Terry and Kim Pegula should feel very lucky they own the Buffalo Sabres and not the Florida Panthers because no matter how bad their team might be, they'll never see such a sparse crowd like was on hand last night in Sunrise, Florida. The Pegulas reside just a stone's throw away in Boca Raton and they were on hand last night as their Sabres took on the Panthers with empty seats all over the place at BB&T Center. Luckily for them, despite how bad Buffalo has been playing lately, and have played since they took over the team in 2011, the attendance is way beyond anything Florida has had.
Buffalo dropped a 4-2 decision to a Panthers team that has been in the bottom half of the conference for most of the season. It was the third loss in a row for the Sabres and third one against a team that was decidedly out of the playoff race.
What the Pegulas and Botterill witnessed in the first 20 minutes last night was about as awful a period of hockey as one will see to open the game. Their team attempted only nine shots--not shots on goal, but nine total shot attempts--in the first period. A seemingly disinterested fist powerplay unit was about as lackadaisical and apathetic as we've unfortunately seen on way too many occasions and it lead this blogger to question what goes through their minds at practice. Ownership saw their team on the receiving end of some hard hits by Florida to the point where Panthers analyst, and Hall of Fame defenseman Denis Potvin called out the Sabres saying, "[hard hits] keeps teams very uninterested, [we're] probably not going to get a lot of response from the Buffalo Sabres."
How the Pegulas didn't walk right out the door after the first period and tell Botterill to call them in the morning is amazing and was probably tied to the play of goalie Linus Ullmark who made a couple of stout saves to somehow keep the game scoreless.
Botterill must have been red-faced the entire 20 minutes as the team he's in the process of building, the same one that went on a 10-game winning streak earlier in the season, was a disaster unfolding right in front of his and his bosses eyes. He has a flawed team and he knows it, but what transpired in the first period last night had little to do with lack of talent and more to do with lack of heart and soul. They were generally lifeless save for a handful of players on the forward lines and as a team it looked as if they'd packed it in.
The second period was better and Buffalo took the lead on a Jack Eichel powerplay goal but as has been happening a lot lately, and throughout the post-streak demise, the Sabres fell apart in the third period. A Florida goal at 3:07 tied the score, :43 seconds later it was 2-1, just 1:52 later the Cats made it 3-1 on an egregiously soft goal let in by Ullmark. And wheels had officially come off for the Sabres. Florida would tack on another one and Vladimir Sobotka would score meaningless goal for the final 4-2 score.
Terry and Kim Pegula have a flawed team which might not be news to them. However, the brand of hockey we've seen on display these past three games while in the middle of a playoff push has smacks of a team resigned to a loser's fate. The Florida game makes it three in a row where the Sabres either had the lead or were within reach heading into the final frame but when the going got tough they fell apart.
In not placing the blame all on the players, the Pegulas also have a coaching staff that isn't getting the job done. It looks as if some of the players have already tuned their head coach out and for as much as ownership might like Botterill, he's not been able to, or didn't feel the need to, make a move to bolster this team the past two-plus months.
Those are the overt problems facing this team but perhaps the biggest flaw might be with the Pegulas themselves. Respect to them for all they've done in keeping the Sabres in Buffalo and revitalizing downtown, but their Sabres have generally been a train wreck ever since they took over in 2011. It may not have anything to do with them as owners as one would believe that they'd love to win and be respected, but how they've gone about trying to build a winning franchise in Buffalo might not be the best approach.
The question that should be posed to them is, Who's in charge of their team while they're some 1,300 miles away in Boca Raton, Florida?
Kim Pegula is the team president of the Sabres but she's miles away and there is no one watching over hockey operations on a day-to-day basis meaning there is no one between her and Botterill, which places a lot of weight on the shoulders of a GM who is in only his second season in that position. They asked Botterill to reconstruct their team in a complete 180 from the previous GM who also had never been a general manger before. We're going on four years with two green general managers who were trying to build both a team and a culture without a hockey mind to guide them. The overall record to date post-tank is 121-142-42 and their 284 points is tied for third-worst in the NHL during that span.
The Pegula's have tried switching coaches over the past three-plus years as well. Dan Bylsma got fired after compiling a 68-73-23 record and present bench boss Phil Housley is at 53-69-19 in nearly two years. Odds are that he'll have a worse record than Bylsma with arguably more talent and with each loss, Housley's days behind the bench seem to be that much more numbered.
Add it up and you have two rookie GM's hiring two coaches (one of them, Housley, a rookie head coach) with results that will be very similar and not even close to good enough. All the while you had two team presidents--a communications guy in Ted Black and a marketing maven in Russ Brandon--who knew little about hockey ops overseeing hockey operations. Ownership eventually moved on from them giving way to an owner in Kim Pegula who knows even less about hockey ops then they do.
The amount the Pegulas are paying, or have paid, Murray and Bylsma not to manage and not to coach plus the amount of money they have paid and continue to pay players not to play for them would have been more than enough to entice a great hockey mind to come in and watch over their baby.
Both Murray and Botterill had their ways to build a team and had/have their pluses and minuses, but they were left to do a job that was way beyond their pay-grade based upon their inexperience alone. They needed someone not so much to tell them what to do (in most circumstances,) but moreso to guide them as to what might be the best approach to what they wanted to do. They may have added a perspective to Murray's thought process about a quick rebuild that may have kept him from giving up too much all at once. Or they may have asked Botterill what he thought about giving his team a shot in the arm during the rough post-streak patch they were going through. Hopefully said VP would have been respected enough for their opinions to be truly valued and in the very least, they'd have been a buffer between GM and ownership, taking the blame if/when it went sour or passing on the praise had it gone well.
Perhaps most importantly a VP will be in town on a daily basis overseeing the hockey operations.
The Peguals have tried numerous approaches to ownership and for the last seven years it has gotten them no where with the Sabres. There's little difference between the team they saw last night and the one they saw back in 2011-12, their first full season as owners. It's their baby and their money and they obviously will do what they want. However they should have figured out by now that absentee ownership without strong supervision of day-to-day operations, specifically in the hockey department, is a recipe for disaster, no matter how many times they tank or how much ill-fated money they're convinced a problem needs.
Time's a wastin'. They can draft and/or sign all the talent they want and/or fire another coach and/or fire another GM but without a respected individual guiding their vision and keeping everyone on the same page, they're just spinning their wheels as an organization.
Just like their team lately.
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