Pat LaFontaine halts aggressive youth movement, aces wisdom test
There hasn't been much good news for the Buffalo Sabres and their fans over the past several seasons. Since the club last made the postseason in 2010-11, the Sabres morphed from a skilled club with a strict budget to a bloated organization that prioritized toughness.In a league where controlling the puck is increasingly emphasized, the Sabres' approach backfired. Massively.
Somewhere along the way the Sabres became the NHL's version of the Jacksonville Jaguars - only with fewer fans agitating for the club to sign Tim Tebow.
But it's a new day in Buffalo, apparently.
Or perhaps that new day came last week when the Sabres made a clean break. General Manager Darcy Regier and head coach Ron Rolston were dismissed and the club hired Pat LaFontaine to be their president of hockey operations. LaFontaine hired Ted Nolan, former Sabres bench boss and the head coach of the Latvian national men's ice hockey team.
Tuesday, the Buffalo Sabres returned teenage skater Nikita Zadorov thi his major junior club, this season's Memorial Cup Host London Knights. The team also re-assigned 19-year-old forward Mikhail Grigorenko, 21-year-old forward Johan Larsson and 19 year-old defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen to the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League.
Grigorenko has gone to Rochester on a conditioning stint, but is ineligible to remain in the AHL for more than two weeks (or six games) due to the NHL-CHL transfer agreement. According to Nolan, Grigorenko will rejoin the Sabres thereafter.
Where the club was carrying four teenagers on their roster on Monday, only Zemgus Girgensons remains.
These transactions may seem like minor moves superficially - none of those young players were filling key roles for the Sabres - but they're indicative of a larger shift. Put simply: rookie front office executive Pat LaFontaine just aced his first wisdom test.
It's still way too early to evaluate Pat LaFontaine's skill as an executive. And perhaps we should slow down on anointing him with a competency medal. These moves were the management equivalent of a tap-in putt.
Of Buffalo's four teenagers, only Girgensons was in the black in terms of relative shot attempt differential. With Grigorenko, Zadorov and Ristolainen on the ice, the Sabres have had their teeth kicked in at even-strength. Even as all three high-end prospects showed flashes of elite skill in the early going, they were drowning at the NHL level.
Meanwhile the 21-year-old Larsson has impressed in occasional fourth line minutes, but he was too often a healthy scratch and was simply playing too infrequently for the Sabres.
This collection of moves was foreshadowed on Monday by Nolan, who told the Buffalo News that the Sabres were "going to try to get this thing on proper footing going forward and putting people in position of success versus force-feeding them."
"You see some good organizations and how they go about it," Nolan continued. "You don’t force-feed somebody and say we’re rebuilding. Rebuilding is important, but how you rebuild is really important."
A week ago the Sabres' rebuild looked to be an unrelenting, unfocused disaster. Now there's at least the faint whiff of a plan, one that takes into account the big picture.
Between hiring a general manager and trading Ryan Miller among other moves, LaFontaine has a lot of work to do yet. But the clear-eyed perspective he's brought to the organization has arguably already paid off from a player development perspective. That should come as welcome breathe of fresh air for a beleaguered club in a downtrodden professional sports town.