Flyers vs. Sabres recap: LOL the Flyers lost to the Sabres because why not

Folks, I’m not going to soften it up for you — I hate the Buffalo Sabres.

Now, there’s no real reason to hate the current day Sabres, what with them being a terrible hockey team and all. No, this hatred goes much much deeper. To understand this, let me take you back to the last time these teams met in the playoffs.

The year was 2011. I was a beautiful baby boy fresh out of college, ready to start my career at whatever job I could get. E.T. by Katy Perry and Kanye West was on the top of the Billboard Hot 100. John Boehner was the Speaker of the House. And, most importantly, Peter Laviolette lost his goddamn mind.

In a series that the Flyers so clearly should have won, then coach Laviolette decided it was a good idea to play three (3) different goaltenders in a single playoff series. First Sergei Bobrovsky, then Brian Boucher, then Michael Leighton for some reason, then back to Brian Boucher. To make matters worse, Laviolette also decided that a must-win playoff series was the perfect time to give Zac Rinaldo his NHL debut. The Sabres, through their inability to simply let the Flyers win easily, caused a coach who had led his team to the Stanley Cup Final just a year before look like a total and utter buffoon.

And Laviolette losing his mind would have been fine if it didn’t set into motion the craziest time in Flyers history. Just a few weeks later, Mike Richards and Jeff Carter were gone to make room for Ilya Bryzgalov. Paul Holmgren, presumably given the go ahead to blow up the team, did just that. And in my mind (which is always correct), this was all because of the Sabres.

And to add insult to injury, first ballot hall of famer Ville Leino became a free agent only to turn around a sign a long-term deal with our enemies.

Because of all this, I cannot stand the Sabres. They hurt me so bad, and in turn, I will hurt them the only way I know how: with a vicious on line own. So for tonight and hereafter, I will exclusively refer to them as the Buttfalo Sabres (owned).

So I’m not going to lie — I really have not been keeping up with whatever the Sabres have been doing the past few years. And can you really blame me? This team is hot garbage, and while they may have a few big ticket names, the rest of the guys are pretty much either no names or people that I can’t believe are still in the league.

And you know what’s kind of weird? The big ticket guys on the Sabres are ones that I probably would care about if they weren’t on the Sabres. Jack Eichel, Evander Kane, Ryan O’Reilly, and Kyle Okposo are all pretty good hockey players but lol they play on the Sabres so who cares? Like, if I read off those four names two years ago and you didn’t know what team they were on, you would think it would be a good team. But it is not because it is the Sabres, and this is very very funny to me.

Given all this, I expected the Flyers to utterly dominate out the gate. That...didn’t really happen. The first few minutes was just sloppy play by both teams. A lot of bouncing pucks and neutral zone flubs, not much else. Except for a fight between Nick Deslaureiers and Brandon Manning, which was at least entertaining. Manning lost, by the way, in case you were keeping count of these things.

So the rest of the period was pretty boring, but I started to notice something that was later confirmed by smart hockey man Charlie O’Connor — the Weise-Schenn-Simmonds line looked pretty good in the offensive zone. And while it feels very strange saying this, Dale Weise looked really impressive, showing patience with the puck and trying to set up chances down low. It was pretty wild, that’s for sure.

And then the Flyers failed to capitalize on a power play, the period ended, yada yada yada, and Sam Reinhart eventually scored on a Buttfalo power play early in the second period. It was incredibly uncool, and I think the Sabres were very uncool for doing it.

The Flyers responded to that goal by doing nothing in particular. The Sabres continued to control play, nearly scored again a few times, then finally increased their lead with a William Carrier goal off a juicy rebound.

And then a bunch of crap happened which eventually led to an Evander Kane goal with a few seconds to spare in the second.

The Flyers were getting pooped on by Buttfalo is what I’m trying to say. But hey, the last time I recapped a Flyers-Sabres game, Philadelphia ended up winning despite a three goal deficit. HmmmMmMMmMmMmMMMMmmmmm.

During the second intermission, I nearly lost it when I realized there was only like one scoop of ice cream left in the freezer. And it was peanut butter cup ice cream, which is really really good. I even bought some sugar cones to enjoy an ice cream cone in my adult house because when you are an adult you can do these things. But things were bad tonight, so I could not have an enjoyable ice cream experience. Nonsense.

I should have known that the ice cream thing was a bad omen, because even though Brayden Schenn eventually scored on the power play, the Flyers lost 4-1.

To the Sabres.

In 2017.

Here is a single observation:

• Andrew MacDonald is bad.