The Buffalo Sabres fanbase is already growing impatient with head coach Don Granato, but a certain MLB team can show them to stay the course.
During the Buffalo Sabres eight-game losing streak, the Fire Granato chants were growing unlike any other. Despite the team’s lack of success over the past decade in firing head coaches every two seasons.
That said, regime change after regime change will most likely continue to dig the team into a deeper hole. So even if the Sabres finish with the same points total, Granato needs to stay and continue developing what is the league’s youngest roster.
And for fans to have some visual proof here of what sticking with the same coach can do for a franchise, they only need to look to the desert, where a certain MLB team is brewing a monster under the Arizona sun after sticking with their manager through the lowest of lows.
What the Arizona Diamondbacks can teach Buffalo Sabres fans
While manager Torey Lovullo took the team to the NLCS in 2017, the Diamondbacks embarked on a slow decline, missing the playoffs in 2018 and 2019 despite solid records before the COVID-shortened 2020 season gave the team their first losing record under Lovullo. They finished 25-35 that year, and 18 games out of first place.
Then came the 2021 season, where Lovullo’s Diamondbacks went 8-48 between May and June 2021. The result? A 52-110 finish that saw them finish dead last in the National League by nine games.
Of course, the poor performances in 2020 and 2021 allowed Arizona to restock their prospects pool. They also pulled off some trades for a few prospects, and that put them in better position for their future.
While the Diamondbacks were not as young as the Buffalo Sabres with an average age of 28.58 in 2022, or even in 2021, the organization had enough faith in Lovullo to keep him around as opposed to getting rid of him after the team either stagnated or declined over the course of four seasons.
Something that paid off in 2022, when the team finished 74-88, a 22-game improvement. And this occurred after general manager Mike Hazen signed Lovullo to an extension following that tumultuous 2021 campaign.
As mentioned, the Diamondbacks aren’t as young as the Sabres. But the similarities between the two teams from a win-loss standpoint shows what can happen when a franchise has faith in their coach, or in the MLB’s case, manager.
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