Sabres Hold Team Meeting Because No One Stood Up For Star Player Tage Thompson After Cheap Shot
In hockey, if your teammate takes a brutal hit — especially a dirty one — you stand up for him.
Unfortunately, the Buffalo Sabres did not do that for star forward Tage Thompson after he was on the receiving end of a brutal cheap shot from New Jersey's Stefan Noesen on Sunday.
How did players react in the immediate aftermath of the blindside headshot on one of their best players?
*Crickets*
Noesen got a match penalty on the play — which means the on-ice officials jumped on Noesen faster than any Sabres did — while Thompson has been ruled out of Tuesday's game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, but passed his concussion screaming according to head coach Lindy Ruff.
Noesen did not receive any supplemental discipline for the hit.
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The Sabres won the game 4-3 — their third in a row — but the lack of response was the big story.
It really shouldn't matter who got hit, but when a teammate takes a shot like that, someone should grab the perpetrator.
Obviously, that didn't happen, and according to TSN, that led to the Sabres scrapping practice the following day in favor of a team meeting.
The result of that meeting? The lack of response after Thompson nearly got his block knocked off will not happen again.
"We had some hard conversations," Ruff said. "It’s over. What we discussed will stay inside the room and we’re moving on to try to win tonight."
"I think there’s a lot of guys that wish they were on the ice when that happened," Forward Dylan Cozens said. "But we talked about it, we dealt with it and that won’t happen again."
If the Sabres find themselves in this situation again, it'll be interesting to see if they react differently. Based on their comments after the meeting, it looks like they will, but unfortunately, we can only believe it when we see it,