Sabres and Pegula family come under fire for censoring angry fans

In case you missed it earlier this week, the Buffalo Sabres put up a pitiful performance against the lowly Ottawa Senators, losing 5-2 at home. Brutal. 

The Sabres are now 10 points out of a Wild Card spot, despite a Hart Trophy worthy campaign from captain Jack Eichel. The team retained Jeff Skinner this past offseason, they’ve hired a new coach in Ralph Krueger and FINALLY, after a decade of false starts, seemed to be back on track. Then the puck dropped and the train went completely off the rails. Such is life for Sabres fans.

Now, the Sabres organization is coming under fire not for their play on the ice, but for the way they’ve handled their fanbase this season. During WGR 550’s post game show after the Sens’ loss, Sabres fans voiced their displeasure with the team. One fan absolutely went OFF on the Sabres and owner Terry Pegula.

Check it out:

This call prompted a pretty thorough summation of the situation in Buffalo on Reddit from user wobut. Click here for the link, or read his/her synopsis below:

Things are getting wild here in Sabreland.

After a pretty abysmal loss to the Ottawa Senators, fans are outwardly showing their frustration, but the franchise is capping off their brutal mismanagement with their handlings of the fan's reactions.

A caller to the local sports radio station had a pretty passionate rant about how the franchise doesn't do anything right beyond the product on the ice either, mostly about how many absurd mistakes they are making in promoting the 50th anniversary celebrations such as:

• Misspelling alumni names on their jerseys
• Having alumni wear cheap chinese knockoff jerseys instead of authentics in official team functions
• Failing to meet a deadline to wear original jerseys against the Canucks, when the canucks wore theirs.

The radio station, in a now deleted tweet, tweeted out the call, as its a pretty common sentiment among fans these days. The organization allegedly pressured their flagship partner into deleting the tweet. I say allegedly, but come on.

Elliot Friedman had a pretty innocent blurb about the on-ice failures of the franchise under the Pegulas in his 31 thoughts blog. Today on his recurring interview on WGR550, he mentioned that he received complaints that people within the organization were not happy with his criticism! To save you a click, here's what he said:

We’re coming up on nine years since he bought the Sabres. At that media conference, he promised to spend, which had Sabres fans dancing with joy. He’s spent on players, coaches, executives, scouting — everything. They made the playoffs that first season, losing in seven games to Philadelphia. But there have been no playoff berths since, and the team is 80 games under .500 in that span.

There is literally nothing here. But yet the team is desperate to try to control media backlash towards them.

One attempt to censor a fan's frustration and one attempt to persuade national media to not point out their failures, both which would have just been another day we'd have moved on from, have resulted in the dam being ready to burst.

Another ugly loss to Montreal tonight, and we may see some heads fall.