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Ownership, not Eichel, is to blame for Sabres' housecleaning |
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The wrecking ball came out in Buffalo Thursday morning, demolishing the Sabres’ coaching and management team, and leaving now-former GM Tim Murray and ex-head-coach Dan Bylsma on the unemployment line. But although some accuse star centre Jack Eichel of riding the demolition weapon a la Miley Cyrus as it swung down into the offices of the two veteran hockey men, the reality is Eichel shouldn’t bear any blame for the professional demise of Murray and Bylsma in Western New York. Eichel is merely a 20-year-old elite athlete with a burning desire to win, and if he weren’t absolutely revolted by the manner in which his first two NHL seasons have played out since Buffalo drafted him second overall in 2015, the Sabres’ future would be notably bleaker than it is at present. You should want to see a roaring competitive fire from a franchise cornerstone.
No, the blame for the current state of the organization lies with the people at the top – owners Terry and Kim Pegula – and nowhere else. The husband-and-wife team certainly deserve kudos for their investment in the city and its sports teams, but in six seasons paying the bills and hiring the key organization-builders, they’ve failed to construct a hockey club worthy of praise or celebration, and thus deserve the hisses and raspberries that always accompany defeat.
And it isn’t just defeat that makes the Sabres’ present-day predicament so frustrating. It’s the sense that a plan the team’s fans knew would involve significant growing pains is still leading it in nowhere but a lateral direction. Major trades have gone down, expensive free agents were signed, multiple organizational shuffles have been made, but none of them have brought the Sabres even a single playoff game since the Pegulas purchased the franchise in 2011.
That is what curdles the blood of long-suffering Buffalo supporters. If sports truly is about selling hope to consumers, it’s also true that hope is merely an appetizer, and the main course has to be progress. Little is more frustrating to season ticket-holders than watching a group that’s running to stand still. But that’s precisely what the Sabres have been doing.
They’ve acquired big-name talents including Ryan O’Reilly and Evander Kane on the trade market, and while both those players likely would be solid contributors on any playoff team, neither has performed in a manner commensurate with their salary cap hit. And their ventures into the free agent pool have also delivered less-than-optimal yields: solid veterans such as Brian Gionta and Matt Moulson are positive locker-room influences, but both are closer to the end of their NHL days than the beginning; Kyle Okposo was an above-average contributor in his first season as a Sabre this year, but there’s been a virtually whirring revolving door of signees who didn’t pan out as planned and moved on nearly as quickly as they arrived.
But perhaps the greatest issue with the Sabres is their lack of a steady pipeline of young players able to step in and make a difference at the NHL level in the past six years. This isn’t to suggest there aren’t youngsters who can and should be part of the future in Buffalo; Eichel, Sam Reinhart, defensemen Rasmus Ristolainen and Jake McCabe, and prospects such as Alex Nylander and Hudson Fasching all have the potential to be in the lineup when the team turns the corner and becomes a bona fide Stanley Cup contender. The problem is there haven’t been enough of them in previous years, and the development of the new crop will take a while yet to be fully realized. If you’d told Sabres fans in 2011 they were six years away from being a few more years away, they’d have been outraged back then, too.
Nobody’s saying the Pegulas were making trades and draft decisions. But they were responsible for hiring and/or keeping in place people who made them, and those people didn’t deliver. After more than a half-decade, that’s on the owners just as much as their front-office representatives.
The Pegulas hardly are the first staggeringly wealthy people with a publicly-stated, honest desire to win in hockey’s toughest league, but who err in the choices they make. They won’t be the last. But the notion Eichel is somehow responsible for Bylsma and Murray’s ouster gives far too much credit to the young star’s off-ice skills, and not nearly enough blame to the two people who ultimately control what happens under the Sabres’ umbrella.
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