Browsing: calm

<img src="https://6up.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Its-The-Calm-Before-The-Storm-For-Sabres-As-Buffalo.jpeg" alt="Lindy Ruff (center) — (Timothy T. Ludwig, USA TODAY Images)
“/>

For the Buffalo Sabres, itâ€s the calm before the storm. The NHLâ€s 2025-26 regular-season is about to commence, and with the new season comes a new set of expectations for the Sabres. And with this seasonâ€s Sabres, the expectation is urgent – this Buffalo team is either going to end the Sabres†14-year playoff drought, or there are going to be changes throughout the organization, including the firings of GM Kevyn Adams and coach Lindy Ruff.

Itâ€s really that simple in Buffalo this year. Come Hades or high water, the Sabres need to make the playoffs. And itâ€s not going to matter what their excuses may be this season. There may be injuries; there may be bad puck luck; and there may be players who underachieve. None of it will make a lick of difference for Buffaloâ€s players, coaches and management if they fail to make the playoffs. No player will be safe. No coach will be, either. And the changes will start at the top.

That means Adams clearly will be the first to go if things donâ€t go according to plan in Sabres Land. Adams has had five years on the job, and if he canâ€t do something of positive consequence in his sixth season, it will be Adams†last year running things in Buffalo. Adams has had more kicks at the can than many hockey executives, and without the type of results that will reward their fan base for continuing to support this Sabres team, Buffalo management is spinning its wheels and going nowhere.

The same thing goes for Ruff. Heâ€s entering Year 2 of his second go-around as Sabres coach, and nothing short of Buffalo earning a playoff spot will assure Ruff of being Sabres coach at this time next year. These days, the first person to be thrown overboard in an under-performing hockey team is more often than not the coach. Itâ€s the easiest way to try to re-set things, and in some rare cases, it works as a motivator of players. So Ruff could be the first to go if things go wrong early this season.

Finally, the same thing goes for Sabres players. It doesnâ€t matter who weâ€re talking about – nobody should feel safe in Buffaloâ€s dressing room if the Sabres miss the playoffs again. Either management will want to shop them around, theyâ€ll ask to be traded, or both. Thus, Buffaloâ€s lineup will look significantly different in the 2026-27 campaign if the Sabres prove theyâ€re not worthy of the investment in the ‘25-26 campaign.

Early Injuries To Key Sabres Players Can’t Be An Excuse For Buffalo To Fail This Season
We said it earlier this summer, on more than one occasion – if the Buffalo Sabres intend on ending their Stanley Cup playoff drought at 14 years, they canâ€t afford to let the injury bug take a major bite out of their roster. Obviously, thatâ€s something that only the Hockey Gods can control, but the Sabres simply donâ€t have the organizational depth to withstand the damage if someone meaningful is sidelined for a notable stretch of time.

The biggest problem for the Sabres may be that theyâ€ve exhausted their fan base with year after year of sub-par play. Indeed, since 2012-13, Buffalo hasnâ€t finished higher than fourth place in its division. And theyâ€ve finished as high as fifth place only three times in that span. The rest is year-after-year of 6th, 7th and 8th-place finishes. That basically takes a blow torch to your fan base. Nobody wants to be associated with a perennial non-factor of a team. You start to shrink your customer total rather than increase it.

Meanwhile, there are so many good things that winning does for a team. You walk around with a legitimately rightful sense of pride in what youâ€ve been able to achieve. You generate genuine hope in an otherwise-cynical populace. You give people reasons to believe.

This is as clear-cut a make-or-break situation as exists in the NHL right now, and Buffalo has clear paths to two roads – one that leads to more excuses, more anguish, and more dismay; the other leads to a promised land of sorts. A place where other teams fear to tread. Right now, thatâ€s not Buffalo.

Sabres Should Be Looking Into Trading For One Of These Maple Leafs Forwards-On-The-Block
The Toronto Maple Leafs are about to finish their 2025-26 training camp, and as it happens, the Maple Leafs are very deep at every position — but certainly, the most depth they’ve got is on the wings. And as we’ll exploain, we’re telling you this because the Buffalo Sabres should be looking into acquiring into one of a few veteran Leafs wingers in particular: right winger/center Calle Jarnkrok, and left-wingers David Kampf and Nick Robertson.

If they canâ€t deliver their fans to the promised land of a playoff position – the bare-minimum when it comes to achievements as a team – the Sabres will be at a crossroads. Team ownership will have to know a 15th-year without playoffs cannot be met with the status quo. Bringing the same group of coaches, management members and players back next season without a playoff appearance this coming year would make the Sabres a laughingstock.

This is a zero-sum industry the Sabres are in. If you want to have stability and happiness, the only way you do that is by being on a winning team. And think, thereâ€s now an entire generation of Buffalo hockey fans whoâ€ve grown up not knowing what a Sabres playoff game looks like. Thatâ€s unacceptable, and thatâ€s why the consequences have to be extreme if Adams, Ruff & Co. canâ€t get the job done.

The Sabres know full well they have to make the playoffs this year, or all bets will be off. Theyâ€re going to be under a giant microscope all season long, and they have a clear target all season long. If they donâ€t hit that target, Buffalo will see sweeping change across all areas of the organization. And everyone involved with the team will have only themselves to blame.

Source link

“From the outside, it seems crazy,†Jarell Quansah says, as he reflects on his summer just gone, when dizzying change felt like a constant. “But it is one of them … football is a crazy game.â€

A quick recap. Days after winning the European Under-21 Championship with England at the end of June, Quansah decided to leave Liverpool, his boyhood club, to go to Bayer Leverkusen in a £30m deal.

The big fee equalled big pressure as the 22-year-old was charged with finding his feet in a new country and at a club where the churn was dramatic. Erik ten Hag had stepped in to replace Xabi Alonso as the manager and a host of key players were gone or going – chief among them Florian Wirtz, Piero Hincapié, Jeremie Frimpong, Amine Adli, Granit Xhaka, Lukas Hradecky and Jonathan Tah.

Quansahâ€s Bundesliga debut came on 23 August at home to Hoffenheim and the centre-half scored after five minutes, albeit the goal was undercut by sadness. All he could think about was Diogo Jota, his former Liverpool teammate, who was killed in a car accident. Quansah performed Jotaâ€s gamer celebration as a mark of respect.

“To have a goal on your Bundesliga debut, at home, after five minutes, is certainly a whirlwind,†Quansah says. “But my overwhelming feeling was that it was a tribute to Diogo.â€

The defender could have been forgiven for wondering what he had signed up to at Leverkusen. From the promising start in their opening league fixture, they fell to a 2-1 defeat and the next match on 30 August was just as bad. Ten Hagâ€s team threw away 2-0 and 3-1 leads to draw 3-3 at 10-man Werder Bremen, the equaliser coming in stoppage time. It was not Ten Hagâ€s team for much longer. He was sacked on 1 September.

Quansah does not come across as the type to fret. If composure defines his game, it was on show during the interview he gave after joining England for the Wembley friendly against Wales on Thursday and the World Cup qualifier against Latvia in Riga next Tuesday.

Quansah has kept his head down under the new Leverkusen manager, Kasper Hjulmand, and continued to do what he always intended to do at the club – play. Hjulmand has brought stability. His team have three wins and one draw in four league matches along with draws in each of their Champions League ties. But there is a broader statistic that encourages Quansah, even bringing a measure of vindication. It is the one which shows he has played every minute of the clubâ€s campaign.

It is one that Thomas Tuchel has noted. The England head coach was a fan last season, selecting Quansah when he named his first squad in March. After leaving him out in June so that Quansah could concentrate on the Under-21 European Championship, he gave him a late call-up in September when John Stones was forced to withdraw.

Jarell Quansah and Harvey Elliott embrace at the end of the European Under-21 Championship final against Germany. Photograph: Petr David Josek/AP

Still to win his first cap, Quansah must have done something right in training and around the camp because he was named at the outset in Tuchelâ€s 24‑man group for Wales and Latvia, essentially as a fifth centre-back with Stones fit again. The dream is a debut. It is another thing he would surely take in his stride.

“At Leverkusen, the club were interested in me for a while and thatâ€s not just from the manager [Ten Hag],†Quansah says. “They were interested before he got appointed. So knowing it was a sort of internal decision and nothing would change with which manager was to come in and stuff like that … it was easy for me to make that decision [to join them].

“We had a lot of players leaving and itâ€s always tough when you lose key players. It has been tough to build the leadership groups but the results we have had [under Hjulmand] show that we have got a good squad with quality players. It is going to take time to build and we are not where we want to be. But if we are getting results and not losing that is a good place to start.â€

skip past newsletter promotion

Sign up to Football Daily

Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football

Privacy Notice:Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

after newsletter promotion

It had to have been a wrench for Quansah to leave Liverpool, his club from the age of five, where he enjoyed so many memorable moments – such as the Carabao Cup final victory over Chelsea in 2023‑24 when he came on as an extra-time substitute.

Quansah was also a part of last seasonâ€s Premier League title triumph. Yet his view of much of that was not the one he would have chosen. He was an unused substitute on 25 occasions in the competition, his four starts and nine appearances off the bench comparing unfavourably with his numbers in the league from 2023‑24 when he started nine games and came on in four.

“Iâ€ve always learned off some of the best players around me at Liverpool and itâ€s been so good for my career,†he says. “But as a young centre-back, you need games and Iâ€m going to be needing hundreds of games to be where I want to be.

“I just wanted game time and when you are at a team like Liverpool, itâ€s not promised because there are world-class players all over the pitch. I wanted somewhere where they can trust that I might make mistakes at times but they will look under that and see I can keep pushing and pushing.â€

Quansah remembers his loan to League One Bristol Rovers in the second-half of 2022-23 where he made his first senior appearances – 16 of them, to be precise. There were “numerous wake-up callsâ€, he says with a smile, beginning with his debut; a 5-1 defeat at Morecambe.

“That was a true eye-opener,†Quansah says. “It was a really valuable part of my career because I wanted to make the next step to playing first-team football. Every game I learned something new. Thatâ€s where I knew how valuable experience and playing games was. You could say it informed my decision in the summer.â€

Source link