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Sabres “State of the Union”: Reset, Redefine, Rebuild |
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By Micheal Pachla
The 17-year reign of long time GM Darcy Regier ended five months ago when owner Terry Pegula showed him the door. Very little of Regier's "vision" remains.
And that's a good thing.
"The core" is no more and a season of upheaval in Sabreland is beginning to settle. As their 21-46-9 record would indicate, this is not a very good team.
Since the trade of captain Jason Pominville at the 2013 deadline it was pretty obvious they were eschewing the present while planning for the future.
The future was now. But it came on a little too fast.
Reset
At the time of Regier's firing back in November, 2013 the team was filled with youngins caught up in a downward spiral. Although, Sabres fans were promised "suffering" by Regier, no one, not even he, expected it to be 4-15-1 bad. And it was getting to the point where the future of the Sabres was being damaged by continued exposure to losing.
Pegula brought in Sabres legend Pat LaFontaine to transition the team away from Regier and LaFontaine in turn brought in former Sabres head coach Ted Nolan captain the sinking ship.
What they proceeded to do was put the entire organization in reset mode.
"Reset" is a term that Kris Baker of sabresprospects.com used when describing the demotion of rookie Mikhail Grigorenko to junior.
It was too much, too soon for Grigorenko in Buffalo especially in a losing environment. He had to take a couple of steps back to move forward. It was an approach that LaFontaine and Nolan took with all the rookies.
Every young player was evaluated and sent to a level that best suited their talents and stage of development.
With one fell swoop, 18 yr. old defenseman Nikita Zadorov was sent to London, his junior team. Fellow 2013 first round pick, defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen, was sent to Rochester along with forward Johan Larsson. The aforementioned Grigorenko was also sent to Rochester, but league rules prevented it and, much to his dismay, he eventually ended up back in Quebec with his junior team.
Only two rookies--forward Zemgus Girgensons and defenseman Mark Pysyk--remained with the big club. Both players showed maturity beyond their age, had the skill to hang with the big boys, and have the intestinal fortitude to take the punishment of an historically bad Sabres club.
Eventually Pysyk would be sent back to Rochester just before the Olympic break not so much for his play, but to help stabilize and reset the Amerks. He has been dominating in a top-pairing/#1 d-man role for Rochester.
With the youngins in the lifeboat, LaFontaine and Nolan got to work on redefining what it means to be a Buffalo Sabre.
Redefine
If you could pick one word to describe the Sabres teams of the last 17 years under Regier it would be "vanilla."
It's a far cry from the most successful, most beloved Sabres teams.
The skill was there, although not the top-end skill of the French Connection or the LaFontaine/Alexander Mogilny era. But there was enough to make them a middling team.
What Regier's core lacked, was compete and intestinal fortitude.
From the moment Nolan got behind the bench, his goal was to up the compete level. He it a notch or three. At one point in time, before all his top-end talent was traded, Nolan had a group of players that could beat or compete with almost any team in the league.
It was a hallmark of his earlier stint with the Sabres back in the 90's and he coached a team that would be known as "the hardest working team in hockey."
With the youngins sent down to their respective leagues, what remained in Buffalo would need to be schooled in proper work ethic before anything else. And except for a handful of games, the Nolan-coached Sabres strapped on their work boots (save for a player or two.)
And "this summer," Nolan promised, "we're going to lay the groundwork, and get the players that are coming back here in the best shape of their lives. We're going to make training camp extremely tough. We want to make sure we have tough players."
The Sabres are not only looking at physical toughness, but the mental aspect as well. Said Nolan, "Your [physical] conditioning level can only take you so far. It's your mental toughness and who you are."
It's an approach that will further separate the chaff from the wheat and completely raze whatever was left of the Regier-era.
And that too is a good thing.
Rebuild
The Sabres have been in rebuild mode for two years, starting with the trade of Paul Gaustad in February, 2012. Derek Roy, another of Regier's core players, was traded a bit later in July.
Those were the first two "Rochester guys" to exit.
It's been a slow deconstruction since then taking two full years for Regier's vision to be dismantled.
But the return Regier received for four of his core players (Gaustad, Roy, Jason Pominville and Thomas Vanek) was impressive. Add in what Murray got for Ryan Miller and Matt Moulson (who came over in the Vanek deal,) and it's quite a haul of picks and prospects for the Sabres.
Looking at a four-year span that began in 2012 with two years under Regier and which will continue with the next two years under Murray, the Buffalo Sabres are set to have a total of 17 first and second round picks in the draft.
When all's said and done Buffalo may end up with nine first-rounders spanning that four year period, something that's unprecedented in Sabres history.
Those could be tremendous building blocks for the team moving forward as the team builds through the draft.
How Murray and Co. lay the foundation, the parameters of the rebuild and what type of players they will be rebuilding with was already set in motion two years ago when head scout/assistant general manager Kevin Devine touted "bigger, faster, tougher."
At the 2012 Draft, Devine indicated that the days of drafting smaller, highly skilled jitter-bugs, "the [Tyler] Ennis' and the [Derek] Roy's and [Nathan] Gerbe's," as he put it, will be put on hold until "the outlook of [the Sabres] changes a little bit."
Murray seemed to fit right in with that model when at the 2014 trade deadline he brought in three prospects all of which are around at least six feet tall and weigh in at nearly 200 lbs or more.
Some of the players Nolan is coaching now will be a part of the future as well and they fit into that bigger, tougher mode. "We have guys like Ristolainen (6'3", 201), who just turned 20 yrs. old," he said. "We have Girgensons (6'2", 195) who's a baby himself and Marcus Foligno (6'3", 226) who's not that much older. We have some really young players here."
And they have some vets who could be a part of that as well. The resurgent Drew Stafford comes to mind as does the aforementioned "jitterbug" Ennis who leads the team in scoring.
"The thing we want to do this summer," said Nolan, "is change the attitude, change the culture."
And that starts at the top.
Lost in Pegula's first presser as owner was the type of players he said he wanted on his team, "I want not only statistically good players," he said, "but winners, gritty players."
It's a throwback to his introduction to the game of hockey.
In a Bucky Gleason article from the November 30, 2010 Buffalo News he mentioned that Pegula in the mid-70's was torn between the Broadstreet Bullies and the French Connection (click here for access to a link.) "It was the Philadelphia Flyers' style of play that got me into it," Pegula said after presenting Penn State with the largest private gift in the university's history. "Then I moved to Western New York, and I became more or less a Buffalo Sabres fan. ... The Flyers and Sabres played for the Stanley Cup, and it was difficult. I liked both teams."
The Buffalo Sabres team Pegula bought looked nothing like either of those two teams. He spent a ton of money and wasted a couple of seasons giving Regier every opportunity to make it happen.
It was a disaster and it's taking a full-blown deconstruction and rebuild to eradicate "the core" from the organization.
Which is a good thing moving forward
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