« Je vois les choses de cette façon, si je quitte l’organisation, cela me rend heureux que ces gars parlent de responsabilité, et je vais vous dire pourquoi, parce que nous avons eu beaucoup de discussions à ce sujet », a déclaré Granato. «Je peux vous punir toute la journée, ce dont tout le monde dit que vous devez rendre des comptes. Mais la vraie question est : « Êtes-vous responsable ? Avez-vous besoin d’être puni ou êtes-vous une personne responsable ? … Donc si j’ai facilité le travail du prochain entraîneur, j’en suis content. Parce que j’aime ces gars en tant que personnes et joueurs et je veux les voir réussir. Ça vaut vraiment le coup d’être lu. Et un conseil : utilisez le mode lecteur sur votre téléphone.
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rustcity716
5 Comments
Pre-read impression..
It’s so easy to make completely unfair judgements about this quote and how it seems to say what most Granato critics arrived at: he didn’t know how to make the team buy in enough.
Now to read the piece and see how / whether more context changes how this quote looks…
Post-read impression…
As nice and thoughtful, sensitive, and intelligent as I thought. But my God, not NHL HC material based on the quotes.
The question that lingers for me after reading is how do a GM and his team miss such remarkably low self-confidence in a coaching candidate when it’s this near the surface, when Granato speaks so openly about it?
Anyway, all that.
Don’s last word salad regarding Buffalo.
Those exit interviews were damning to the type of coach he is, and this just further backs his own lack of accountability. It reminds me of when Michael Scott declared bankruptcy.
If he had lots of talks about accountability then he didn’t even think they were a group that held themselves accountable. So of fucking course they had to be held to a standard, which is how a group becomes accountable (can we please start calling it disciplined instead because I’m getting fed up with this word) in the first place.
Thank god they are bringing in a new coach, I wouldn’t be able to stand listening to another season of this.
The full text:
BUFFALO, N.Y. — On Monday morning, Don Granato walked into Amalie Arena for the Buffalo Sabres’ 82nd game of the season with one thought on his mind.
“How do we beat Tampa Bay?”
As the Sabres’ playoff hopes slipped away in the later part of the season, and Granato’s status as Buffalo’s head coach became a persistent question, Granato did everything he could to block it out by putting every bit of his attention on the day-to-day responsibilities of the job. On Tuesday morning, less than 12 hours after the Sabres’ season ended with a win over the Lightning, general manager Kevyn Adams delivered the news that Granato had coached his last game.
“Nothing surprises you,” Granato told The Athletic by phone Friday. “The situation and the expectations rose to a level that something had to give. The media, the fan base, the pressure that is on that locker room, the team, the organization, something’s got to give. This is what happens. Obviously, there’s frustration, but I don’t have anything to complain about. I really don’t. I could have done things slightly different. You can change some things and can’t change others.”
He added, “I have to ground my memory in that I was given this opportunity by Kevyn and the Pegulas. It’s an opportunity I had been waiting for for a long time. And honestly, I have no regrets and no blame for anyone else. There are always dynamics at work in situations and you cannot fight them all at once, let alone think you can win them all.”
When Granato took over as the Sabres’ interim coach just over three years ago, he didn’t focus on what he needed to do to become the permanent coach. He thought, “What can I do to make this franchise better if I’m not here?”
He saw a group of players who needed to believe and needed to improve. And when Granato became the permanent coach, he called colleagues around the league and admitted, “This job scares the hell out of me.”
It reminded him of how he started his coaching career with the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers when he committed to loading his roster up with first-year players. He called his parents and said, “My entire future rides on 17 and 18-year-old kids.”
Sabres exit interviews: What we learned about practice issues, offseason needs and more
The Gamblers went 9-34-1 in his first season but rebounded and won the Anderson Cup as the USHL regular season champions two years in a row. In his second season, they won the Clark Cup as the playoff champions. He didn’t get to experience that same high with the Sabres, but the task was similar.
In the calendar year before Granato took the job, the roster lost Linus Ullmark, Sam Reinhart, Jack Eichel, Brandon Montour, Eric Staal and Taylor Hall. That summer leading up to his first full season on the job was a sleepless one for Granato.
“I’m thinking, ‘Just don’t embarrass the Sabres and their fans,’” Granato said.
“You talk about pressure. Your career is on the line. If you don’t have your stuff together and you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re not going to have a career in about six months. My career is over if I don’t handle that. The 30 years I worked in coaching is done. I’m going back to the minors and never coming up.”
The Sabres were coming off finishing last in the NHL and managed 76 points that first season with the lowest payroll in the NHL and one of the youngest rosters in the league. The Sabres finished that season winning five of their last seven games. Prior to the next season, Granato signed a contract extension and then led the Sabres, again the youngest and cheapest roster in the league, to 91 points.
Fairburn: Sabres were ‘too comfortable’ under Don Granato. Are they ready for what’s next?
But this season, the Sabres couldn’t match that total and take the next step and get into the playoffs. They were without Jack Quinn, Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch and Jeff Skinner for stretches of time early in the season. On Dec. 31, the Sabres played their first game with their preseason top 12 forwards all healthy. By then, they were playing at a 73-point pace, a hole too deep to dig out of.
In the 48 hours after Granato got fired, players talked about the need for more “accountability and structure.” Thompson said the team was “too casual” and “too comfortable.” Granato understands that narratives are always going to happen after a coach gets fired because there needs to be justification for it. This narrative is a frustrating one because it was a constant point of conversation between him and the players.
“I look at it this way, if I’m leaving the organization, it makes me happy that these guys are talking about accountability, and I’ll tell you why, because we had lots of talks on it,” Granato said. “I can punish you all day long, which everybody says hold accountable. But the real question is, ‘Are you accountable?’ Do you need to be punished or are you an accountable person? … So if I made the next coach’s job easier, I’m happy for that. Because I love these guys as people and players and I want to see them be successful.”
Granato did limit ice time, too. Skinner was on the third line at the end of the season. He made JJ Peterka earn his time on the top line and the power play as he cleaned up the details in his game away from the puck. The minutes distribution reflects the fact that Granato was trying to push more of those buttons this season after handing out ice time to young players in his first two seasons as coach. Trying to change that message is tricky, though, when the same messenger has to change the tone.
“Unfortunately I created a bit of my own mess because you had to get these guys to believe in their ability,” Granato said.
Granato grappled with all of the questions you would expect. How hard do you push a guy before you’re demoralizing him? How do you keep players from tuning you out? How many guys can you make an example of before you run out of players to bump up the lineup?
“When you have more experience and more skill, you’re going to have more accountability in your organization,” Granato said. “When people know someone else can replace them, you have automatic accountability. That’s why skill development is so important.”
As for how demanding his practices were, Granato noted they had 56 games with one day or no days between games. He said, “Your job as a coach is to push your team and create urgency. You’re balancing all the time how hard you can push. We all know if you break that threshold and you push too hard, you don’t end up with 84 points or 91 like we did last year. We end up with 70. There’s a fragility to every team that you as a coach have to understand every day.”
In the end, Granato said this could be as simple as Sabres players needing a new voice. Adams said he wants the next coach to have NHL experience. Now that he’s entering his fifth season as general manager, the urgency to add more veterans has increased. The spending might, too. Buffalo’s next coach will have a different set of circumstances, but Granato doesn’t fret about that. He’s comfortable with what he had for resources and said he always focused on coaching what he had.
“There will be different moves now,” he said. “That’s a byproduct of the situation.”
None of this has been easy for Granato the last few days. But he recognizes this is the territory of coaching in a league in which 15 of the teams have made a coaching change since the end of last season. Players wondered how he was dealing with it all the last few weeks and all he could tell them was how much he loves the job.
“This is a tough, tough business and this is an extremely tough time in Sabres history because you’re at a threshold of doing something and getting past a barrier that’s been there for years,” Granato said. “Over a decade.”
The conversation Granato and Adams had Tuesday was like many others they had: open and honest. They sat down and talked about everything. And Granato said he and Adams will always be close and he recognizes what a tough job Adams has. He’ll always care about Buffalo and the people who helped him on and off the ice.
“I’m vested,” Granato said. “I do want to see these guys be successful. I’m confident in my own future and I think I did what I needed to do to help move this thing along. Kevyn has to make tough decisions and that’s it.”
Granato has wasted no time diving back into the film and going through his coaching notes, too. He’s ready for whatever is next for him in coaching and is still energized by the game. Nothing about this season robbed him of that passion for hockey.
“I’m grateful,” Granato said. “I leave this and know I’m better. To be in this pressure, to elevate in this pressure and develop all of these relationships. There’s no question I’m better by working through all of this and that excites me.”
The next Sabres coach will inherit a 13-season playoff drought, the longest in league history. But these Sabres are also coming off 91 and 84-point seasons. Those are the two best seasons this franchise has had since Lindy Ruff got fired. That those seasons disappointed Sabres fans shows Granato how far they moved the expectations from when he took over.
“It cost me my job, but I’m proud of that,” Granato said.
What I think happened was the roster not only grew drastically, but they also reached Don’s coaching ceiling. Which, for a 1st time NHL HC, is ok if you ask me.