Fans in favor of a complete teardown of their favorite NHL team should take note of what’s happening right now with the Buffalo Sabres.
Tearing down is easy. The Sabres are proving, again, how hard it is to build back up.
On Thursday, the Sabres completely cleaned house. They fired GM Tim Murray along with coach Dan Bylsma. On Friday, owner Terry Pegula met with the media in Buffalo to try and explain the reasoning and what’s next.
To his credit, he started by taking the blame.
“Accountability starts with me,” he said. “We are not happy with our season this year, and there are no excuses.”
Then, in explaining one of his mistakes since taking over the Sabres, he expressed that he wasn’t hands-on enough in hiring the current regime.
“I can tell you I was not involved in the last GM-coach search to a large extent, and I regret that move,” he said. “That’s all I’m going to say about that.”
It’s a mess.
But the words that Pegula kept coming back to when discussing the Sabres organization were structure, discipline and organization.
“All of that stuff goes together with character,” he said. “You’ve got to have character throughout the organization.”
In other words: culture.
