Head coach Don Granato was relieved of his duties by the Buffalo Sabres on April 16, 2024. (Photo by ... [+]
As the longest playoff drought among North America’s major pro sports extended to 13 seasons, someone had to be held accountable.
On Tuesday, Buffalo Sabres head coach Don Granato was shown the door by general manager Kevyn Adams. Assistant coach Jason Christie and video coordinator Matt Smith were also let go.
The 2023-24 NHL regular season does not conclude until Thursday, but the Sabres closed out their schedule on Monday — on a winning note, with a 4-2 road win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
They ended the season at 39-37-6 for 84 points. That’s a drop of seven points from last season, when they finished one point out of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
Now 56, Granato grew up in Illinois as part of the famous hockey-playing family, and served as captain during his time at the University of Wisconsin. After graduation, it wasn’t long before he moved into coaching, working with teams in the USHL, ECHL, AHL and the U.S. National Team Development Program. In 2017, he got his first NHL coaching job as an assistant with the Chicago Blackhawks, then moved to an assistant’s role with the Sabres in 2019.
On Mar. 20, 2021, he was promoted to interim head coach after Ralph Krueger was dismissed. Despite finishing out the pandemic-shortened season with a 9-16-3 record, Granato was promoted to a full-time role at season’s end.
At the dawn of the 2022-23 season, with two years remaining on his existing deal, the Sabres signed Granato to a two-year contract extension, reportedly worth $1.9 million per season before bonuses.
That deal was set to kick in next fall. Instead, Granato is out and the Sabres are searching for their seventh head coach since Lindy Ruff took Buffalo to its last playoff appearance in 2011.
This time, Adams says he’s looking for a veteran presence.
Sabres fans wonder if that could lead them back to Ruff. Now 64, the team’s one-time defenseman and long-time bench boss got the club to within a goal of the Stanley Cup in 1999 — its only trip to the final in franchise history. And Ruff is back on the market after being relieved of his duties with the New Jersey Devils on March 4.
Or could those breadcrumbs lead to Joel Quenneville? A three-time Stanley Cup winner as head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks, Quenneville resigned from his coaching duties with the Florida Panthers in October of 2021, after news of the Blackhawks’ 2010 sexual-misconduct scandal involving video coach Brad Aldrich came to light.
At 65, Quenneville is the second-winningest NHL coach of all time, behind only Scotty Bowman. Last week, he did a long-form interview on the ‘Cam and Strick’ podcast where he took accountability for his poor handling of the situation with Aldrich and spoke of his desire to get back into the game — potentially setting the stage for NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to give him the green light to return this summer — whether that’s in Buffalo or elsewhere.
And the Sabres could be an appealing landing spot. They have a strong nucleus of young talent, led by a pair of first-overall draft picks on the back end: Rasmus Dahlin, now 24, who was selected in 2018 and Owen Power, now 21, who was selected in 2021. They’re surrounded by a litany of other first-round picks, and after a 16-point improvement in the standings in the 2022-23 season, it was expected that the talented young core would take the next step and snap the playoff drought this season.
But Buffalo’s unconventional decision to hand their No. 1 netminding role to then-21-year-old Devon Levi was part of what put the team in a hole early this season. Typically, goalies need significant minor-league seasoning before they’re ready for a steady dose of NHL work. But when Levi posted a 5-2-0 record when he turned pro after two seasons at Northeastern University at the end of the 2022-23 season, the team elected to anoint him as its No. 1.
Levi started the first four games, winning just once and posting a pedestrian 3.26 goals-against average and .892 save percentage. His momentum was then stalled by a lower-body injury which caused him to miss some time, and kept the Sabres with three goalies in rotation for most of the year — a difficult situation for all parties.
In the end, it was 25-year-old Ukko-Pekka Luuokken who climbed from third-string status all the way to the starter’s role in the second half of the season. He finished out the year with a record of 27-22-4 over 54 games and a save percentage of .910, setting himself up for a nice raise from his current cap hit of $925,000 as a restricted free agent with arbitration rights this summer.
During just over three years behind the Sabres’ bench, Granato’s record was 122-125-27 over 274 games — a points percentage of .495. His dismissal also continues a whirlwind pace of coaching changes in the NHL, as he was the league’s sixth-longest-tenured coach when he was let go.
Last summer, six NHL teams made head-coaching changes, followed by eight more during the season — including a second change by the Columbus Blue Jackets.
If that pattern continues, many more moves lie ahead as other teams’ seasons come to an end around the league.
