Buffalo Sabres Round Table – Head Coach Options
By Tim Redinger
The secret is out, the Buffalo Sabres as an organization want to win the draft lottery, or at least be involved in the first or second pick. No big surprise there right? What is starting to become less of a surprise for many as well, is that fan-favorite and great-motivator Ted Nolan is most likely not going to be back next season as head coach.
Next season the plan, at least according to Tim Murray who doesn’t want to be involved in a draft that is still looking like a rebuild, is for the Buffalo Sabres to rise from the ashes like a phoenix, and once again compete like a National Hockey League team should.
The Buffalo Sabres of today are a ramshackle group of players struggling to find their way through the now to get to the future. There is no plan, the rudder that is guiding the ship through rocky waters is better for cheering his players on and urging them to do better, rather than giving them x’s and o’s and telling them how they should be handling situations.
Hell, when the team was mired in one almost went down as the NHL’s longest losing streak in league history, Ted Nolan was quoted as having told the players to make a trade happen by playing for themselves. He was all but encouraging guys to play better just so they could get out of Buffalo. Certainly neither he nor the players has any real weight in changing the mind of GM Tim Murray, who has a plan and likely given his nose for talent, knows who is going to be here for the future and who isn’t.
People have been asking the question for some time now, if Ted Nolan has a future with the Buffalo Sabres or if he knows that he, like the players on the roster, is on borrowed time. Well leave it to the Toronto Media to ask that question (because they don’t have enough about their franchise to worry about) directly to Ted Nolan.
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What were they expecting the answer to be, uh, yeah guys, I am just here to ride out the season – if you could keep the questions simple that would be great. Nolan played the situation off and answered well (from the WGR550 article by Paul Hamilton):
I’m expecting to be here today, that’s it. I only look one day, you never know, a bus goes off the road, who knows, you can’t predict the future and you can’t do anything about yesterday, the only thing that you’ve got is today, so that’s always been my philosophy in life its worry about now.
The only way that would have been better is if Ted Nolan wouldn’t have channeled his inner-Marshawn Lynch and reply: “I’m just here because they haven’t fired me yet.”.
So I called together the first ever Buffalo Sabres Round Table by SabreNoise staff – to bring you their comments on whether or not Ted Nolan will be around after this season.
It doesn’t look good for Ted Nolan, but maybe that is all part of the plan.
On the flip side of it as well, as technical as the league has gotten, players are stronger, bigger, more skilled than the last time Teddy coached – do teams really want a guy who is a self-professed motivator and not a systems guy?
Next: Ted Nolan Era A Bygone Conclusion
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