Things got so bad in Buffalo this week, the Buffalo News had the Sabres 32nd in its weekly NHL Power Rankings.
That’s one spot below a team that hasn’t played: the expansion Seattle Kraken.
The team quit on coach Ralph Krueger, who got fired.
Jack Eichel is on his fourth coach (Dom Granato) and third general manager (Kevyn Adams) since entering the league in 2015.
Factories and abandoned warehouses don’t burn like they used to throughout Buffalo, Tonawanda, Lackawanna and Cheektowaga. Only the Sabres do, to the chagrin of one of the best fan bases in all of sports.
One wonders how the late, great, alliteration-loving newscaster Irv Weinstein would have reported this. “Sad-sack Sabres ignite Buffalo blaze: Coach Krueger caught in carnage. Gambling Granato can guide group back.”
OK, maybe that’s overdoing things, but it does appear that there’s a little black cloud over the Buffalo Sabres — losers of 13 straight games heading into the weekend.
- Leafs fans, if you haven’t gotten over Kerry Fraser’s missed high stick by Wayne Gretzky on Doug Gilmour in 1993, just go into the Anchor Bar and say, “Brett Hull’s foot was in the crease.” Then watch the tears flow over a plate of wings as they reminisce about the 1999 Stanley Cup final.
- The last-place Sabres lost the NHL draft lottery in 2014 (when Aaron Ekblad went No. 1) and 2015 (Connor McDavid) after tanking so blatantly as a means to rebuild under owners Terry and Kim Pegula that the league had to change the rules.
- And last year, they missed the pandemic-expanded playoffs by one point. They were one point behind the Canadiens and due to play Montreal the evening the season was paused in March. One more win and maybe Buffalo’s young stars would have had that first taste of what the playoffs are like. Conversely, perhaps Montreal would be going down a different path. Claude Julien might have been fired and replaced by Dominique Ducharme sooner. The free-agent signings and trades both teams made might have been different.
“Both teams were in very different situations,” says former Buffalo goalie Marty Biron, now a frequent analyst on Sabres and Canadiens games. “But what happened is, (making the playoffs) gave Montreal a very positive look into the future with the way Jesperi Kotkaniemi played, and the way Nick Suzuki played.
“It gave Montreal that perception that they were closer to a being playoff team than last season’s standings indicated.”
The Sabres, though, still went all-in with big off-season moves indicative of a team that believed it was ready to move forward — including signing Taylor Hall and Eric Staal, to name a couple of now trade-bait possibilities.
The Pegulas’ other big sports franchise, the NFL’s Bills, was perhaps a bigger tire fire — for even longer — but now looks like a real Super Bowl contender. Biron thinks the Pegulas can do as much for the Sabres as they did for the Bills.
“The Pegulas are trying,” Biron says. “They’re trying to find the winning recipe for the hockey team. They tried different coaches and they tried different management. They haven’t gotten there.”
Krueger, ex-GM Jason Botterill and ex-assistant GMs Randy Sexton and Steve Greeley are all being paid till 2022. So the Pegulas are not cheap.
The Sabres won the Rasmus Dahlin lottery in 2018, after another lost season in Buffalo — but not because of tanking. And the consolation prizes in 2015 (Eichel) and 2014 (Sam Reinhart) were pretty good.
“They got the right players in those drafts, at least to be able to build a winner,” says Biron. “It just hasn’t worked out. So that’s the big question mark hanging over the heads of everybody.”
Adams has his work cut out for him.
On paper, the core of young players looks strong, from Eichel to rookie Dylan Cozens. The goaltending could be better. But it’s hard to imagine the Sabres attracting high-end talent anymore, with the franchise in a state of perpetual turmoil.
“Let’s not overcomplicate this,” said Adams. “We want to be better, we have to be better and we will be better.”
Irv Weinstein couldn’t have said it better. News at 11.
2012 NHL draft revisited
With Alex Galchenyuk now a Leaf, let’s remember one of the more messed up drafts in NHL history. In 2012, it went:
1. Nail Yakupov to the Oilers
2. Ryan Murray to the Blue Jackets
3. Alex Galchenyuk to the Canadiens
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4. Griffin Reinhart to the Islanders
5. Morgan Rielly to the Maple Leafs
The Oilers were the biggest losers, basically getting nothing out of Yakupov, who’s in the KHL. And later they actually traded assets for Reinhart (the 16th and 33rd picks of the 2015 draft, with the Islanders turning them into Mathew Barzal at 16 and flipping 33 to land Anthony Beauvillier).
Reinhart never made it, perhaps done in by injuries. He was expansion draft fodder for the Golden Knights.
I covered that draft, and remember there being no clear-cut choice that year. Safe to say the best player of the top five went fifth. Brian Burke really did seem to take a chance on Rielly, who had been hurt most of his draft year. Burke said then that he’d have taken Rielly at No. 1. (They all say that, until they get to the point where they have to say: “I can’t believe he was still available.”)
But even Marc Bergevin would later say he wanted Rielly at No. 3. But because he was just starting out as Habs GM, he let his scouts run the draft and stayed silent as they took Galchenyuk. The Habs have done well since then: flipping Galchenyuk for Max Domi, then Domi for Josh Anderson (who went 95th in that draft).
Said Rielly: “You keep tabs on players that are your age when you’re in year one, two and three, maybe. But after that you just, you start focusing on yourself.”
If you’re going to redo the 2012 draft, then how’s this order?
1. Andrei Vasilevskiy (who went 19th)
2. Filip Forsberg (11th)
3. Rielly (fifth)
4. Tom Wilson (16th)
5. Anderson (95th)
Other notables with Leafs connections from that draft: Cody Ceci went 15th to Ottawa, Jimmy Vesey 66th to Nashville (though he never reported), Anaheim took Frederik Andersen 87th, the Leafs took Dominic Toninato 126th, Connor Carrick went 137th to Washington, Alex Kerfoot went 150th to the New Jersey, the Leafs took Connor Brown 156th.
Around hockey
Who needs coaches? The Rangers’ entire staff was sidelined under COVID-19 protocols on Wednesday — and they went out and beat the Flyers 9-0. You’d think players might have a little fun with that. Goalie Alexandar Georgiev called the experience “surreal.” But other than that, the Rangers were cliché-o-matics with “good team effort” being the prevailing thought of the post-game interviews. Oh well, showing personality has never been a hockey player’s strong suit. Anyway, minor-league coach Kris Knoblauch is a perfect 1-0 as the emergency fill-in.
- Radio gaga: I know this is supposed to be a hockey column, but let me rant for a second about what’s happening in sports radio. I find it absolutely appalling that Rogers isn’t doing play-by-play of the Blue Jays in spring training and will simulcast their TV broadcasts in the regular season. Hey, it’s a pandemic, but even the Raptors are doing play-by-play remotely from Toronto. Do something, rather than nothing. Can’t blame fans if they feel disconnected … Meanwhile, I wonder if Sauga960 a.m. is on to something. They’re broadcasting Bob McCown’s daily podcast Monday to Friday at 6. So essentially, McCown is back on radio, on his terms. And everyone’s got a podcast these days — well, not me, but everyone else. So broadcasters could have a wealth of ready-made material.
- Game-changer: An intriguing development in women’s hockey is Dani Rylan Kearney’s departure from the NWHL this week. She founded the league. That was deemed a betrayal by the movers and shakers of the now defunct CWHL, who had courted her as a potential expansion team owner. And it’s part of the reason why the women’s game has splintered at the professional level, with most of the CWHL alumni — largely American and Canadian national team players — refusing to take part in the NWHL, preferring to barnstorm as the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association. Rylan Kearney stepped aside as NWHL commissioner in October, and this week stepped down as president of W Hockey Partners, which owned four of the teams. With her out of the picture, here’s hoping for a reunion at the top of women’s professional hockey.
