During another week of ugly losses for the Buffalo Sabres, the New York Rangers—to the surprise of no one—came to terms on a seven year, $59.5 million deal with their Vezina-winning netminder, Henrik Lundqvist.
Beyond the fact that they were to play the Lundqvist and his Rangers that night, the extension hit close to home for the Sabres.
Ryan Miller is in limbo, and this contract likely didn’t make it any easier for him or the Sabres.
Miller’s play has been nothing short of spectacular at most points this season. In his 21 starts, Miller has faced 763 shots, an average of 36.3 per game. That is by far the highest in the league with Miller in front of the next player by almost four shots per game. That by itself puts his 3.05 goals against average and his solid, but unspectacular, .917 save percentage in context.
Simply put, Miller has been the brightest spot on an otherwise incredibly dark season. He has not only earned a chance to secure a long-term deal similar to Lundqvist’s, but he likely has also earned his way back onto the United States Olympic Team, something a lot of people felt he wouldn’t be able to do.
Obviously, between his play and the Lundqvist extension, many began to wonder if Miller being traded was as sure of a thing as many had led them to believe.
What if Miller signed a similar deal here? Goaltenders don’t grow on trees and, despite being 33 years old, Miller likely has at least four years left in him. And draft picks are so risky. A first-rounder does not always develop into a franchise player.
Ted Nolan then threw a bit more fuel on the fire by saying he did not want to trade Miller. Nolan understands as well as anyone how important a goalie is to a team—see Dominik Hasek—and trading away a Vezina winner who is also clearly the best player on your team at the moment likely doesn’t make him feel comfortable moving forward.
That, however, is assuming that Miller wants to stay in Buffalo, something many have questioned since the beginning of last season, especially after Lindy Ruff was fired.
So what should the Sabres do with Miller?
The easy answer is to re-sign him for something similar to Tuukka Rask money (eight years, $56 million) and move on with him.
That puts him squarely in the middle of the rebuild but also allows him to be a piece to build around because no matter what the NHL is or will evolve into, a solid goaltender, or at least solid goaltending, is always going to be important.
So while that’s the “easy” answer, it still is fraught with complications, the biggest being the salary cap moving forward.
As it stands today, the Sabres have about $35.5 million in cap room for next year, assuming no increase in the cap, which, frankly, is a bad assumption. But no one seems to agree how much higher the cap will go next year, so the status quo is the best starting point. Inking Miller to a $7 million per year deal—which could be a low estimate—would bring them down to approximately $28.5 million.
That’s plenty, right? Wrong.
Just assuming the Sabres want to re-sign their restricted free agents, they have Tyler Ennis, Marcus Foligno, Luke Adam, Jamie McBain and Brayden McNabb to deal with. All five of those players will likely be on the NHL roster next season, and all will likely be due some level of a raise. To think you’re getting away from those negotiations by committing less than $10 million of the cap annually is nuts.
Now you’re down to around $18.5 million and you have Steve Ott and Matt Moulson staring you in the face. While many rightly believe Moulson is likely to leave in some fashion, be it the trade deadline or free agency, Ott has said he wants to stay and one has to believe the Sabres want him to stay.
Ott will be due a slight raise, and will likely cost the Sabres around $3.5 million annually. That’s now $15 million in cap space.
Even without Moulson, the team needs to sign someone to replace him in body count at the very least. That may open the door for Joel Armia, but it could mean they pursue someone in free agency. Some names that may interest the Sabres include Dany Heatley, Milan Michalek, Ales Hemsky, Devin Setoguchi and Alex Steen. None of them will come cheaper than $5 million per season.
Now the Sabres are likely under $10 million in space and they have a few roster spots to fill. Sure, using a compliance buyout on Ville Leino will be a popular solution once again, but that just means you need to spend more to replace him as well.
It’s not as if the Sabres’ cap situation would be dire by signing Miller, but the final available cap number will be a lot less than many would have imagined, and spending to the cap in a rebuilding stage typically doesn’t fair too well.
So that brings one to the idea of trading Miller, something Sabres fans have been waiting for all season long.
The return on Miller is going to be one of two things: way too much or way too little. That’s likely to be the case because the market for a goaltender, even one of Miller’s caliber, is not the best right now, especially when teams are nixed by a limited no-trade clause.
A few teams have been linked to Miller for awhile, including the Edmonton Oilers, the New York Islanders, the St. Louis Blues and the Anaheim Ducks, but a betting man would guess that at least Edmonton and probably the Isles were on Miller’s no-trade list.
So in all reality, that leaves a pretty bare market right now, especially seeing the Ducks and Blues have been getting good enough goaltending to get them to the top of the Western Conference.
Essentially what it comes down to is this: The Sabres either need someone to start playing extremely poorly or to get hurt to open the market. Without one of those things happening, Sabres fans will be very underwhelmed with the return on any Miller trade, especially from a contender.
The worst part of this for the Sabres is that trading Miller for a stable of prospects and/or picks is probably the best long-term solution, but the only teams they’d get such a return from are likely on his no-trade list. The Islanders may as well have your grandmother in net right now and their general manager Garth Snow may be in the mood to trade away too much to potentially save his job.
So, again, the Sabres enter a wait-and-see mode, hoping that either a need arises or that Miller decides he wants to stay and signs a favorable extension. The odds either happens? Probably slim, but those are the team’s best options right now.
Right now the only certainty in this ongoing saga is that Miller will see a lot of rubber thrown his way the next few months.
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With the Buffalo Sabres unable to score goals once again in the still relatively young season, the reality has likely settled in for most who follow the team: They’ll be picking very, very high in next year’s NHL Entry Draft.
How high? Jeremy White of Buffalo’s local WGR 550 radio station tweeted that SportsClubStats.com gives the Sabres a 97-percent chance of picking in the top three.
So to start, the Sabres will have an all but guaranteed top-three pick. Then comes the saga that will surround the first rounder obtained from the New York Islanders for Thomas Vanek that can be deferred to next season if the Isles finish poorly enough to pick in the top 10.
The story will involve the Islanders’ internal debate of whether or not to defer the pick given what is on the horizon in terms of prospects next year.
As of Friday, the Islanders would pick second in the upcoming draft—assuming the Sabres win the lottery. Aside from John Tavares, the Islanders don’t seem to be getting much better anytime soon either, especially with their current situation between the pipes. With that in mind, it is not a stretch to think the Isles will be as bad, if not worse next year, especially if they part ways with Vanek.
With Connor McDavid as the top prize in 2015, and names like Dylan Strome, Mitch Marner and Travis Konecny behind him, the Isles may not want to forfeit their chance to acquire one of them, so a top-three, let alone a top-10 pick, in this year’s draft is not guaranteed to be deferred.
This means that the Sabres have the ability to have two top-three picks on top of three second rounders in 2014. As discussed before, this does not include any picks acquired in trades including potential UFAs Ryan Miller, Matt Moulson and Steve Ott, all of which would likely be at least second rounders.
If the Sabres are going to get better anytime soon, these picks, however they are utilized, will need to play a huge part in the future of the team. There is no way Pat LaFontaine and the new general manager will draft five players as Darcy Regier did last year. While Darcy’s haul was impressive, the three second rounders, J.T. Compher, Justin Bailey and Connor Hurley, are each at least three years away from being in the conversation for an NHL roster spot.
The Sabres need to start adding “right-now” players, and the players available at the top of the next two drafts—Sam Reinhart and Connor McDavid—certainly fit that bill. The players in the mid-first and second rounds likely do not.
As Sabres President Ted Black has said many times this season, draft picks are a special kind of currency in the NHL and should be treated as such. There’s more than one way to spend money, and there’s certainly more than one way to use a draft pick.
Continually drafting five or six guys in the first two rounds can only get your team so far. Sure, those prospects themselves become their own currency, but the picks typically have a lot more value.
If the Sabres were to net themselves another first-round pick(s), likely in a Miller and/or Moulson trade, it’s likely they’ll come from teams making a playoff push and will be later in the round. Those picks can be swapped for immediate, top-six goal-scoring talent.
There are a number of soon-to-be restricted free agents that may have trouble re-signing given their team’s cap situation like Derek Stepan of the New York Rangers and both Craig Smith and Colin Wilson of the Nashville Predators. They should be targets of the new Sabres GM.
The common theme in all of this is that the basis laid in 2014 will tell the tale of how well, or poorly, this rebuild will go. The new regime in the front office may have walked into a bad situation on the ice, but there is no denying that Regier has done a good job stocking the player cupboards, especially on defense.
LaFontaine and his GM choice need to take that and build on it this offseason, and that will almost certainly happen around the draft.
So whether Reinhart is wearing the blue and gold or not, the team needs to be able to take a step forward, and it needs to start in June.
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Through his Facebook page Wednesday, Buffalo Sabres forward Mikhail Grigorenko announced he is heading back to Russia, stating “Flying to RUSSIA on Sunday with my brother Zadorov!!!!)))))))))”
Grigorenko’s agent later confirmed to Bill Hoppe of the Olean Times Herald the post was indeed made by Grigorenko, and that it means what we all knew it meant—the struggling sophomore Sabre would be playing for Russia in the upcoming World Junior Championships.
The Sabres officially announced Thursday morning they would honor the request and loan Grigorenko to Russia for the tournament.
NEWS ALERT: The #Sabres announce the team will loan forward Mikhail Grigorenko to the Russian men’s national junior ice hockey team.
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) December 5, 2013
Grigorenko will remain with the #Sabres until he leaves with defenseman Nikita Zadorov on Sunday to join Team Russia. (@SabresPR)
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) December 5, 2013
The 19-year-old Russian’s punctuation tells the story—he’s ecstatic for the opportunity. And who can blame him? In Buffalo, he’s been relegated to fourth-line duty or, worse, has warmed press box seats as a healthy scratch. The 2012 first-round draft pick has scored just three goals—two in one game earlier this year in Anaheim—in 43 games with the club.
The Sabres even tried to send him to the American Hockey League in November, only to have the attempt denied by the NHL due to the rules of the collective bargaining agreement.
It’s clear that Grigorenko doesn’t presently fit within the Sabres’ scheme. On a Ted Nolan-coached club preaching hard work and grinding in the corners, the underachieving Grigorenko has been an odd man out. He knows it, telling reporters both Tuesday and Wednesday that he was waiting for a call from the Russian Hockey Federation for an opportunity to head to Scandinavia for the WJC.
Grigorenko was a goal-scoring machine in two seasons with the Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, scoring 70 goals in 92 games. The opportunity to play a more wide-open game on the international-sized rink with players his own age will give him the chance to regain some goal-scoring confidence he has lost in Buffalo.
A strong performance in the tournament could bring momentum back to the First Niagara Center ice and help Grigorenko turn his career in the right direction. He has just one year left in his entry-level contract. How he performs in the next month at the WJC may determine whether he will begin the process of earning a longer-term deal after that or whether he will become a career journeyman—or perhaps return to Russia permanently.
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The deadline to finalize rosters for the 12 teams playing in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, is fast approaching. (It’s Jan. 7, to be precise.)
Ever since NHL players started playing in the Winter Olympic games in the 1998 Nagano games, a highlight for fans of each franchise has been seeing familiar faces playing on the international stage. What longtime Buffalo Sabres fan doesn’t remember staying up late to watch Dominik Hasek lead the Czech Republic to the gold medal in those ’98 games, or recall Ryan Miller’s meteoric rise to the most beloved hockey player in America during the 2010 Olympics?
Needless to say, the talent level on the Sabres roster leaves a lot to be desired during this particular Olympic season. But that being said, there are a few players who will likely be a part of the tournament in February—and, of course, one head coach barking orders from behind a bench.
Also worth noting is that two of Germany’s top defensemen, Christian Ehrhoff and Alexander Sulzer, won’t be making the trip to Sochi because the German National Team failed to qualify for the tournament. Both Ehrhoff and Sulzer were members of the German team in both 2006 (10th-place finish) and 2010 (11th-place finish), while Ehrhoff was also a member in 2002 (eighth-place finish).
So while Ehrhoff and Sulzer will definitely be staying home, there are a handful of other Sabres players who may be playing for medals come February.
Note: All stats are updated through Nov. 30, courtesy of NHL.com, unless otherwise noted.
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When Ted Nolan returned to the Buffalo Sabres as interim coach, many believed it would soon mark the return of Patrick Kaleta to the team’s roster as well.
Kaleta, who was waived by the team Nov. 2 and ended up in the American Hockey League with the Rochester Americans, fits to a T the “hardest-working team in hockey” mantra that Nolan championed during his original tenure in Buffalo.
Assuming the demotion to the AHL—which came after a 10-game suspension for a cheap shot to the Columbus Blue Jackets‘ Jack Johnson—gave him pause and made him think about cleaning up his game a bit, Kaleta could step back in and provide the hard hits and penalty-killing prowess that made him a serviceable player in the National Hockey League in the first place.
It was all lining up to play out that way with Kaleta returning to the blue and gold, until fate handed the Buffalo native an unlucky draw.
Regarding Patrick Kaleta, Nolan says #Sabres planned to call him up to play Thursday, but a long-term injury will prevent that.
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) November 30, 2013
Kaleta suffered the injury Friday night during the Americans’ 5-3 win over the Lake Erie Monsters, in a collision with Monsters goaltender Calvin Pickard, reports Kevin Oklobzija of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
Pickard made the save and Kaleta went up and over the goalie. The back of his right leg — right near his ankle or top of the skate — slammed hard into the cross bar as he somersaulted over Pickard and then fell to the ice. He essentially ended up in the net.
Kaleta stayed sitting on the ice for a minute or two afterward, with trainer Rob Frost assessing the injury. When he did get up, he was unable to put any weight on his right leg and needed help from Frost and Kevin Porter to get to the bench. He was still in the medical room well after the game.
The injury was later confirmed to be a torn ACL by Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News, and by the Rochester Americans.
TBN source: Kaleta out for the season in Rochester with torn right ACL suffered in Friday night’s game. #Sabres #Amerks
— Mike Harrington (@BNHarrington) November 30, 2013
#Amerks forward Patrick Kaleta suffered an injured ACL in Friday’s game vs. Lake Erie and will be out indefinitely.
— Rochester Americans (@AmerksHockey) November 30, 2013
The injury will keep Kaleta out for the remainder of the 2013-14 season, as Paul Hamilton of WGR Sports Radio 550 and Oklobzija reported.
They had told 36 he was going to be called up to play against the Rangers. Now his season is likely over.
— Paul Hamilton (@pham1717) November 30, 2013
#Sabres confirm what @BNHarrington reported: #Amerks RW Patrick Kaleta done for season. Torn ACL, per his report.
— Kevin Oklobzija (@kevinoDandC) November 30, 2013
Kaleta will now have another 10 months to think about the reason behind his suspension, being dumped onto the waiver wire, and why 29 other teams in the league didn’t take a chance to snag him off it.
While the injury is a major setback for him on the ice, the time away from the game may be just what he needs to better understand his role on an NHL roster.
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After a few days of speculation following the Buffalo Sabres‘ home-and-home with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Sabres have effectively purged most of the youth on its roster this morning, per their official Twitter account.
The Sabres have sent Rasmus Ristolainen, Johan Larsson and Mikhail Grigorenko to Rochester of the AHL while sending Nikita Zadorov back to London of the OHL.
Grigorenko, who was sent down on a conditioning assignment, will be back within 14 days, according to Kevin Oklobzija of The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Beyond him, it seems Larsson and Ristolainen will be spending most of the remaining season down in the AHL, while Zadorov will remain in the OHL.
Up from Rochester to take these now vacant roster spots will likely be Patrick Kaleta, Luke Adam, Brayden McNabb and Alex Sulzer. Kevin Porter and Chad Ruhwedel also may get a shot.
In essence, the Sabres will go from the youngest team in the NHL to somewhere in the middle of the pack, and the rebuild will be put firmly in the hands of the guys who were pushed out in favor of the youth at the beginning of the season.
So the question that presents itself is clear: Is this the right move for a rebuilding team?
The word “rebuild” seems to come with the somewhat flawed assumption that any youth who can reasonably play on the NHL roster should be there in favor of guys who likely will not play into the long-term future of the team. While that can be the case, it’s not always the right decision.
The Buffalo Sabres find themselves in a precarious position moving forward, because Ted Nolan is not a developmental coach. He’s a “get the most out of what you have” coach for sure, but he’s never been known as a developer.
And let’s be honest: The Sabres aren’t turning it around and making a playoff push with the guys they’re calling up. They actually may be worse with them.
So these moves seem to tip the Sabres’ hand moving forward.
First, they definitely are hoping for a top pick in the 2014 Entry Draft. Sam Reinhart is the obvious target, with William Nylander and Leon Draisaitl being considerations if the Sabres were to lose the draft lottery.
Reinhart, at worst, projects to be a top-six forward. At best, he could be a top-three forward with franchise-changing potential. In other words, he’s an excellent piece in a rebuilding puzzle.
Second, it seems that Nolan may truly be only an interim coach. This team is not going to compete by playing older guys simply because they’ve been around longer. Sooner or later the reigns need to be turned over to the youngsters stocking the cupboard.
While that may not necessarily need to happen this season, it has to sooner rather than later.
A team cannot hope to rebuild using fringe veterans, so these guys will be back, and likely in prominent roles. The only question is when.
Regardless, expect the Sabres to stay in more games, but a spade is a spade, and a team with this many third-liners is not going to have much success.
And with that, the rebuild forges on, and probably a lot differently than many would have expected.
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Buffalo Sabres fans have long called for Ted Nolan to return as coach of the team.
Coach Ron Rolston’s days with the team were very obviously numbered during a dreadful start to the 2013-14 season that has seen the Sabres outplayed and outcoached at every turn. And with each loss, each questionable decision from the bench, the name of Ted Nolan was bandied about with even more ferocity on message boards.
So while it may be shocking to see his face on the ice again for Sabres practice, it’s really no surprise he is the man owner Terry Pegula and team president Ted Black have brought in to replace Rolston, a coach so bland that you either hated him or you forgot his name in between games.
Similarly, it’s no surprise another beloved name from Sabres past, Pat LaFontaine, is the man being brought in to take former general manager Darcy Regier’s seat at the table—even if he isn’t actually taking his title or role within the organization.
The additions of Nolan and LaFontaine may turn out to be good hockey moves for the Sabres, and they may eventually lead the team down the road to hockey’s promised land. But there’s no doubt that in the short term, the carefully calculated play has energized a Sabres fanbase that has been getting more and more apathetic about the team by the day.
The timing of the move—after the team’s first home win in 10 tries this season, and just their fourth win in 20 games total—was odd, indicating it has been in the works for quite some time. The game against Los Angeles Tuesday was the first off a week-long West Coast road trip, and a move of this magnitude couldn’t have been done while the team was flying home from California.
The pageantry of it all—Pegula and Black sitting on the dais at First Niagara Center, introducing familiar faces to Sabres fans with pomp and circumstance—is a public relations move with very little downside for the organization.
On social media, the organization has made a concerted effort to engage nostalgic fans—posting photos of Nolan and LaFontaine from the ’90s throughout the day Wednesday and changing the team’s official Facebook cover photo to text that reads, “Welcome Back! Pat & Ted.”
The posts, predictably, earned thousands of likes and hundreds of shares, spreading the cloud of cheerfulness that was over Pegulaville Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the team has a lot of leeway with Nolan in making him the interim head coach rather than just giving him the official tag. If the team makes drastic improvements, he can continue to lead it into next season. If the situation deteriorates quickly, he can be let go and the “real” coach can be brought in to pick up the pieces.
And in creating a position (“president of hockey operations”) for LaFontaine instead of making him the general manager, it gives the organization a familiar face in the front office for fans to be hyped up about while still allowing (eventually) decisions to be made by a general manager who is more qualified for the position.
Nolan may not be the coach of the future, and LaFontaine’s role in the public eye may diminish once the general manager search comes to an end, but bringing them in now in the short term is a shot in the arm for a weary fanbase that wouldn’t have been delivered had an unknown-to-the-masses head coach and general manager been trotted out Wednesday instead.
The chances that the product on the ice is going to improve dramatically in the 62 games that remain in 2013-14 are slim. If it does, wonderful. If it doesn’t—well, that’s just part of the blueprint toward getting that lottery pick and continuing the rebuilding process.
No harm, no foul.
But in the meantime, what the organization will have gained is the renewed excitement of fans who are now flooding message boards with proclamations of adoration for Pegula instead of calls for his head.
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In a move that was both equally unexpected and long overdue, the Buffalo Sabres announced the firing of long-time general manager Darcy Regier and head coach Ron Rolston Wednesday in a morning press conference, according to the team’s official website.
In their place step former Sabres captain Pat LaFontaine as the president of hockey operations and former Sabres coach Ted Nolan, who will be taking over on an interim basis.
It’s safe to say that this move was well received by Sabres fans, as LaFontaine is one of the most revered players in the history of the franchise (the No. 16 jersey hanging from the rafters of the First Niagara Center is proof of that), and Nolan was known for getting a lot from a little during his first tenure in Buffalo.
So what can Sabres fans expect from this point forward?
First, LaFontaine will commence his search for a new general manager to replace Regier. An interesting storyline to keep an eye on is how much say that GM will have in roster moves moving forward (see the Colorado Avalanche). Assuming the Sabres use a traditional structure, their next general manager will get the keys to the youngest team in the NHL and a plethora of top-60 draft picks in the next couple of years.
With that said, let the speculation begin. Three names that will lead the pack at the start will be Rick Dudley, Jason Botterill and Tom Fitzgerald.
Dudley, an assistant GM in Montreal, is the popular pick at this juncture. He both played and coached in Buffalo and was the architect of the 2003 Stanley Cup-winning Tampa Bay Lightning. As of this moment, according to the Buffalo News‘ John Vogl, the Canadiens have not commented on whether or not the Sabres have contacted them about Dudley, but you have to imagine they will, and soon.
Both Botterill and Fitzgerald are from the Pittsburgh Penguins organization, with both holding assistant GM designations. Botterill focuses more on the salary cap and the day-to-day operations of the team, whereas Fitzgerald is more involved in scouting and other developmental aspects.
As with every NHL front-office position, there will be dark horses for the position as well. Enter Neil Smith and Mark Messier.
Smith, the former GM of the New York Rangers in the 1990s, is widely seen as a great GM, but he has not been in or near the position since taking the New York Islanders job for a hot minute—about 40 days—in 2006. Given that most of his experience is from before the salary-cap era, you have to wonder if he has the ability to be a successful GM in the new cap-driven NHL.
Messier is an intriguing choice, but he doesn’t have any experience in the position, so his hiring would be a huge risk. But the greater the risk, the greater the potential reward, and Messier’s involvement may pay dividends for a team that needs a new image badly.
The other focal point for the new front office will be to maximize the pieces Regier has left them with.
At the top of the list is the nine top-60 picks the Sabres have between the next two entry drafts—five in 2014 and four in 2015. By no means do the Sabres need to use all of those picks, and you better believe Pat LaFontaine knows that.
Beyond that, the Sabres have plenty of tradable commodities as the trade deadline approaches, with the most notable being Ryan Miller.
It’s unlikely that today’s events have changed his mind much on his future in Buffalo, and LaFontaine‘s job will likely be split between the GM search and trading Miller.
With Miller having another scintillating night against Los Angeles last night, his trade value continues to rise while other netminders, including the Kings‘ Jonathan Quick, are getting hurt in bunches. Miller’s play continues to amaze, and team with a need may overpay for his services, if only for the rest of the season.
With that in mind, and considering the fact that Matt Moulson, Henrik Tallinder, Steve Ott, Christian Ehrhoff and Drew Stafford may garner a lot of interest, the Sabres’ draft pick cupboards could be bursting by the time the draft rolls around in June.
On top of all of this, Nolan will bring his hard-working style into the young Sabres locker room and should at least make the team harder to play against. Nolan isn’t tasked with performing miracles, but both he and LaFontaine both said the word culture a bunch this morning, and it’s clear that they feel that if the Sabres are going to be successful, they need to change the culture that’s there now.
Overall, it seems that the Sabres have taken a few huge steps in the right direction. Colorado is the last team to implement a system like this, and they have been one of the biggest surprises in the league thus far in 2013-14. Yes, it helps that they have three top-three picks on their roster, but Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy have made a huge difference already in that team.
One has to hope the Sabres follow suit, and if they win the Sam Reinhart lottery this year, they may have a quicker turnaround than many would have thought last night.
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With the Buffalo Sabres’ front office moves on Wednesday, we now know with certainty what they are not. We’re still a long way from knowing what they are.
In firing Darcy Regier, the Sabres axed the longest-serving general manager in team history. He was 40 years old and a bright, up-and-coming executive when hired; he’s two weeks shy of 57 today, and Buffalo’s failings as a team are mostly synonymous with his mistakes as a manager.
One of those mistakes—perhaps even the one that finally did him in—goes out the door with him.
It’s arguable that Ron Rolston should never have been given the head coaching job in Buffalo. Rolston was a longtime assistant coach in college hockey, and his only professional experience was a couple of middling seasons as the bench boss of the AHL’s Rochester Americans.
But Rolston was hired as the interim coach last season, the Sabres’ performance briefly spiked, and that was enough for Regier to hire him full-time. Regier stuck with his choice, too, even as the Sabres lost four times as many games as they won.
That’s all in the past now; whatever path the Sabres end up taking going forward, the men plotting it will not be Regier and Rolston. What is still at issue is who the replacements for both will be, and that question was not answered with the names the Sabres hired Wednesday.
Pat LaFontaine, the new President of Hockey Operations, will be hiring someone to replace Regier; he will not be stepping into the management role himself. Ted Nolan, the new interim head coach, gets that interim tag in no small part because the manager-to-be-named-later will doubtless want some say in who is running his bench.
That’s why the biggest move is still to come. What the Sabres have right now is a transitional regime, people who will lay the groundwork for what is to follow but won’t necessarily be the primary architects of it.
LaFontaine himself was honest about his limited experience in the press conference announcing the moves, which was streamed live on the Sabres’ official website. He was very briefly part of the New York Islanders management team, coming and going during Neil Smith’s six glorious weeks as the team’s general manager. He’s been around the game in various roles since, but has very little familiarity with the day-to-day management of an NHL team.
Likely, much of the latter will fall to assistant general manager Kevin Devine, a former World Hockey Association player who was promoted last year after several seasons as the Sabres’ director of amateur scouting.
This is a caretaker administration, and the job in front of them seems clear. The Sabres’ season is already all but over, and their role is to clear the decks, maximizing the return on various departing veterans (almost certainly including pending unrestricted free agents like Ryan Miller).
Ted Nolan should be able to help. The NHL’s Coach of the Year in 1996-97 has only had two seasons behind a major league bench since then, both with the New York Islanders, a team that promptly collapsed after Nolan was fired. He’s a good bet to get the most out of the Sabres’ vets the rest of the way.
But without question, the biggest decision wasn’t made Wednesday. The interim work being done by LaFontaine and company matters, but what will determine whether or not the Sabres’ rebuild succeeds is the quality of the man hired as the team’s general manager.
Whoever it is has a big job ahead of him.
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In the midst of a woeful season and a full-scale rebuilding process, the Buffalo Sabres made some major shakeups to the front office Wednesday.
Owner Terry Pegula announced that Darcy Regier and Ron Rolston had been relieved of their duties as general manager and head coach, respectively.
Taking over for them will be former Buffalo Sabres captain Pat LaFontaine, under the title of president of hockey operations, and former Buffalo Sabres coach Ted Nolan as interim head coach. The shocking move was officially announced during a Wednesday morning press conference at First Niagara Center.
Terry Pegula: “Last night I relieved Darcy Regier of his duties as Buffalo Sabres General Manager and Ron Rolston as our head coach” #Sabres
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) November 13, 2013
Pegula: Pat LaFontaine will be President of Hockey Operations. Ted Nolan will be #Sabres interim head coach, effective today.
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) November 13, 2013
Nolan was the Buffalo head coach from 1995-97, compiling a record of 73-72-19. The team won the Northeast Division title under his guidance in 1996-97, and he was awarded the Jack Adams Trophy as the NHL‘s top coach that season. He left the team following that season, however, with personal tension between him and star goaltender Dominik Hasek cited as the reasoning.
LaFontaine played for the Sabres from 1991-97 and set a team record for scoring in the 1992-93 season with 148 points. He previously worked in the front office of the New York Islanders, as senior advisor to owner Charles Wang during the 2006-07 season.
During Wednesday’s press conference, LaFontaine said he will be working to find Regier’s long-term replacement.
LaFontaine says he’ll work with Sabres Assistant GM Kevin Devine while searching for a GM. He has a “short list.”
— John Vogl (@BuffNewsVogl) November 13, 2013
Regier had been the Sabres general manager since 1997, and he had been the target of a large amount of criticism from the team’s fans in recent years.
Sabres president Ted Black said this move is part of the team’s process toward becoming a championship contender in the future.
#Sabres President Ted Black: “We’re about winning, creating a winning franchise, and today we take a huge step forward in that effort.”
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) November 13, 2013
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