Tanking in the NHL is an epidemic in the same way that shark attacks are an epidemic, which is to say that twice a decade there’s widespread panic that quickly subsides when the media moves on to something else. And while we’ve never weaponized an army of trained porpoises or constructed a laser sea-wall to combat Jaws: The Revenge, apparently this is the season in which the hockey world finally stands up to teams taking a fall.

The catalyst for this activism isn’t Connor McDavid or Jack Eichel, the twin franchise-salvaging prizes at the top of the 2015 NHL Draft, but rather the Buffalo Sabres and the National Hockey League.

The NHL encourages tanking. It does so by having a draft system that, despite the existence of the lottery, rewards futility. The worse you are, the better your chances will be for gaining the first overall pick. Combine that with a free-agent system that shackles young players to teams until they’re in their late 20s – thanks, old boys' club! – and terrible hockey teams have few options other than to clear the decks and point the submarine down to the bottom of the standings.

The Buffalo Sabres embraced tanking, perhaps more than any team we’ve seen before. GM Tim Murray laid the groundwork last summer, adding a few veterans but doing nothing that would indicate this team was looking at a playoff seed – especially in goal, where Jhonas Enroth and Michal Neuvirth were two No. 2s that didn’t add up to a starter.

The Sabres were positioning themselves for a last-place season, the NHL knew it, so they actually changed their draft lottery rules less than a year before the 2015 lottery to make it more difficult for tanking teams to secure the first overall pick.

Sabres GM Tim Murray said, “You know who you’re affecting, that’s not fair.” He was completely right: The NHL was “Sean Avery Rule” fast with the legislation on this, and it targeted the Sabres and anyone else that was going to Dishonor for Connor.

This didn’t stop Murray, who continued the Sabres’ downward trend by:

- Trading his starting goaltender. Twice.

- Trading his best defenseman for a player who wasn’t going to play this season.

- Keeping prospects like Mark Pysyk and Sam Reinhart off the roster, for their own sanity but also because they could have made a difference.

Sabres fans had been conflicted about tanking for most of the season. The ones I spoke to last September were hoping that Buffalo would contend and that Islanders' first-rounder the Sabres owned would end up being in the lottery, which obviously didn’t happen.

So they were met with a moral quandary as the season continued: Embrace the tank or reject the degradation of sportsmanship that comes with rooting against your favorite team.

The nadir of the Season Of The Tank came when the Arizona Coyotes – once a team with playoff aspirations, now one where their general manager openly endorses their losing ways – came to Buffalo and the fans cheered for opposing goals.

Wrote Steven Sazant on The Brock Press:

“Cheering against them in front of their faces is wrong, especially for what has already been a great hockey town in Buffalo.

“My perspective is that if you openly cheer against your team when they’re losing and only cheer for them to win when they’re doing well, then you’re nothing but a traditional bandwagoner, simple as that. There were even some fans in attendance that wore their Sabres jerseys to the game, but taped the Arizona Coyotes’ logo onto the front of it.”

Wrote Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News:

“Good for Ted Nolan and his players to not give in to the absurdity all around them. The coach is right. The integrity of the game is real. I’ve said it since October: You play to win and you draft where you draft. People who want to manipulate the results simply don’t understand sports and competition.”

I’d argue the fans know exactly about sports and competition.

It’s about winning. And tanking for McDavid is a means to that end, and perhaps the best chance the Sabres have had to that end since Brett Hull’s skate was in the crease. They’re not cheering against the players; they’re cheering for the betterment of the franchise.

Isn’t one of the hallmarks of hockey to cheer the logo on the front and not the name on the back?

Of course, NHL players do the same thing on an annual basis: Parking loyalty to their team, their fans and their city to make cold, emotionless business decisions, like signing elsewhere or demanding a trade. But the moment a fan base does it; the moment the paying customers decide what they want to pay for, going forward … well, they’re just a bunch of meanies.

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