When the boss pays a visit
Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula met with players, coaches and management in Montreal in an attempt to help turn things around.
MONTRÈAL — It’s generally accepted that when the owner of any organization—never mind a professional sports franchise—drops by to speak with the workers while things are going badly that things may be about to take a stark turn.
Owners talking to teams and general managers and head coaches in the middle of the season for an unscheduled visit stands out to be one of the more ominous situations. So when Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula traveled to Montreal to meet with the team, coaches, and general manager Kevyn Adams following the team’s 10th straight loss, expectations for how that would be received and how it would play out were all over the place.
After all, we’ve only seen Pegula generally when new coaches are hired or sometimes when superstar players sign long-term deals. Sure, he’s at the arena sometimes, but he’ll try to stay out of view and keep the lowest of profiles. It’s kind of how he is.
In this situation in which the Sabres have lost 10 in a row going 0-7-3 in the process and are headed into a game against the Montreal Canadiens who lurk just below them at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, however, choosing to drop by now and attempt to rally the team is as much as an owner can do that doesn’t involve throwing money around.
“It’s easy when you have a couple losses in a row for it to snowball, so I think it was a pump-up and a sense of calmness,” Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin said. “You know, we’re here. We can’t do anything about the past. We’ve got to move forward and that’s what we have to do right now. We don’t have a choice.”
Dahlin rejoined the team at morning skate at Bell Centre on Tuesday, his first since he left the game against the Colorado Avalanche on December 3. That he left that game while the team was up 4-1 and they lost 5-4 in one of the worst losses in team history only highlights how important he is to the team. That he’s been out of action for the four goals that followed in the loss that night and the subsequent six games that followed only enhances that.
Being out while all the losing streak rages on is deeply frustrating for Dahlin. Dealing with back spasms makes it even more frustrating because that’s not the kind of injury that necessarily comes with a set timetable. Watching his teammates battle and lose without him is beyond upsetting for him.
“I’m trying my best to be positive in the room and to push the guys,” Dahlin said. “But when you’re not in the games, you can’t really do anything. I’m trying to do as much as I can, but it’s the guys. They’re battling so hard out there. We still believe in it and there’s a lot of good people in there that really want the Sabres to win. So, we will figure this out.”
It's not met lightly that Pegula went out of his way to go from Detroit following the Bills game to Montreal. For the players who have had to dodge discussions about teams calling Adams about certain players and other writers among us who have spit-balled some trade ideas, that kind of thing only enhances the frayed nerves of trying to help each other get out of a brutal run of losses.
“We're all in this together,” Tage Thompson said. “It's going to take everybody, and I think it just shows how much everyone cares. There's no one in this room that's given up, and I think that starts from our owner showing that he's committed to us and means a lot to everyone in this room that he's coming out here to speak to us personally.”
The specifics of what Pegula had to say with the players and coaches were not privy to our ears as the players are keeping that in-house, but with the losses and trade speculation and all the talk that surrounds this kind of void of success is a lot to endure. Players are good at compartmentalizing it and dealing with it in the moment, but coaches endure it from the moment they wake up until they’re able to get to sleep.
We saw it on Lindy Ruff’s face following the 5-3 loss to Toronto and his thorough exasperation at enduring losses game after game. That he fell on his sword again saying it’s on him to get the team out of this highlights the kind of leader he was as a player and especially now as a coach. For him, seeing the owner do the same was important in a similar vein.
“That was incredible what he did – showed up,” Ruff said. “Terry cares. He’s passionate about what’s happening here, and for him to take the time to come here, it meant a lot to everybody.”
When you look at the way the losses have happened and the final scores the way they’ve played out, while the ultimate result of a loss is what matters, the “how” of it all makes it so much more frustrating. Six losses by one goal, one of them in a shootout. The last two losses to Washington and Toronto by two goals, but with empty-net goals that made it a two-goal bulge. Those losses are, in essence, one-goal losses and highlights just how close these games have been.
The losses that were ugly stick out. A 3-0 loss on Long Island was a miserable performance all-around as was the 5-2 home loss against Utah. Even the shootout loss to Detroit was ugly in that it was a poor performance from James Reimer as well as the rest of the team after NHL-debut-making Sebastian Cossa took over in goal for Ville Husso.
When autopsying a 10-game losing streak, however, losing so many close games makes it even more frustrating.
“I think we all left the meeting feeling good and kind of knowing that we have to look ourselves in the mirror and we have to better as players,” Jason Zucker said. “As much as Terry and the ownership group do for us, they can’t win games for us. I mean, that’s players, and we got to go be better on the ice and we got to get these wins.”
Unlike previous seasons, getting good starts and having leads early has not been a problem for the Sabres. Instead, it’s how they’ve handled facing the prospect of losing when their opponents gain momentum from a goal. The feeling of, “Oh no, not again” was present in the losses to Colorado and Toronto in which you can point to one particular goal scored that altered the course of the game and dragged the Sabres to hell again. Weathering those swings has been a problem and it’s only enhanced now as the losses have piled up.
The Sabres may be young and experienced, but they’re still young. Dealing with the sort of heavy feelings involved with a team buried in a playoff drought going through a massive losing streak is difficult to maneuver for anyone of any age in the league, but especially for guys in their late-teens and early-20s. It’s an acid test of maturity and a wicked way to figure out how to grow up in difficult situations.
“It's tough when you have lost a few and you have a lead and they score,” Thompson said. “And I think we had a little too much panic in our game. I think yesterday was a great day for us to kind of just reset and just going to get our heads right and kind of realize that there’s still a lot of games left, we can turn this around, and we can just as easily go on a 10-game win streak. We have the guys in this room to do it. We have all the tools. There's no reason why we can't do it the exact same way on the winning side. So, it starts today.”