Both GMs Are Losing Goodwill & We Are Tired of Just Being “In On It”

Photo from @Salsports

[Note part of this was already written for Bills, Takes and Dad Mistakes…but I’m annoyed and finished this off]

The long national nightmare appears to be over. Connor Hellebuyck is about to become a New Jersey Devil. Congrats? I guess.

What we have here is yet another #BecauseItsBuffalo situation where you just want to be more than *in on it*. I’ve always felt there’s a certain stigma attached to Buffalo sports fans, myself included, in that we don’t just want our teams to be good, we want to be the envy of the sports world. We want other fan bases looking at us and saying, “Man, I wish my team had that guy.” We have Josh Allen, and that’s something probably 30 other NFL teams would love to have. After that, though, where are we with BOTH teams?

Sometimes you just want to get online, see that your GM actually did something, puff your chest out a little, and immediately start looking at the price of the new guy’s jersey. Instead, we’re just *in on it*. We’re in on the rumors, in on the negotiations, in on the reports that Buffalo is interested, and in on the endless conversations about whether Player X is worth Player Y and a second-round pick. Then, after weeks or months of talking about it, somebody else gets the player.

I’m not as vested in the Sabres as I probably should be, but when Jarmo Kekäläinen arrived in Buffalo, we kept hearing about his reputation for wheeling and dealing. That’s what everybody said about him. This was a guy who wasn’t afraid to make moves, someone who was aggressive and would shake things up, which was exactly what a lot of fans wanted to hear after years of wondering what the hell this organization was doing.

Well, here we are.

As of this writing, it looks like Hellebuyck is headed to New Jersey, which would bring an end to basically five months of this shit. The rumors started, died down, came back, disappeared again, and then resurfaced like a bad sequel nobody asked for. At various points, it seemed like Buffalo was right there, then maybe not, then absolutely, and then who knows? It became one of those stories where you almost stopped caring about the details because you just wanted some sort of resolution.

I honestly think the last time I remember the Sabres being seriously connected to a player through trade rumors whom just about everybody wanted was Ryan O’Reilly, and that was over a decade ago.

Now, here’s where this gets interesting, because we’re at a really weird point with both Buffalo franchises. The Bills and Sabres made the playoffs in the same season for the first time since 1999, which should be something worth celebrating considering everything we’ve endured over the last quarter-century.

For years, all we wanted was to see both teams playing meaningful games beyond the regular season, and we finally got that. The Sabres ended their seemingly eternal playoff drought, while the Bills have Josh Allen and have been legitimate contenders for years.

So why the hell are we so miserable? And yes, I’m including myself in that question.

I think it’s a combination of expectations, disappointment, and the exhausting experience of constantly raising a banner that reads “WE WERE IN ON IT.” That’s our championship banner lately, and it’s especially frustrating when you consider the reputations attached to the people running these organizations. We’ve heard about their ability to build rosters, make deals, find talent, and put together contenders, but lately it feels like that scene in *Trading Places* where Dan Aykroyd is staring through the window at Eddie Murphy eating lobster with the rich people.

That’s us, standing outside, watching everybody else enjoy themselves, wondering what the hell happened and why we can’t be the ones having a good time for once.

When you’ve lost as much as Buffalo fans have with these two teams, I think you develop one of two mentalities.

The first is what I call *drought brain*, where you’ve experienced so much losing that you’re terrified of doing anything that might screw up a good thing. You don’t want to trade away prospects, you don’t want to give up draft picks, and you don’t want to mess with a roster that’s finally competitive because you remember how bad things used to be. The thought of going back to those miserable years makes you sick, so you’re willing to be a little more patient and conservative because, hey, at least we’re not terrible anymore.

I get that mentality, but I fall into the other category, which is that you’ve lost for so long that when you finally have an opportunity to win something, you want to go for the whole damn thing. You want your GM to take a chance, you want him to make the big move, and you don’t want to spend five years talking about potential while another franchise is parading down Main Street with a trophy. Maybe that makes me impatient, but when you’ve spent decades watching your teams fall short, the last thing you want to hear is another explanation about why now isn’t the right time.

You want to know why Sabres fans aren’t happy with the goaltending situation? It’s because it cost them in the playoffs. Period. You want to know why Bills fans are pissed off about the defense? It’s because it cost them in the playoffs. Period.

This isn’t some complicated psychological experiment, nor is it that Buffalo fans are incapable of appreciating success or that we’re all miserable bastards who wake up every morning looking for something to complain about. It’s scar tissue, and scar tissue cuts deep.

The memories of failures don’t just disappear because you win 11 football games or put together a terrific hockey regular season, because fans remember how seasons ended, the plays that cost them, and the same weaknesses showing up at the worst possible moments.

When the following season rolls around and those same questions are still being asked, what exactly do you expect the reaction to be? For the Bills, it’s the defense, and for the Sabres, it’s the goaltending. We’re talking about two different sports, two different GMs, and two different rosters, yet somehow we’re dealing with the same frustration.

It’s the GM’s job to make the roster better, and that’s the gig. Nobody is asking for perfection, and nobody expects every transaction to work out, but at some point, fans want to see some urgency when it comes to addressing the very problems that helped end their seasons. Both organizations have leaned heavily on younger players being reasons for optimism, and while it’s still early, the results haven’t exactly provided the reassurance everyone was hoping for. Maybe those players develop, maybe the patience pays off, and maybe six months from now we look back at all this and laugh, which I genuinely hope is the case.

But how many times have Buffalo fans been asked to be patient, how many times have we heard about the future, and how many times do we have to be told that the answers are already in the building?

That brings me back to Hellebuyck and, on the Bills side, the endless conversation surrounding someone like Jaylen Waddle or Myles Garrett. You can absolutely make the argument that Hellebuyck wasn’t worth the price, especially when you’re talking about a 33-year-old goaltender. You can point to his contract, his postseason history, the assets Buffalo might have needed to surrender, the fact that he ballwashes the shitty President, or any number of advanced statistics that support walking away.

It’s the psyche of being a Buffalo sports fan, and it’s wanting something more than what we’ve been getting.

It’s wanting to be the team that makes the move instead of the team that’s constantly mentioned as a possible destination. It’s wanting your GM to look at a roster that’s close and say, “You know what? Let’s go get this thing.”

I’m not advocating for making a trade just so you can win the internet for 24 hours, because we’ve seen plenty of blockbuster moves blow up in teams’ faces, and sometimes the best deal really is the one you don’t make. But I also don’t buy the idea that being competitive means you should automatically be content, because that’s the trap of drought brain. You spend so many years begging just to be relevant that relevance eventually becomes the goal instead of the starting point, and I’m tired of that mentality.

For a fan base that’s watched so much losing, so many disappointments, and so many opportunities slip away, sometimes the frustration isn’t even about the player you didn’t acquire. It’s about the feeling that you want to win more than the people responsible for putting the team together, and while that might not be fair to the people running these organizations, it’s a feeling that’s becoming increasingly difficult to shake.

I don’t actually believe these GMs don’t want to win, because of course they do, and their livelihoods depend on it. But wanting to win and showing the urgency to win are two very different things.

That’s where the goodwill starts to erode, especially when the weaknesses that helped end your playoff runs are still the very things keeping fans up at night.

I don’t want another banner celebrating that Buffalo was interested, another offseason championship for being mentioned in trade rumors, or another explanation about why the guy we spent five months talking about wouldn’t have been worth acquiring anyway.

I don’t want to be Dan Aykroyd staring through the window while somebody else eats the lobster, wondering how the hell everyone else managed to get a seat at the table.

For once, I’d like Buffalo to be the one sitting at that table, enjoying the meal, and having the rest of the sports world wishing they were us.