{"id":535467,"date":"2026-03-14T07:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T07:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/535467\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T07:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T07:51:08","slug":"as-sabres-have-shown-tanks-dont-always-follow-the-script","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/535467\/","title":{"rendered":"As Sabres have shown, tanks don\u2019t always follow the script"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Tage Thompson, centre, and the Buffalo Sabres look to be on to a good thing right now, but the franchise has gone through its growing pains to get to this point.Timothy T. Ludwig\/Reuters<\/p>\n

If one had to build down the dangers as well as the possibilities of a fully committed tank, you\u2019d end up with the Buffalo Sabres.<\/p>\n

Buffalo\u2019s been tanking for more than a decade. It tried to tank its way to Connor McDavid back in 2014-15 \u2013 an epochally terrible season of hockey. Edmonton won the draft lottery instead. <\/p>\n

What do you do in that situation? You talk up your No. 2 pick, Jack Eichel. Instead, then Sabres general manager Tim Murray said, \u201cI\u2019m disappointed for our fans.\u201d Great start. <\/p>\n

Eichel wasn\u2019t enough, so the Sabres tried to tank again. Then Eichel wasn\u2019t Gordie Howe, so they did it again. Then both parties decided they hated each other, so once again. The Sabres started 0-3 this year, and people were talking about another tank. <\/p>\n

NHL coaches stress authenticity in the art of delivering pre-game speeches<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a line past which any tank blurs into incompetence. The Sabres have been stumbling back and forth across it for years. But on Saturday night, they will host Toronto as shining examples. Buffalo is finally proof the tank can work. Theoretically, and rarely the way you planned. <\/p>\n

Buffalo currently stands first in the Atlantic Division. It has been on an almighty heater since the Olympic break. Any club that\u2019s been this bad for this long becomes everyone\u2019s second-favourite team once it improves. Edmonton \u2013 another perma-failure made good \u2013 got the benefit of this doubt, though the effect is dwindling. <\/p>\n

Given that the Oilers are now in decline, would you call Edmonton\u2019s tank a success? <\/p>\n

You would if you owned them. According to Forbes, the Oilers were the third most profitable franchise in all of sport last year. <\/p>\n

This is because they did things in the right order \u2013 they were great for a long time, and then they were awful for just as long, and then they got the most exciting player in the world, and then they used him to leverage a real-estate jackpot. Who won what trophy is a parenthetical in all of this. <\/p>\n

Opinion: The Leafs need to tank to protect their first-round pick. Don\u2019t expect it to go well<\/a><\/p>\n

The thing you notice about Forbes\u2019s top-20 earners list is that no one on it is a winner. Many of the most profitable clubs on the planet \u2013 the Maple Leafs (No. 9), Tottenham Hotspur (No. 11), the New York Jets (No. 15) \u2013 are notorious losers. Several of them are in some stage of a tank. <\/p>\n

The tank is not about generating titles. It\u2019s about manufacturing excitement, and then upselling it. <\/p>\n

The Oilers got it right through blind luck. They had the third-worst odds in the McDavid sweepstakes. What if they\u2019d landed where the numbers say they should have? They\u2019d be trying to build a winner around Dylan Strome (the No. 3 pick), playing in a flooded parking lot and taking a bus to West Coast games. <\/p>\n

Toronto\u2019s last tank worked as well because it got Auston Matthews. That is a one-result rationale. The smart play now would be getting rid of the guy, but it can\u2019t. He\u2019s making the Leafs far too much money. <\/p>\n

The Leafs will ride Matthews until kids stop asking for his jersey as a birthday present. At that point, and at that point only, MLSE will push his desiccated professional corpse overboard and go looking for its next Matthews. <\/p>\n

In order to get one, it will either have to go first in a celebrated draft, or develop a charismatic superstar it gets a little later. The first thing is simple. The second thing is hard. <\/p>\n

Winning has nothing to do with any of this. You can\u2019t lose a ton of games, but as long as you seem like you intend on winning, people will assume that\u2019s where you\u2019re headed. The Leafs have been getting this advantage for the entirety of the Matthews era. Now that they\u2019re terrible, they\u2019re still getting it. <\/p>\n

This is the mark of a truly successful franchise \u2013 one that needn\u2019t be any good at sports in order to interest sports fans. <\/p>\n

The Sabres don\u2019t have this quality. They are admired exactly as much as the final standings say they should be. <\/p>\n

They also don\u2019t have a boldface name fronting the team. The Sabres are collectively good \u2013 which is a plus for their hockey prospects, but not so much for their bottom line. <\/p>\n

Opinion: Leafs should trade Matthews, but their addiction to being a contender means they won\u2019t<\/a><\/p>\n

The Leafs are going to miss the playoffs. The Oilers will probably squeeze in. The Sabres won\u2019t be favourites to win a Stanley Cup, but they won\u2019t be far off. <\/p>\n

Given all that, if Toronto or Edmonton could swap rosters with Buffalo right now, do you think they would? Absolutely not. At a big club, losing will always be tolerated, but a celebrity vacuum cannot be. <\/p>\n

This is why the tank means different things to management and fans. For management, it\u2019s a way to revitalize interest. If interest is high \u2013 and whatever the Leafs\u2019 deficiencies, attracting attention isn\u2019t among them \u2013 there is no point to a tank. Just keep doing whatever miserable thing it is that you\u2019re doing until people wander off. The nice thing about blowing up a team is that it\u2019s always an option. <\/p>\n

For fans, the tank is a promissory note for future success. Whether or not the club is ever going to win a championship, they would like to believe that\u2019s possible. The Chicagos and Pittsburghs have convinced them that the tank the best way to do it. <\/p>\n

Where management and fans are aligned is in the belief that none of this should be hard. Slowly constructing a winning roster through smart trades and good development? Who\u2019s got five years for that? What the people want is one big whopper of a draft pick, slot a few schmucks around him and voil\u00e0 \u2013 instant parade.<\/p>\n

However, the most likely result of any tank is the Buffalo way \u2013 trying the same thing over and over again, getting it wrong as often than you get it right, until finally, mostly by random chance, it turns into something useful. Even then, there\u2019s no guarantee it works out. <\/p>\n

If Buffalo get to a Cup final this year, the same decision makers who were derided as clowns will be celebrated as geniuses. If the Sabres get bounced in the first round, this whole thing was a mirage. Time to start tinkering again. <\/p>\n

Tanking is only an undeniable good because it\u2019s fun. It\u2019s spring cleaning for the sporting soul. But it doesn\u2019t mean things are going to get better. They can always get much worse. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Tage Thompson, centre, and the Buffalo Sabres look to be on to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,2922,82,8023],"class_list":{"0":"post-535467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-noastack","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-topstory"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}