The point was always to play meaningful games in March. That is what Jason Botterill said, anyway, before he was sent packing for trying to stand up for his soon-to-also-be-fired staff.
Playing meaningless games in mid-March when the season started in mid-January is a new kind of low for a franchise that’s been force-fed heaping helpings of gruel since 2013. But there’s a rite of passage that happens in Buffalo every two years. It’s the biannual tossing of the head coach and Ralph Krueger was the deserving subject in 2021. That he follows in Phil Housley’s footsteps as a guy liked by the players only serves as a backhanded compliment.