Reprinted with permission from hockeybuzz.com
There's a cynicism that permeates the Buffalo sports landscape and at times it can grow to the point where it will swallow us fans whole. But there are other times, usually in a window of change, where pessimism abates and hope springs eternal. Those are times usually defined with the term "cautious optimism." The NFL and NHL Drafts are annual events that bring hope to non-playoff teams like the Buffalo Bills have been for the past 15 years and the Buffalo Sabres for the last four seasons. Front office changes can also help deter cynicism for a little while as do ownership changes, of which both the Bills and the Sabres have gone through. The Pegula's, Terry and Kim, bought both of the Buffalo franchises within four years.
Cynicism is woven into the fabric of our Buffalo sports being and until a championship is won, it will maintain it's place in our psyche, the extent of which is personal yet is revealed on a daily basis when reading the comment sections at various websites.
After taking in the hiring of Dan Bylsma as the 17th head coach of the Buffalo Sabres, I had plenty of fuel for the negative side of a debate. Two days prior I'd tapped into the sentiment of Pittsburgh Penguins blogger Ryan Wilson and weighed in on Bylsma's coaching shortcomings as laid out by Wilson and those who've followed the Penguins. Those philosophies were to included defensive-zone exits and offensive-zone entries as well as his failure to adapt. Teams were on to what Bylsma wanted to do and how to defend it. A solid case was that of the Columbus Blue Jackets who bottled Bylsma's 2014 playoff team to the point where the Pens were almost upset in the first-round. He was fired by Pittsburgh that June.
On the other side of the spectrum is the positivity that many pundits had towards Bylsma's hiring. Out came the various stats, from Bylsma achieving a record for fastest coach to win 200 games, to his .629 win percentage with Pittsburgh, to his win percentage without all-world Sidney Crosby and/or superstar Evgeni Malkin. The statistical euphoria that experts espoused were heightened by the fact that he won a Stanley Cup. Stats are great and can be argued ad infinitum, but Homie ain't gonna play that in this piece.
In saying all of this, Sabres fans should be thrilled with what was laid out yesterday in the Dan Bylsma press conference.
Contrary to beliefs that ran rampant in chat rooms and on twitter, the Buffalo Sabres are in it for the long haul and despite GM Tim Murray mentioning speeding up the process via trades that might be to his liking, this looks to be a longer, more calculated process than signing some free agents, trading the moon and the stars for a 24 yr. old forward or offer-sheeting a desired young player. When asked what the time-frame was for a "highly competitive roster" Bylsma responded, "I don't think there's a time frame where you put on certain aspects of success or where this team is going to be. Right now in our process of development as a team we're looking to get better every day."
That "looking to get better every day" aspect is something that Murray has espoused even while the team was plummeting to the bottom of the standings last season. He feels that the team is better than it was before. "We improved today by hiring [Bylsma,]" said Murray at the presser, "so this is a part of the process of getting better."
Coaching record and statistics aside, here's how Murray thinks his young team is better today with Bylsma as their head coach. "Obviously we're going to be a young team and we need somebody who knows how to teach, knows how to communicate. It's not just telling somebody what to do it's why they have to do that. There aren't a lot of coaches that can do that. Dan is one of them that can. It's a teaching process."
In his first appearance as Buffalo Sabres head coach on WGR550's Mike Schopp and the Bulldog Show, Bylsma talked about where the team is right now in the process and his role in the grand scheme of things. "In talking with the Pegula's and Murray, the mission is to put together a winning team, put together a winning culture and [build] a perennial winner in Buffalo," he told WGR's Chris "Bulldog" Parker. "At the development process, we're not there, not [even] a long ways down that road, but the desire, the passion and the willingness to do that is. That was evident in talking to the Pegula's and [with] the vision that Tim Murray had.
"[It] really was maybe the biggest enlightenment in talking over the past few days as to where we think we're at, where we think this can go and how we're gonna do that. It's all with a winning culture in mind and winning in Buffalo"
Bylsma addressed the "how" part of the equation somewhat a little bit later in the interview. "In speaking with [Murray] and the Pegulas, clearly we want to win hockey games immediately, but not at the cost of making a rash decision or a free agent signing that may possibly win a hockey game today but might not set us up to be a good team in the long-run. It's not so much about winning Game-1 of the regular season as it is building a winning hockey team, of building a perennial winning hockey team."
It's lock-step with what Murray has been saying since he took over as GM back in January, 2014 and lock-step with what the organization had been saying since the failure of the Darcy Regier free agent splurge in 2011.
"Some of the players coming to this team," continued Bylsma on WGR, "yes, they may be a little young. Yes, this may be a young group, but the development of that process into being a good team I don't think is going to come via a free agent signing. One that's going to come in here and dazzle the team and dazzle the city. We're going to develop players and develop people and we're going to develop this team.
"That vision is shared by Tim and one I get excited about building."
Talk like that leads me to believe that there may not be a "big splash" this off season. The Sabres have tore down everything and kept what pieces they deemed necessary to build with. And in Bylsma's view, he has some pretty good pieces to work with. “When you look at the pieces that are here, you see good players, Evander Kane is an excellent player, Tyler Ennis is an excellent player," he said at the presser.
“The pieces (on the blueline,) while they’re good, they’re young they’re developing defensemen, but they’re good players. The other players that are coming to the Sabres, Sam Reinhart, they’re going to be very, very good young players, but they are developing, but they’re surrounded with good people, they’re surrounded with Josh Gorges, their surrounded with Brian Gionta who I think are exceptional leaders.
“It’s going to be a development process, it’s not going to happen overnight, but it’s a group that has a good number of pieces and can become a better team,” Bylsma said.
This whole process should give Sabres fans a different perspective on the hiring of Bylsma as the head coach of the Buffalo Sabres. The here and now is not how quickly GM Murray wants to have a playoff team and what he might go after in order to achieve that. Nor is it what statistical framework we can use while judging the first year under Bylsma. The focus as of today is where it should be, the continued development of individual players and how they'll come together as a team in the future as well as the culture they'll be reared in.
"[Right now] it's communication, it's teaching," said Murray when talking about he 44 yr. old Bylsma. "It's understanding young people. Understanding what they're going through.
"To me he's a winner, he knows what it takes to get there. He's been through it. Stanley Cup Final as a player, winning a Stanley Cup as a coach. He knows what it takes to get there and how to perform when you are there. So there are a lot of lessons he can give to young players. That's part of the culture."
The cynic in me would say that it's all window dressing after missing out on the coach they really wanted, but I can't go there this time. There was no blather, no grand exultations, no talk of systems or of X's and O's, just talk of developing this group of youngins.
Sabres fans have gone through plenty over the course of the last three years and in looking at how things have transpired since Murray took over, I've found no sound reason to venture over to the dark side. Although one might hate some of the moves he's made, or may be battling an inferiority complex because of the draft lottery or having Mike Babcock go to a hated rival, the Sabres really are in a pretty good situation right now.
And it's putting me in a pretty good spot mentally.
Bylsma Press Conference (via WGR. thanks)
Schopp and the Bulldog Segment (Thx again, GR)
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