from Damien Cox of the Toronto Star,

The Buffalo Sabres have become quite proficient at shooting themselves in the foot. They buy bad players, hire mediocre managers and inexperienced coaches, fail to draft and develop effectively, and in general provide a negative working experience for their players.

Ryan O’Reilly could tell you something about that.

As an organization, the Sabres are right there with the worst in sports. They don’t need any help to be lousy.

Every once in a while, however, every 20 years or so, the NHL helps out anyway by putting the screws to the Western New York Swordsmen. We won’t go through the 1999 Stanley Cup final all over again, but Brett Hull’s got a ring and so do the rest of the Dallas Stars and the NHL still hasn’t explained successfully why that Cup-winning goal on Dominik Hasek counted.

This spring, it was like Gary Bettman’s front office suddenly realized they hadn’t taken a tire iron to the Sabres recently, and got to it. When the league announced that 24 of the 31 teams would possibly resume play in late July or early August, the Sabres weren’t among those invited.

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