User blog comment:Sicarius001/Royal Guard and Eighth Division Captain/@comment-8589859-20130423081917/@comment-8295743-20130425075309

The main power of the Vandenreich is in their ability to steal Bankai. Without this, the Gotei 13 would have taken them out without too much effort. Sasakibe probably still would have died. He doesn't seem to have fought much, if at all, in the past 200 years. If he had been practicing with Bankai, it was somewhere that he could do so without anyone noticing the weather changes.