On Don Granato's dismissal and who could be the next coach of the Buffalo Sabres

After an 84-point season, seven fewer than a year ago and another season without the playoffs, GM Kevyn Adams decided to move on.

After a disappointing 84-point season concluded on Monday night in Tampa, the Buffalo Sabres fired head coach Don Granato. They also let go assistant coach Jason Christie and video coordinator Matt Smith as part of the coaching shakeup.

A year after the Sabres finished one point behind the Florida Panthers for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, they’re going to finish at least five points behind whoever wins the second wild card spot this season. Although fans clamored for Granato’s firing for some time now, their performance in the second half of the season better resembled how they played last season when wins were slightly more common (39 this year, 42 last season).

Granato’s dismissal comes at an awkward time for this very young team. There’s no doubt his effect in helping bring along such a green group after the difficult time they had in Ralph Krueger’s final season in Buffalo was immediately identifiable.

Granato’s system and style unleashed Rasmus Dahlin’s offense once again and made him one of the better young scoring defensemen in the league. Tage Thompson’s emergence as a superstar came thanks to Thompson’s good health and Granato putting him at center. There, Thompson turned into a human highlight reel with his scoring and creativity with the puck.

There was also Casey Mittelstadt’s growth under him that saw him evolve into a key figure and solid two-way player. His performance made it so that retaining him with a long-term contract was going to be financially difficult and led to the Sabres dealing him to Colorado for young defenseman Bo Byram. There’s also the effect he had in resurrecting Jeff Skinner’s career after it went into the pits under Krueger and helped make his monstrous contract into much less of a burden to bear now that he was scoring 30 goals a season once again.

But this season showed some cracks.

The Sabres had so many bad starts this season it was beyond noticeable. That they were so routinely beaten in the first period of games, it brought into question how well prepared the team was for their opponents. Although the Sabres were a much better scoring team later in games, that often came because teams were ahead in a way that allowed them to withstand giving up a goal or two while defending leads.

Buffalo was outscored in the first period this season 97-67 but outscored opponents 80-73 in the second period and 93-68 in the third. Going from minus-30 to plus-7 to plus-25 could show this team was able to close out games, but that would be incorrect.

The Sabres’ record in one-goal games was 11-11-6, a .383 winning percentage and their inability to not just win close games, but to force close games into overtime cost them standings points. The Sabres having to constantly chase games all season long, particularly in the first half of the season, put them in a bad place. Needing to come back in games so often sets an unreasonable standard for games and sets the team up for disappointment night in and night out.

There is also the power play.

We’ve pointed to the power play as the No. 1 reason why the Sabres missed the playoffs this season and for good reason.

Last season the Sabres scored 63 power play goals and for half the year the power play was as poor as it was for the entirety of this season. This season, they scored 37 power play goals, 26 fewer than a year ago. Take that into consideration with their record in one-goal games and you’ve got yourself the kind of theory where you posit that if the power play clicked the way it did for half of last season, we might be talking about the Sabres first-round playoff matchup as opposed to their first-round lottery pick odds once again.

The power play being so brutally miserable this season with no creativity, no real adjustments, and no real changes other than personnel on the units at times is damning enough to cost jobs. Is that reason enough to fire Granato, Christie, and Smith? If they’re the sole creators for the power play, the case would be pretty tough to refute. The kind of stubbornness in doing anything to try and change how the power play operated that was exhibited this season is the sort of thing that could cost a coach their job, particularly when it’s been a known issue for a season and a half.

Running a power play with the mentality of, “As long as we can get the puck to Thompson to shoot it, we’ll be OK,” is fine if you’re effective at getting him the puck and helping him get room to shoot it. But he was shadowed heavily and the puck movement on the power play was beyond predictable. On a team with so many offensive weapons and guys who are beyond creative, there’s zero need to set up so one-dimensionally.

There is no doubt that Thompson wasn’t the same after injuring his hand earlier this season and towards the end of the season with a fully healed hand looked more like the guy we watched the past two years. But a year ago, he had 20 power play goals. This year? Nine. The power play got to the point where it became the definition of insanity.

When Kevyn Adams speaks Tuesday afternoon, we’ll see what he says the thought process was for firing Granato and that will be instructive, to a degree. I don’t necessarily agree with moving on from him. The points I’ve made here already are certainly reasons for firing a coach, make no mistake, but when you look at how the team improved defensively and the big improvements made to the penalty kill, that deserves praise.

Perhaps the thought there was the credit there belongs to assistant coach Marty Wolford and he’s certainly deserving of adulation for that. It would also explain why he was not part of today’s group who were relieved of their duties. Clearly the improvements in Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen’s game and the progress made by Devon Levi earned assistant coach/goalie coach Mike Bales his job.

Ultimately, the lack of good starts and the lack of power play success did in Don Granato. You want to root for the good guys in the game, and Don is certainly one of them. He’s a thoughtful, passionate, and caring person who understands the dynamics involved in being a head coach and the players very much loved him as a coach. Losing a beloved coach is a tough moment for the younger players on this team and a harsh reminder that it’s a performance-based business. It’ll also be a moment where the understanding should be that the next head coach that comes in may not be so cuddly.

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The next coach question

Rochester Americans coach Seth Appert

So just who is on the list of coaches for the Sabres to move to next?

There are plenty of names to be tossed around that we’ve all seen already elsewhere around the league. Bruce Boudreau, Gerard Gallant, Todd McLellan, Craig Berube… they’re all going to be out there available. There’s the elephant in the room that no one is ignoring, however.

Lindy Ruff.

Ruff’s time in New Jersey this season saw the Devils go from Stanley Cup contenders to out of the playoffs and below the Sabres in the standings thanks to a host of issues. They got absolutely miserable goaltending from Vitek Vanecek as well as rookies Akira Schmid and Nico Daws who were pressed into bigger spots. They lost veteran defensemen Ryan Graves and Damon Severson to free agency over the summer and then lost No. 1 defenseman Dougie Hamilton for the season in November. Those departures forced young defensemen Luke Hughes, Kevin Bahl, and Simon Nemec into bigger roles without much ability to shelter them.

Bad defense and bad goaltending costing a team their season? Why does that sound so familiar?

Ruff’s time wasn’t without controversy, of course. He buried forward Alexander Holtz in the lineup and when he was fired, Holtz suddenly found himself getting more ice time and better spots in the lineup when Travis Green took over. Like Ruff did in Buffalo and in Dallas, he leaned on his veterans, but the Devils were a team loaded with young talent he had to trust. It’s kind of easy to trust guys like Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes, to be fair, but the issue with Holtz was noticeable and worthy of keeping a perked eyebrow up for any team considering hiring him to be their next head coach. Particularly a team that has a host of their own very young players.

Ruff is going to merit strong consideration for the Sabres job. My pal Tim Graham mentioned that Ruff interviewed for the job in 2019 when GM Jason Botterill ultimately hired Ralph Krueger. Botterill passed on Ruff because he didn’t view him as a good fit at the time. The Sabres are in a similar, but much different, position this time around five years later.

There are the more ethereal reasons for Ruff’s consideration. When he was fired by the Sabres in February 2013, that came at a time when things were about to get real bad. They traded Jason Pominville that April and then general manager Darcy Regier infamously told fans, “It may require some suffering,” as the franchise entered a rebuild stage. Eleven years later, here we are.

But Ruff’s dismissal, while almost necessary at that time, went over poorly because he’d coached the Sabres for so long but was also a legendary player for the franchise. It didn’t help that Regier wasn’t fired along with him at the time and was ultimately removed later in November 2013. There’s no doubt owner Terry Pegula feels some pangs of remorse for letting Ruff go, but considering Ruff was the last coach to bring the Sabres to the playoffs, you could theorize Pegula might want to “right a wrong” and have Ruff return. Won’t lie, it would be pretty astounding if Ruff is hired and got the Sabres back to the postseason. He’s essentially have a job for life at that point, right?

Ruff won’t be the only one strongly under consideration. Rochester Americans coach Seth Appert has made a case for himself just by virtue of how he’s taken good care of the AHL team and made them a perennial playoff contender. That Appert coached the Americans to the Eastern Conference Final a year ago and has the team primed and ready for another playoff run this season helps strengthen the argument to move him up to the NHL bench.

After all, Appert has helped bring along a few of the Sabres key young guys recently and has worked extensively the past two years with Jiri Kulich and Isak Rosén. There was also the pair of games this season he substituted for Granato running the Sabres bench when Granato was out sick. But it’s that developmental ability that makes him so valuable to the franchise in Rochester. Bringing him to the NHL alters that aim substantially unless they’ve got another coach with that kind of developmental background in mind to move into Rochester should they hire him to Buffalo.

That is not a decision to be made lightly. The Sabres have a lot of high-end prospects poised to be in the AHL in the coming seasons and making sure they’re prepared for professional hockey is vital to the franchise’s success. Anton Wahlberg just arrived in Rochester and Noah Östlund won’t be far behind him, be it for the playoff run this year or for next season and beyond. Player development has become a vital part of the Sabres franchise and it’s not an area they will allow to lag behind to make other personnel decisions.

If Adams has someone in mind to step into Rochester next to continue what Appert has started, seeing Appert promoted to Buffalo becomes a stronger possibility. But if that happens, my idea here (and this is based solely on my own gut and be aware my guts are stupid) would be that Appert becomes the new assistant coach to work the bench with Lindy Ruff.

This kind of move would allow Ruff to come in and be the head man to take this group to the next level and be more of a hard-ass coach to get them whipped into shape to take the next step. It would then allow Appert to step in and be kind of the “good cop” on the coaching staff and play a role in continuing development at the NHL level. If Adams had concerns about how Ruff handled things with younger players, apart from that being a red flag but stay with me here, then Appert would help soften that blow in-house.

It’s an idea and one that popped into my head this afternoon and it’s one I will happily get cold-take’d on when none of it happens. It’s a gut thought and, like I said, my guts are dumb. But on paper, it’s a move that would check a lot of boxes and lean into the ideas floating in the ether as to what this franchise may want to do next.