@boosbuzzsabres
The Buffalo Sabres are headed to Sweden next season as a part of the NHL's 2019 Global Series according to the League. Buffalo will face off against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday, Nov 8 and Saturday, Nov. 9 at Ericsson Globe in Stockholm, Sweden. It makes for a very interesting connect-the-dots situation when it comes to their head coaching situation.
Phil Housley is still the head coach of the Buffalo Sabres and will likely be so until the end of the season. However, general manager Jason Botterill, along with possible input from owners Terry and Kim Pegula, will need to decide Housley's fate as this season turned south in December and there were no signs that Housley could, or even knew how to, pull this team out of the muck.
And it continued last night.
The Toronto Maple Leafs swept the season series with a 4-2 win last night, have now won five in a row against the Sabres and according to Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News, the Leafs have now won three in a row at Buffalo for the first time since 1972. Housley's team got run over last night and only Carter Hutton kept this from being a laugher on the scoreboard.
The Sabres are hitting marks that don't bode well for Housley's future in Buffalo. The Sabres were coming off of a solid win vs. the St. Louis Blues on Sunday and were looking to make it two in a row for the first time since Dec. 11-13. That in and of itself should tell you the struggles this team has been having and that stretch is also the reason that the Buffalo Sabres will be only the second team in NHL history to have a 10-game winning streak and miss the playoffs in the same season.
Should he be dismissed as head coach, and it seems to be heading in that direction, the lineup of head coaches available, at least right now, contains some heavyweights and Joel Quenneville heads the list. The three-time Stanley Cup winner with the Chicago Blackhawks is mulling his future and seems to want to get behind the bench again. Former Jack Adams winner Alain Vigneault is also available. He took two teams--the Vancouver Canucks and NY Rangers--to the Stanley Cup Finals and seems to be a hot commodity right now. There are others--from former NHL head coaches to former NHL assistants like Housley looking for their big break to college coaches looking for their first NHL coaching gig--in the mix so management, should they decide to move on from Housley, will have a cornucopia of coaches to chose from.
In addition to those North American candidates, there's an intriguing name that surfaced last summer as a possible connection with the Sabres. Buffalo was said to have shown intereest in Team Sweden head coach Rickard Grönborg, a well-respected name in the international hockey community. Swedish hockey journalists Alexander Nilsson tweeted this out last May, "Sabres interested in bringing in Sweden men's national team head coach Rickard Grönborg according to Sportbladedt Carolina also interested. Unknowon in which capacity. Grönborg has one more year on his contract with the Swedish Ice Hockey."
The "connect-the-dots" scenario is only that but there are many dots to connect in Buffalo. The Sabres have eight Swedish players under contract and have another five whom they drafted. Heading that list is 2018 first-overall pick, defenseman Rasmus Dahlin, who's game is a tribute to how hockey is played in Sweden and also embodies where the NHL is trending. In addition to Dahlin, there is full-time Sabres goalie Linus Ullmark and defenseman Lawrence Pilut who played 25 games for Buffalo this season. Winger Alexander Nylander is presently with the club while center Rasmus Asplund winger Victor Olofsson are in their first pro seasons with the organization. Veteran Johan Larsson and 2014 pick Jonas Johansson round out that group of eight.
All seven young Swedes could play prominent roles with the club in the immediate/near future while 2016 pick Philip Nyberg, 2017 draft picks Marcus Davidsson and Linus Weissbach along with 2018 picks Linus Lindstrom Cronholm and William Worge Krug are a part of the Sabres pipeline.
As the Sabres play out the string of another disappointing season where they could end up having the longest playoff drought in the NHL at seasons end, the news that the NHL picked the Sabres to play in Sweden adds a very interesting wrinkle into a possible coaching change.
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The last time the Sabres played overseas for a regular season game was in 2011 when they beat Anaheim 4-1 in Helsinki, Finland on October 7 and followed up with a 4-2 win over the Los Angeles Kings on October 8 in Berlin, Germany. Thomas Vanek (2,) Ville Leino and Jason Pominville scored for the Sabres against Anaheim while Luke Adam (2,) Paul Gaustad and Drew Stafford scored for Buffalo.
All are gone save for Pominville, who was named Buffalo's permanent captain for that season by head coach Lindy Ruff. The 2011-12 season, the Pegulas first full season as owners of the team, started out well enough but disintegrated after the Milan Lucic hit on Sabres goalie Ryan Miller. It took over two months for the Sabres to recover and despite a strong playoff push in February and March, Buffalo missed the playoffs and they haven't sniffed them since.
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A Sabres/Lightning matchup is very intriguing in that those two teams, who are far apart organizationally, on the ice and in the standings, seem to have grown to dislike each other over the past season. Buffalo defeated Tampa in the early stages of their 10-game winning streak and the Lightning returned the favor by ending the streak with a 5-4 win a couple weeks later.
Despite the talent discrepancy, the Sabre managed to play the Lightning tough, going 1-2-1 in the seaosn series with only one game decided by more than one goal and even in that one, the Sabres had a 3-2 lead in the third period before Tampa scored three unanswered.
A solid choice by the NHL and maybe the only thing better would be for the Sabres to have former Tampa GM Steve Yzerman on board in an executive capacity.
Just a thought.
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