Thread by @SlavaMalamud

Remember when Ryan O'Reilly said there was something about the Buffalo Sabres that ate one's soul and destroyed one's will to take another breath and made one wish for an eternity in the fiery depths of hell?
And the Sabres gave him away for nothing because of all this slander?

If you look at every second of history following the O'Reilly trade (which, according to my notes and the best resources available, was for 2 bags of broken sticks and a mostly used stick of deodorant), it's obvious that nobody has ever been more right about anything that ROR was

The Buffalo Sabres story, at its core, is a great Faustian cautionary tale about the dangers of tanking. They literally sold their soul in 2014-15 in pursuit of a shiny object. They betrayed the spirit and the essence of the sport to get someone they thought would be the savior.

In the end, the savior they got was not the savior they wanted, and the betrayal they engaged in to get him has forever poisoned both the team and the player. There is no escape from this. The best case scenario is Eichel can gain a measure of healing and redemption elsewhere.

But for the Sabres, there is no such hope. The poison has eaten deep into the very fabric of the club. It has robbed it of the passion it has once possessed, the passion one could see in the body contortions of Hasek and the eyes of Drury. Who even remembers what it felt like?

The team is soulless, heartless, an empty shell, a howling void that freezes and kills anything that approaches it. O'Reilly felt it and knew it, though he had the spirit and the will to fight. Hall and Staal did not, and wilted immediately. Skinner had tried a bit and lost.

And now, we get to see Eichel slowly realized that he is dying inside. That he has in fact died a long time ago and is now living through a season-long Sixth Sense revelation plot twist scene. This is heart-wrenchingly sad. And incredibly evil. This franchise needs to die.

Whatever value it has as a cautionary tale is solidified by now. At this point, it is nothing but a sad little vortex into which an odd unfortunate player may fall, an Azkaban of hockey. It needs to go. Shut them down, move them to Quebec, free the fans and the players.
KILL IT!

PS. I have been a fan of the Sabres since 1989. I don't change clubs, ever, and can't just switch over to the Jets, as reason and prudency tell me I must. But I have seen suffering and death and hopelessness. I know what they look like. I see them in this team.
They need to die.