Through five games in the 2013-14 season, the Buffalo Sabres look like a bad hockey team.
Really bad.
After years of playoff contention being an expectation instead of a hope, everything is now different. Anyone who still expects this team to make a run is poorly misguided. The team is in sole possession of last place in the NHL and is one of two winless teams.
Things can only get better, right?
One of the important things to understand is just how young this team is. They are the NHL’s youngest, checking in with an average age of 25.45, which is more than 0.5 years younger than the average Toronto Maple Leaf (the second-youngest team).
With time, you can expect to see a better, more consistent product on the ice. But for now, be prepared for the worst.
Let’s take a look at what we’ve learned through the first five games.
After Thursday night’s embarrassing loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Buffalo Sabres have moved to 0-4-1 with a minus-nine goal differential, behind only Florida and the New York Rangers.
The Sabres knew this was going to be a tough year, as did the fans. This is nowhere near the firestorm that surrounded both Lindy Ruff and general manager Darcy Regier last season when the team started slowly.
The issue is not that the team is losing—that was expected more or less. The issue is that the team looks as hapless as it is.
Ron Rolston was brought in to be a teacher for the young kids on his roster, but the flaw in the plan is that a coach with Rolston’s strengths is not typically relied on for victories.
In Rolston’s previous jobs, that much held true. As the head coach of the United States Development Team, his job was to develop the American talent in a program that serves as a feeder program to the NHL, NCAA and sometimes CHL. The team plays in the USHL and typically against older teams, so it’s not expected to win games as much as Rolston was expected to further the talent pool.
In Rochester of the AHL, winning was a bigger priority, but an AHL club is in existence for the success of its parent club in the NHL. Coaches don’t get fired in the AHL for losing seasons for the most part.
Obviously, the NHL is different.
Rolston has shown his inability to coach an NHL team in a number of ways in just five games this season, and the team’s performance is suffering as a result.
A coach needs to place his players in a position to succeed. The systems need to be in place to complement the players and promote the style of play the team is best suited to play.
The problem? There are no systems.
A team typically has a system for everything—forechecking, the neutral zone, the defensive zone, the power play, penalty kill, breakouts and zone entries. Systems are more readily apparent in some of these areas than others, like the defensive zone and special teams.
To put it simply, Buffalo’s defensive zone is a mess. The power play is a mess. The penalty kill is doing fine, but the penalty-killing personnel is vastly similar to Lindy Ruff’s. The assumption is that the Sabres are tapping into their knowledge from that system, which typically was one of the best in the league.
In the Sabres’ first game against Detroit, they were given two five-on-three power plays, including one less than five minutes into the game. Both of those opportunities were almost embarrassing to watch, as the Sabres seemed like they didn’t know what to do with the puck. Needless to say, they did not capitalize.
With all of the young players on the team this year, it is imperative that they have a system that they can grow in. Without that, how can Rolston expect them to succeed?
There has been a lot of talk on how well Tomas Hertl and Sean Monahan have fared with their respective teams, and there are tons of factors lending themselves to that, but top on that list is the fact that they have entered established systems with established coaches who have set them up for their successes.
Rolston doesn’t give the Sabres’ youth the same luxury, but he then has the gall to call them out on their compete level.
The Mikhail Grigorenko situation is complex and a discussion to have another day. Does he need to step it up? Absolutely. But he also cannot be expected to succeed in between John Scott and Patrick Kaleta.
Expanding on that a bit, Rolston has shown next to no ability to manage a game. Demoting Grigorenko midgame when he’s not playing well is understandable, but demoting him to allow Kevin Porter to play second-line minutes is inexplicable. A coach’s knee-jerk reaction cannot be to place what may be his best shot at a No. 1 center within the organization on the fourth line in favor of a guy who is a second-line AHLer at best.
For a coach who is supposed to be youth-friendly, Rolston has been anything but, and this isn’t even considering the veterans on the team.
The Rolston experiment is failing miserably. With each passing game it looks worse and worse. Now the only questions are when the very vocal fans of the Sabres start calling for his head and how Darcy Regier can possibly survive this one.
Suffer on, Sabres fans. Suffer on.
Follow me on Twitter for NHL and Sabres news all season long: @SwordPlay18.
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Buffalo Sabres center Mikhail Grigorenko is in the familiar yet unwelcome position he was in during his abbreviated rookie season last year. The young player is a healthy scratch just a handful of games into the regular season due to a lack of “urgency,” according to his head coach Ron Rolston, per Mike Harrington of The Buffalo News.
The 19-year-old former first-round draft pick has just one goal and five points in 29 career games spanning this and last season, and he hasn’t lived up to the high expectations with which he came into the league.
It’s come down to head coach Ron Rolston making the decision to sit the highly skilled center until he sees him be someone who can “be an impact in a game.”
It’s all fine and dandy to want to see a more competitive performance from a young player who’s expected to be a point producer for your squad, but when he’s not put in enough positions to succeed how can you expect him to make an impact?
While no one will—nor should they—accept this potential reasoning for Grigorenko’s seeming lack of fire on the ice, one could make the argument that he feels like he’s not being put in the best situation for his success. If a player feels that way, there is the potential to wonder why he should go to the tough spots when it’s likely not going to pay off because of the linemates he’s often put with.
That scenario is unlikely to be the case, as it would cause seemingly many more problems between player and coach than there are right now.
There is no denying the talent that Grigorenko possesses; you can see just how good he is when you watch him practice. His shot is accurate, his hands and stick skills are swift and he knows how to put the puck in the net. However, when he’s put on a line with players like John Scott and Patrick Kaleta, how can one expect him to produce?
If you want to see if he has enough fight in him to “be an impact” at this level, why not stick him on one of the top two lines.
Put him between Marcus Foligno and Drew Stafford. Hell, put him on the wing with Cody Hodgson and Thomas Vanek. Either way, put him in a situation to go out there and perform. Don’t give him eight minutes a night on the fourth line and expect to see a game-changing player.
It’s worth a shot. What else does the team really have to lose?
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Off to an 0-3 start, the Buffalo Sabres are setting the bar low. Fans’ expectations are minimal, and the playoffs seem like a thing of the distant future.
Still, there are always going to be standout performances.
On this year’s team, there are a ton of players under the age of 25. They may surprise me, but I doubt that many will be in the discussion for team MVP. That leaves a group of core veterans, who each have a chance of being deemed the team’s most valuable player.
Let’s dive in.
Heading into the 2013-14 season, the Buffalo Sabres have very little fanfare surrounding them. After a season in which they traded away their captain, Jason Pominville, and multiple veteran defensemen, the team is starting fresh.
In the offseason, the team made a commitment to getting younger, tougher and more skilled, which it appeared to do in the 2013 NHL draft. Still, this kind of adjustment takes more than one year—ask the Edmonton Oilers.
In this edition of the season preview, we’ll check out some of the changes to the Sabres roster, go over the expected lineup and make some predictions. Let’s take a look.
