Watching the Buffalo Sabres has been a depressing slog of pointless wandering in a frozen hell that has repeated itself night after night for nearly a decade. This season has been a special brand of torturous performance thanks to equal parts bad luck and poor use of tools. What it has also been is a reminder of errors of the not-too-distant past both inside and outside of Buffalo.

Scoring Slumps

The scoring slumps of Taylor Hall, Jack Eichel, and Jeff Skinner bring back thoughts of days when Thomas Vanek would pass more often than he would shoot.