Mike Harrington: Pegula's 70th comes on his team's 17th. There's nothing happy about it

As you would imagine, the salutations to No. 70 for the owner did not go over very well with the fan base.

Pegula isn't a social media hound. You would hope his wife/team president, Kim, and his kids, who are Twitter regulars, skipped the replies.

Oh, the replies.

Happy birthday to our owner, Terry Pegula! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/ywvxUi4NO3

— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) March 27, 2021

Someone posted a photo of the Feb. 23, 2011, edition of The Buffalo News, the one with the giant headline across the top that read "Destination: The Stanley Cup." Someone else noted, "He's aged 20 years this season."

Another reply wondered, "What do you get a guy who has everything BUT wins?" That was quickly followed with, "A President of Hockey Operations" and a tweet that said, "I hope your birthday is as enjoyable as watching a Sabres game."

Memo to the Sabres' social media team: Read the room. Just a little. This might have been the year to skip the salute to the boss' birthday.

The Pegulas also own the Bills, and the Bills' social media team offered a similar birthday message. While the replies were cheerier there, plenty of Sabres vitriol spilled over.  

There's nothing happy about this franchise right now, and saying anything remotely nice about ownership was just asking for trouble.

Kind of like starting to think this hockey team might actually win a game.

You were waiting for bad things to happen Saturday, even after the Sabres put together two periods of good play. Sure enough, things turned sour. A 2-1 lead turned into a 3-2 loss to the Boston Bruins in TD Garden, in a game decided by Craig Smith's goal with 3:50 left.

When the final buzzer ended, poor Rasmus Dahlin took his stick in one hand over his head and pounded it on the ice. He's "up" to minus-32 in 33 games. Taylor Hall was bent over at the waist and had to be thinking, "When do I get my exit ticket?" Sam Reinhart, who scored the team's first power-play goal all month – seriously – kicked at the ice.

"Obviously, we have the weight of what's going on, but we shouldn't be squeezing our sticks right now," said Kyle Okposo, whose second-period goal produced the 2-1 lead. "We should just be playing free, playing the right way but trying to make things happen."

The Sabres played to lose in the third period as they got outshot 15-3. A better team clearly said, "We can't lose at home to these guys," and took charge. That's one problem here now: The Sabres are never going to get an off night from somebody. Opponents are going to be scared straight into making sure they're not the team on the hook for ending Buffalo's winless streak.

The mutuels are these:

• The Sabres are 6-23-4 and it's 17 and counting for their winless streak (0-15-2). The longest streak in franchise history is the second-longest in the NHL over the last 25 seasons, surpassed only by Pittsburgh's pre-Crosby 18-game skid in 2004.

• The Sabres are 0-13-1 in March, a franchise record for regulation losses in any month, and have dropped nine straight. In fact, if they lose without overtime or shootouts to Philadelphia here Monday and Wednesday, they will tie the all-time NHL record for the worst month by finishing with the same 0-15-1 mark Detroit did in March, 1977. 

• Avert your eyes here: The Sabres are 32 points out of the East Division lead, 23 points out of a playoff berth, 12 points out of seventh place in their division and 10 points out of 30th place in the NHL.

Interim coach Don Granato was clearly disappointed after this one, as he should have been. He got his starting goalie back, and Linus Ullmark was solid with 33 saves. The Sabres, remember, haven't won since Ullmark went down Feb. 25 – when the season was still in play at 6-8-2.

But the Bruins pushed hard, the Sabres lost coverage in their zone like they usually do and that was that.

"They were hungry," Granato said of the Bruins. "There's a lot of things we can look at in the film and once again make the next step. And that's what you take from it. We were not as aggressive as we needed to be collectively. ... They elevated their intensity. We didn't elevate as we should have."

One guy who looked sharp was Ullmark, who yielded nary a rebound. You would think/hope he would be able to steal a game here at some point to end this thing.

"It doesn't really matter how you lose the game. It's unfortunate that we got some unlucky bounces," Ullmark said. "You've got to go home, recharge, and then come back stronger for the next one."

Watching Ullmark was a pleasure. Watching things such as Dahlin and Colin Miller looking lost in their own zone gets old. Watching Jean-Sebastian Dea start the game as the No. 1 center is the kind of thing that makes you wonder if anybody knows what they're doing.

At least Granato showed he hadn't completely lost his mind and got Dylan Cozens and Casey Mittelstadt plenty of time at center later on. These games are free reps for them. Get them as many as you can.

No more top-six roles for Jean-Sebastien Dea. Please. 

Of course, logic isn't in big supply in an organization that has no hockey president and has gone nine months with a rookie general manager operating without an assistant GM. At least it seems that trend will end soon.

Back in June, Pegula said the organization was going to get "leaner" as the Sabres purged 22 members of the front office and hockey operations. Then he said "effective, efficient and economic."

He didn't want to say "suffering," but that's what he meant.

The lack of organizational structure and scouting depth has drawn guffaws across the hockey world. The winless streak has just brought the mockery further out into the open.

"How the hell do they let a young, inexperienced GM start without an AGM? Or deciding just now that he needs help?" former NHLer Jeff O'Neill railed Friday on TSN 1050 in Toronto, one of Canada's most-listened to sports stations. "That's amateur hour, man. That's East Coast League garbage. Come on."

Come on, indeed. That's what most people say when watching this team further embarrass the now-tattered tradition of a once-proud franchise.

Happy birthday, Terry.