By Budd Bailey
Today marks the start of the hockey season, at least around here, as the Buffalo Sabres open training camp for the 2024-25 season. Hope is supposed spring eternal at such times. You know that everyone starts 0-0 (or in hockey’s case, 0-0-0), that the past doesn’t matter right now, etc. etc. etc.
Since the last time the Sabres played a game for real, I encountered a couple of moments that showed what the team is up against – and it’s a lot. They are worth discussing on this particular day.
Back in the late spring, Stu Boyar, formerly of Channel 2, and I turned up for a speaking engagement at the Amherst Senior Center. We do a handful of these per year, taking questions for about 90 minutes on any and every aspect of the sports scene. The fun part is that we never know what’s coming, so every program is different.
In this case, the crowd came in a slightly angry mood. The first 25 minutes or so were devoted to a discussion of the Sabres, and those fans were fed up. They knew that the team hadn’t qualified for the playoffs since 2011, an NHL record that no doubt won’t be broken for quite a while – maybe ever, if the current system is expanded. And they were angry about it. What’s the problem? What will it take to reach the postseason? Can Terry Pegula ever win a title? Is old/new coach Lindy Ruff the answer?
There were people who clearly cared about the team, and some of them no doubt had spent their money on tickets in those 13 seasons that ended with a zero in the category of “playoff games.” They were anxious to hear some opinions and answers. It was a very interesting discussion.
Then later on in the summer, I picked up a book by Ken Dryden on his high school class in suburban Toronto and what had happened to everyone since then. It was an interesting way to see the changes that have taken place in society since the mid-1960s, and it was as usual delivered nicely by Dryden, the most literate of hockey players.
In this particular case, Dryden took a look back at his own life while examining the lives of his classmates. More to the point, he spent some time reviewing his days as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. That franchise famously won its last Stanley Cup in 1967. Since then the Leafs have been good a few times (late 1970s and parts of the 1990s), OK in others, and poor much more often. Dryden wrote about former owner Harold Ballard, who didn’t seem to mind losing as long as the fans were still buying tickets. “He laughed in their faces, he mocked them. Win or lose, he said, I still go to the bank,” Dryden wrote.
Then the Hall of Fame goaltender wrote this paragraph:
“The relationship between a team and its fans is like that between spouses. You have to give as much as you’ve given or it doesn’t work. If the fans don’t show up, the team doesn’t need to give much. But if the fans give and give and give, their money, their time, their belief, their hope, their love, the team has to give back in kind. The Leafs fans were givers. The Leafs teams were takers. Year after year, and because things didn’t get better, they seemed to get worse. The fans didn’t believe that the team wanted to win as much as they, the fans, did. So they loved the team, and they hated it.”
That’s strong language. But what if we do a search-and-replace on that paragraph, putting “Sabres” in and taking “Leafs” out. Isn’t that about where we are today?
The Sabres averaged almost 16,000 per game last season. That was 28th in the league, but it’s still about 83 percent of capacity. So five of every six seats were filled to watch a team that hasn’t been in the playoffs since 2011. That’s a great display of loyalty. Someone still cares.
I’ve written before in this space about how The Tank - in an attempt to throw away a season in order to draft Connor McDavid in 2015 - left a stain that has been unable to be washed away in almost a decade. All of the losses have added a level of desperation to the franchise’s actions since then. The latest probably came this past spring when Don Granato was let go as coach. The Sabres took a small step back in 2023-24, dropping from 91 to 84 points but still out of the playoffs – with some significant injuries (Tage Thompson) along the way. Maybe Granato still would be coaching under different circumstances.
The response was to bring back Lindy Ruff as the head coach. Maybe Pegula did think he owed Ruff something after Lindy’s clumsy dismissal in the fall of 2012. But on the other hand, Ruff is associated with happier times for the Sabres, including the long playoff runs in 1998-99 and 2006-07. He provides a change of subject for those fans who were angry about the course of the team, and that can’t be a bad idea these days.
The NHL does seem to recycle its coaches more than other sports, and it has an occasional history of bringing familiar faces back. In Buffalo, Ted Nolan got a second chance. The same went for Paul Maurice in Carolina. Jacques Lemaire came out of retirement for a while to return to New Jersey. Michel Therrian and Claude Julien had second acts in Montreal, with Julien taking over for Therrian both times. Ken Hitchcock came back to Dallas. Darryl Sutter popped behind the bench in Calgary twice. Going way back, Punch Imlach even made a brief if unsuccessful visit behind the Toronto bench in the 1980s. The results are mixed at best.
Ruff starts the coaching part of his job today on a honeymoon. He’ll get the benefit of the doubt for a while, and that can only help the franchise. But is it enough?
When John Muckler came to the Sabres in the early 1990s, he said it was an easy job because a playoff series win would be a cause for a parade. By that standard, Ruff has it even easier. A playoff series loss would be just fine with everyone. The story of whether that happens will determine the success of the coming season.
(Follow Budd on X.com via @WDX2BB)
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