The Buffalo Sabres lost again on Wednesday night by dropping a 5-2 gong show of a game to the Boston Bruins.
That should not come as a surprise to anybody that has followed the Sabres or the NHL this season.
Just how bad have the Sabres been so far? It's even worse than their 1-9-1 record, if you can believe it.
Look at it this way: After Wednesday's game they have played 11 games this season -- that's 670 minutes, including all regulation periods and two overtimes -- and have had the lead in a game for less than 10 minutes. All of that time with the lead came in one game, a game they actually lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Their only win came in a shootout against the New York Islanders, a game they never led until they scored the final goal in the shootout.
For the season, they've been outscored 33-15, and there is no sign of this getting better anytime soon. Their underlying possession numbers are terrible, and if Thomas Vanek isn't on the ice there just seems to be no chance of generating any offense. Without overreacting too much to a small sample size at the start of the season, they're looking like they have a chance to be one of the worst teams in the salary cap era.
Since the start of the 2005-06 season, when the league introduced the shootout and started giving teams a point in the standings for losing in overtime, there have only been three teams that finished an 82-game season with fewer than 60 points: The 2005-06 Penguins (58), the 2005-06 Blues (57), and the 2006-07 Flyers (56).
For the Sabres to reach even that mark they would have to go somewhere in the neighborhood of 27-38-6 the rest of the way. That's probably asking a lot for this team, and would likely only get worse if and when it moves Vanek and/or Ryan Miller.
And that's just to avoid being one of the worst teams in the NHL over the past nine seasons. Good work, everybody.
What makes Wednesday's game even worse for the Sabres and their current reputation is the hit John Scott delivered on Loui Eriksson late in the third period. It's a play that will almost certainly make him the second Buffalo player to receive a lengthy suspension from the NHL this season, joining Patrick Kaleta for his hit on Jack Johnson.
The presence of players like Scott on the roster came from that game in 2011-12 when Ryan Miller was run by Milan Lucic. That hit, combined by the Sabres' lack of a response on the ice, seemingly convinced the front office and much of the hockey world that they simply were not tough enough. The following offseason they traded Derek Roy for Steve Ott, then signed Scott to a one-year contract (then signed him again prior to the 2013-14 season).
That hasn't exactly worked out.
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