Did the Sabres fire the wrong man? (2-24-13)

When the Sabres dropped the axe Wednesday on long-time head coach Lindy Ruff I felt like it was a terrible but necessary thing. The team has been so flat of late and it seemed like the players tuned out the longtime coach. I heard so many people talk about how sometimes you just have to make a change for the sake of change. Sometimes you just need a new voice in the room. He had been here nearly 16 years and the team hadn’t made the playoffs 6 of the last 10 seasons with this one looking pretty questionable. On top of that I had never heard the fans more restless than they were in Lindy’s last game as coach, that stinker against Winnipeg. The sad truth is that the team was lifeless and times like that the coach is usually the first one to go. It’s the nature of the business: lack of talent usually gets blamed on the general manager, lack of effort always falls on the coach. The Sabres seem to think they have a talented, albeit young group of players, so perhaps it was time. All the reasons made enough sense but something in the back of my mind bothered me.

 

Now let’s look at the facts: Lindy Ruff is the 12^th all time winningest coach in NHL history. He’s the only coach in Sabres history to have back to back 50-win seasons. He’s so well respected that Lindy was selected to be one of the coaches for Team Canada several times and did pick up a gold medal for his troubles at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The facts are that he is one of the most respected coaches in the league and by all reports he’s going to be able to pick and choose his next job because he will be heavily in demand. I hear he’s already rumored to be on the short-list if the Rangers reach their breaking point soon with John Tortorella. At his exit press conference he expressed his desire to continue coaching so it’s a near certainty he’ll have a new NHL head coaching job before the start of next season if he wants one.

He’s coached the Sabres when all they had was a Hall of Fame goalie and nearly won the cup. He coached the team after the first lockout when their strength was a bunch of quick, skilled offensive players and came within an eyelash and flukish luck (having half of his defensive corps injured in the eastern conference finals) of taking the team to the cup finals again. Lately as the league has changed and gotten slower and more physical, the Sabres personnel looks somewhat similar to the team crafted after the last lockout, except without nearly as much talent. Lindy tried to get these guys to play responsible 2-way hockey as he should but the current Sabres are not going to win many back and forth shootout style games and as we’ve learned, they’re not going to win many low scoring, mistake-free battles either. This team has too many flaws from lacking mental toughness to lacking size to outright lacking talent. Now all this falls on the architect of team, general manager Darcy Regier. 

Mr. Regier has put this boring, lifeless, mistake prone bunch together and back when the Sabres didn’t make the playoffs in recent years excuses were made for Darcy. Whether it was the money woes of the bankrupt Sabres in the early 2000’s or the supposed financial limitations of the Tom Golisano years, there’s always been a reason why Darcy has been spared from some of the blame he so richly deserves. Yes he made great deals to get Chris Drury and Daniel Briere here and maybe this Cody Hodgson trade may turn out to be another winner but for every good trade Darcy’s made there’s at least 2 bad ones and one bad free agent signing to go with it. That’s not good enough to be an NHL general manager for 16 years with the same team.

If you look at the standings right now the Sabres are 1 point shy of being the worst team in the NHL. Instead of making a badly needed trade to shake up the roster, the Sabres made a bigger move, removing the most respected hockey person in the organization. Rumors abound that Buffalo has been on the phones for several days looking to deal but Darcy Regier says the trade market is “soft” right now. To me that sounds like another excuse. I don’t know about you but I’m tired of the excuses. Money is not a factor, neither is a so called soft market. When you have to make a trade from a position of weakness like the Sabres are in, you sometimes have to give up a little more in a deal but in the long run it might be worth it. At this point doing anything might be better than going down with a sinking ship. Instead of talking about a soft market, I’d rather the team take a hard look at removing the excuses, starting with Regier. In a manner of days someone is going to break through the so called “soft” market and make a huge deal… someone always does and when they do, they’ll set the market for the rest to follow. From the sounds of it, it won’t be the Sabres who under Regier are always slow to make any. Especially the move they need to make most of all.