@boosbuzzsabres
Can the Buffalo Sabres rifle through three head coaches in less than four seasons?
Sure. Why not? If it isn't working, it isn't working.
Clearly it's not working for present coach Phil Housley and it looks like he might be the third coach owners Terry and Kim Pegula have gone through since the 2015 off-season. Ted Nolan was hired in November, 2013 by former Hockey Ops President Pat LaFontaine who also hired GM Tim Murray a couple months later. After Buffalo's tank seasons of 2013-15, Nolan was canned on April 12, 2015 and Murray replaced him with a Stanley Cup winning coach in Dan Bylsma after the team missed out on landing Mike Babcock. Bylsma had a solid first season but lost the room half-way through his second season and was fired, along with Murray on April 20, 2017.
The Sabres brought in Jason Botterill, who was a rookie GM, to replace Murray and he in turn hired a rookie head coach in Phil Housley. Buffalo's fortunes took a dramatic tumble as they went from 78 points in Bylsma's last season to 62 points and a last place finish in 2017-18 despite having two players who were results of their tank seasons--second-overall picks Sam Reinhart (2014) and Jack Eichel (2015.) The Sabres added to that haul with 2018 first-overall pick Rasmus Dahlin and after a promising first two months of this season, it looks as if they'll finish only marginally better than last year.
Regardless of what people know and/or think of Housley as a head coach, the numbers are quite clear and don't reflect favorably on him. On November 27, 2018 the surprising Sabres were 17-6-2 and at the top of the league but today their record stands at 30-31-9. Within that 13-25-7 record and consequent fall is a stretch of 38 games where they failed to win back-to-back games and also includes recent futility of a season-high six-game losing streak with the last three by shutout. Their present goal-drought of over 197 minutes surpassed a franchise-record 195 minute drought last season set under Housley, whose overall record in Buffalo is 55-76-21.
Those are just the abject numbers. Underneath it all are listless performances by any number of players on any given night in any given period of the game. They've been sliding since mid-December and they've packed it in, some earlier than others and some to a lesser degree, but there's not much worth playing for and it shows on the ice. Last night after a particularly pathetic 5-0 loss at home against the Pittsburgh Penguins, veteran forward Jason Pominville brought up playing for 'pride' which is about all that's left on the season but even his words rang hollow.
It's a pretty sad state of affairs right now and can anyone in their right mind believe that Housley will work some unforseen magic where over the next 12 games , and into the summer, his Sabres will transform into a team that's respected?
This team has crumbled at the first sight of adversity from December onward and whether you believe a team is a reflection of it's coach or not, this is the Buffalo Sabres under Housley. There are some very good players here and some solid role players to augment that group but they don't look like a team, nor do they play like one. Although there's not enough talent to dub the Sabres as a playoff-caliber, they've got enough talent to win two games in a row and play at least .500-point hockey. Why were they not able to do so?
It may not matter at this point.
Reports from the rink as well as in and around the locker room say that Housley's practices are fine and that the players know what to do but when it comes to the game they lose direction and deviate from their game. Reporters have also said that practices were generally been up-tempo and that despite his calm public demeanor, Housley can be pretty fiery behind closed doors. That's great, and makes for a good defense of the coach while putting the onus mostly on the players, but it's not working and if it's not working there's an old adage--it's easier to fire the coach than it is to fire 20 players.
From this blogger's perspective, it wasn't the greatest of moves having a rookie GM hire a rookie head coach to begin with and we can blame Housley for not surrounding himself with the proper assistant coaches, which included hiring rookie coach in Chris Hajt to be on the bench last season. We can blame the GM's for the present roster construction and the owners for continuing on the delusionary path of not hiring a hockey guy to run their hockey operations. However, neither the owners, present GM or core of players is going anywhere which leaves us with the coach.
As of right now it looks like Housley has lost his team and regardless of who's at fault, he's not getting the team back. The situation is deteriorating faster with each passing game and it doesn't look as if it's going to change. You can blame whomever you'd like but this is the present situation and rather than play out the string where players may hate coming to the rink and fans hate performances like the ones witnessed lately, it's best to cut bait and fire Housley now if that's their intention. Which it should be.
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