Far be it for me to equate sports with a life-threatening pandemic that's sweeping the globe, but when looking at the Buffalo Sabres and how the Trump administration responded to the Covid-19 pandemic, and especially with whom in their respective roles as department leaders, there are some parallels.
Prior to the NHL suspending the 2019-20 season, the Buffalo Sabres were on their way to an NHL-long ninth consecutive season outside of the playoffs. Since Terry Pegula bought the team in 2011 they've gone through a short-lived President of Hockey Operations, are on their third team president, third general manager and sixth head coach. The overall choppy results, at best, since he took over are representative of an organization that has neither found the right people nor found the right philosophy to guide the franchise out of this mess.
The Pegula's have been making bad hires left and right with this club, as evidenced by them churning through coaches and management for the past nine years, yet they refuse to bring in an experienced hockey mind to help structure their hockey organization. The only hire they made in that respect was NHL Hockey Hall of Fame player and former Sabres great Pat LaFontaine back in November, 2013, which lasted all of three-and-a-half months as he resigned on March 1, 2014.
LaFontaine's very brief tenure was under team president Ted Black, who was part of Pegula's upper-management team when he bought the Sabres. Black was president until July, 2015 when he was ousted and replaced by Buffalo Bills team president Russ Brandon, who'd been a big part of the Bills upper-management for most of their 17 yr. playoff drought to begin the new century. Less than a year later Brandon resigned from Pegula Sports and Entertainment, the umbrella company, and Terry Pegula's wife, Kim, took over the presidency of both sports teams.
The general managers for both the Sabres and Bills report directly to Kim Pegula.
When it comes to the parallel, the administration of Donald Trump has had far more success handling the economy than the Pegula's have had handling the Sabres. However, when crisis hit, like the coronavirus pandemic that began in China late last year, Trump appointees have left us wanting during this crisis.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has always valued loyalty over anything else and anyone perceived as disloyal was ousted creating a huge turnover (78% turnover rate according a Brookings Institute study.) After three years, those heading key United States departments know how to keep their jobs and tread lightly in the White House while doing their best to not upset the president, especially when it comes to delivering bad news. It went swimmingly up until this pandemic hit and there was no hiding from it. While Trump was being himself blowing off science and minimizing the danger despite scientific evidence to the contrary (some are saying because it could hurt his re-election,) a storm was brewing, something he didn't fully acknowledge until the stock market slid into correction-territory before plunging into a bear market in the shortest time in it's history.
It was inevitable that the coronavirus was set to hit the U.S. hard and Trump picked his Vice President, Mike Pence, to lead the coronavirus response. Which made sense. Pence is Trump's most loyal advocate and despite flubbing a response to a crisis when he was governor of Indiana during an HIV outbreak, the VP was in charge.
The two main government agencies most directly related epidemics and pandemics are the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC,) both of whom are presidential appointees.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar has long-standing connections with many in and around the Republican party dating back to the '90s. Azar clerked for Ronald Reagan Supreme Court appointee, Antonin Scalia. He's also said to be good friends with controversial Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both of whom worked on the Whitewater Scandal, and Azar also worked as a lawyer on the 2000 Bush v. Gore Florida recount. Politico's Dan Diamond, in an interview with NPR's Fresh Air, called Azar, "the Forrest Gump of Republican politics, where if you were making a clip reel of the past 25 years, Azar would pop up in so many memorable moments."
To be fair, Azar also has a background in responding to the 2001 Anthrax attacks, was involved in vaccines for small pox as well as the SARS outbreaks. Of note, Azar went from top lobbyist for Eli Lilly and Company in 2007 to president of Lilly USA, the largest division of Eli Lilly. He left in 2017.
Under Azar is CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield.
Redfield "emerged in the 1980's and 1990's during the AIDS epidemic," according to Diamond. His approach to fighting AIDS was from a scientific standpoint but he also had somewhat of a wart in that he said the best way to avoid AIDS was abstention from sex (which is logical yet socially unrealistic) and wrote the introduction to a book published some 30 years ago called "Christians In the Age of AIDS," which some take issue with. According to Diamond, however, the big knock on Redfield stems from his "lack of high-end management experience," according to Diamond, as his professional history is more on clinical research and directorship at the university level. The CDC was responsible for test kits and testing, which has lagged to the point of being a total failure on their part.
Regardless of who's in office, politics typically plays a key role in who gets hired for high-end positions and all of them serve at the president's behest.
Trump sits atop the trio of Pence, Azar and Redfield and they've all gotten a lot of flak for the United States' response to the coronavirus beginning with the president. The trio under him continue to struggle as they walk a fine line between giving accurate information to the public while making sure they don't do anything to hurt the president, an approach which leans heavily on highlighting any positives Trump may have provided.
But the "star" of the U.S. response to this pandemic so far has been Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID.)
Fauci seems to have taken the lead as he's been able to either answer, or somewhat address, tough questions thrown his way and he hasn't been afraid to use the word fail when it comes to specific incidents concerning the administration's response to this. "The system is not really geared to what we need right now," said Fauci at a House hearing yesterday, "That is a failing. Let's admit it."
Using verbiage like that might seem blasphemous in the White House, but straight-shooting like that is music to a troubled public's ears.
Fauci is a career scientist dating back to 1968 when he joined the National Institutes of Health (HIH) as a clinical associate. He's been director of NIAID since 1984 having done extensive work with HIV, AIDS and was involved in biodefense after the 911 attacks. As someone who might know a thing or two about epidemics and pandemics, Fauci has been making scientifically-backed statements based upon his many years of experience in the field which includes him saying that the Covid-19 outbreak will likely to get much worse before it gets better and he continues to debunk the theory that a vaccine will be ready soon (he states that it will be at least a year.)
So how does this pandemic relate to the Buffalo Sabres? It's really pretty simple. Terry Pegula and the Buffalo Sabres need a Dr. Fauci-type.
Terry has his Mike Pence in his wife, Kim. Is she qualified to run a professional hockey team? By the looks of it, no, and her best bet is to surround herself with people much smarter than her. General manger Jason Botterill is a smart guy. He paid his dues in Pittsburgh where he was part of a very successful Penguins organization but the difference between being a part of a successful organization as opposed to running one is huge and what makes things even more difficult are the stages at which he came in.
Pittsburgh had it's organization in place and was already running when he joined in July, 2007. They made the Stanley Cup Finals in 2008 and won the whole thing in 2009. From there it was a matter of surrounding their core group with quality players who could play the system they wanted. By the time Botterill left the Penguins to take on the Sabres job in 2017, Pittsburgh was on the brink of winning the second of back-to-back Stanley Cups.
Buffalo was a shit-show compared to what he had in Pittsburgh and it's becoming clear that Botterill is in over his head. His first major decision was hiring a head coach and having a rookie behind the bench in Phil Housley turned into a disaster. Botterill was also in charge of trading away two core players who cost a ton in assets to acquire. Evander Kane fell out of favor with ownership because of his off-ice antics and was traded to the San Jose Sharks while the losing under Housley caused Ryan O'Reilly to "lose his love for the game." Both have been successful with their new teams with O'Reilly winning the Stanley Cup, the Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP) and the Selke Trophy (best defensive forward) last season with the St. Louis Blues.
O'Reilly's immediate success in St. Louis after being traded away by Buffalo was a huge black eye for the organization and their struggles after two years of tanking continue to haunt this franchise.
During the past two seasons of struggles, Botterill was left to his own devices, really hung out to dry, without anyone above him taking the heat for what transpired. With Kim Pegula busy being team president for the Bills and Sabres (and saying she's having "fun" in those roles) while also being atop PSE, Botterill was left to face the heat in Sabreland as the fans and media wanted answers as to why this team had sucked the life out of them.
Although the organization brought in a calming influence when they hired Ralph Krueger as their head coach last off season, the on-ice struggles his team has had since starting out hot has contributed to fan apathy and disgust. Most will tell you that Krueger is a positive influence and that they really like him, players included, but positivity in the face of this losing treadmill is of little solace to Sabreland.
Some are ready for a change behind the bench while kicking Krueger up to a role between Kim and Botterill, but there's no real basis for him to be in a position like that. Krueger would make a great motivator/philosophical counselor but his NHL resume leaves much to be desired in that role. Although it's not to say he wouldn't succeed as president or VP of hockey ops the optics of the promotion, if we can use a presidential political appointee parallel, might come off as ownership leaning more towards having a yes-man in charge rather than someone who has years of experience and competence running that department.
There probably is a Dr. Fauci-type executive out there who could take the lead and help this franchise through what's turned into somewhat of a crisis. The Sabres will be outside the playoffs again for the ninth consecutive year, attendance is down and morale in Sabreland is pretty low. And while all of this is going on the prize of their tank years, Jack Eichel, is another year older and another year closer to either free agency or, God forbid, wanting out of Buffalo. Botterill doesn't seem to have quite enough to be able to handle a crisis like this and Krueger, although a damn good "good-cop" is untested in a upper-level executive role at the NHL-level leaving a huge canyon between GM and ownership/team president. That canyon remains as ownership seems to believe everything is fine with their model.
And that's what it all comes down to: this is Pegula's team and he'll run it the way he wants to, even if it means inadvertently running it into the ground because of hubris and incompetence.
NPR interview with Dan Diamond:
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/12/814881355/white-house-knew-coronavirus-would-be-a-major-threat-but-response-fell-short
Fauci via NBC news:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/it-failing-let-s-admit-it-fauci-says-coronavirus-testing-n1157036
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