The news that Jason Botterill would be returning as the Buffalo Sabres’ general manager next season shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. Much less for fans who have paid attention to the team since Terry and Kim Pegula bought the franchise in 2011.
In a league where over half of the teams make the postseason, the Sabres have missed it in nine consecutive years.
This year, with an expanded 24-team playoff that will leave just seven franchises out of the postseason, the Sabres’ win percentage — what the NHL used to qualify teams for the playoffs after the regular season ended abruptly — still wasn’t good enough to end the drought.
In fact, Buffalo became just the 5th team in NHL history to go nine consecutive seasons without a playoff appearance. If they miss the playoffs next year — for a 10th straight season — it would be an NHL record.
Where did it all go so wrong?
It starts at the top. When the Pegulas bought the team from Rochester billionaire Tom Golisano in 2011 in the midst of a few seasons of mediocrity, they promised a competitive team and a franchise whose “sole reason for existence would be to win the Stanley Cup.”
So far, they haven’t even won a playoff series.
The Pegulas seem to have this bad habit of hiring the wrong people and then being shocked when those unqualified hires make bad free agent signings or make terrible trades.
Example: Former GM Tim Murray signing Kyle Okposo to a 7-year, $42 million contract. The 32-year-old has just 48 points over his last 126 games — with three years left on the deal.
Example: Botterill trading Ryan O’Reilly to the St. Louis Blues after the 2018 season for Tage Thompson, Vladimir Sobotka, Patrik Berglund and two draft picks. O’Reilly won the Cup less than a year later with St. Louis and of those three players the Sabres got in return, only Sobotka has turned into any sort of offensive weapon for the team.
The coaches that have passed through in that playoff drought — Ron Rolston, Ted Nolan, Dan Bylsma, Phil Housley — have all lasted two years or less and none were given another head coaching opportunity after being fired by the team. What does that tell you?
As for Botterill, the Pegulas can spin it anyway they’d like, but a big reason that the former Penguins assistant GM will be retained for a fourth season is this: the ownership group, in light of cost-cutting moves across the sports industry, can’t afford to fire a guy and pay him to not work with years remaining on his contract.
But to take a positive tone here — we all need a bit more of that these days — let’s see what Botterill and head coach Ralph Krueger, who will also be back next season, will be working with when the Sabres return to the ice.
Despite all the losses and the turnover with the front office, the coaching staff and his teammates, Jack Eichel has been one of the league’s best players during his first 5 years in the league. He scored a career-high 36 goals through 68 games this year and was on pace to finish with 90 points.
He isn’t going anywhere, and the Sabres have begun to develop a younger core to provide the 23-year-old with some much-needed help.
Most notably among those reinforcements is forward Victor Olofsson. The Swedish forward finished with 20 goals, despite missing 15 games with injury, and was one of the best power play threats in the league during his rookie season. Paired with Eichel and Sam Reinhart, the trio has the potential to become one of the league’s most lethal scoring lines.
Second-year defenseman Rasmus Dahlin finished fourth on the team with 40 points (four goals, 36 assists) in 59 games. He was a Botterill draft pick, and even though he was the obvious choice when the Sabres selected him first overall, the GM should still get the credit for drafting and developing him in Buffalo.
See, it’s not all that bad at KeyBank Center. But with how many times the Pegulas have gotten it wrong over the past nine years, why should Sabres fans trust them to get it right now?
Even Eichel, normally mild-mannered off the ice, expressed his exasperation with the current state of the team in a conference call with the media on Thursday.
Eichel said he is ‘fed up with the losing’ and that he’s frustrated with another year of missing the playoffs.
He added, “I’m a competitor. I want to win every time I’m on the ice. I want to win a Stanley Cup every time I start a season.”
Those are the exact things you want your franchise cornerstone to say, and you just wonder how many more wins the team would have if the owners showed the same passion and fire as one of the best players in the game.
Really, the Pegulas are lucky that they hired Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane to lead the Buffalo Bills or the City of Buffalo may have very well run the billionaires out of town by now.
(Anthony Sambrotto, The Bradford Era sports editor, can be reached at asambrotto@bradfordera.com)
