I feel like there's plenty of staff floating around who could eat with them while I get twenty minutes to myself. But I don't sit around at the table complaining to the kids, "Sure would be nice if I didn't have to eat with you little brats EVERY SINGLE DAY!" If you hate it so much that you can't quit griping about it, take it up with your boss. And don't tell me it's too much work to write a game story, a notebook and a blog. Someone else on your staff manages to do all three even when on the road alone. You're getting paid to watch and write about a friggin' hockey game. Boo-effin-hoo.)

I just... I don't even know what the problem is anymore. I know we've joked about the system but for whatever reason these yahoos are just not buying into it. They talk about it incessantly but they're not executing. I think they can so the only real conclusion I can draw is that they don't want to. If the system is the whole team playing good two-way hockey with an emphasis on defense, I think that's a good thing. It won Detroit a Stanley Cup last season and I think it's really the only way to win a championship. But the reason it worked for Detroit is because they had skilled guys like Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg who bought into it and worked hard at it. So if the Sabres aren't going to do that then what do you change? The system? The players? The coach? This is how bad this team is screwing with my head. I'm actually contemplating whether they need a new coach when I love Lindy Ruff WAY more than most of them. Do you change the system to fit the players and hope it can be successful? Or do you change some of the players?

I even hate Hank right now. I'm in a bad way, people. Very bad.