Per Botterill: Sabres have relieved Phil Housley of his Coaching Duties

[Billznut]

49 minutes ago, dudacek said:

Maybe he’ll come over as an assistant when they hire AV.

I don’t think they get Q and I think AV will slide in through a good team canada experience.

i  expect positive comments about Reinhart, Skinner and Montour out of Bratislava within a month.

Yep. Said this exact thing last week. If AV gets hired, definitely a good chance Lindy comes here as asst if he wants to. 

[SabresBaltimore]

So obviously our next head coach needs to come in and save us all from mediocrity. And probably play both defense, and goalie and probably second line center.

Is Jesus available? I heard he could walk on water...

 

I've liked most of JBotts moves, but the O'Reilly trade still has me shaking my head. If he can re-sign Skinner without handicapping our salary cap, I think we're moving in the right direction despite the way this season ended. I like what's happening in Rochester from the little I've been following it. If we don't see real improvement (either finally make the playoffs or just missing out in last few days of the season) I'd expect he'd get fired, but I can never tell what the hell the ownership is thinking.

 

I don't know what's going to finally fix things. Is it the ownership? Is it because fans have become so jaded they'll blame the good players like Eichel or Dalin or say how Reinhardt didn't do enough?

 

Something had to change. They way this team played down the stretch, there was no way they could keep Housley. I'm not sure who can fix things, but at this point we could do a lot worse than Lindy Ruff. He's changed his system multiple times over the years to fit the players he's had, and that's the kind of coach we need right now. I don't want someone with a killer system. I want someone who take what he's given and make the playoffs.

 

In the meantime JBotts has a lot of work to do this offseason if he hopes to keep his job..

[kas23]

1 hour ago, apuszczalowski said:

Your assuming that Botts and the Sabres are/were interested in Quenville.....

True.

[Ross Rhea]

22 minutes ago, Billznut said:

Yep. Said this exact thing last week. If AV gets hired, definitely a good chance Lindy comes here as asst if he wants to. 

Does Lindy still live in Buffalo?

[SabresBaltimore]

1 minute ago, Ross Rhea said:

Does Lindy still live in Buffalo?

I know he did for awhile after being fired. Not sure if he still does though.

[inkman]

46 minutes ago, Billznut said:

Yep. Said this exact thing last week. If AV gets hired, definitely a good chance Lindy comes here as asst if he wants to. 

How often has that happened?  A guy who has been head coach for a team comes back a few years later as an assistant?  If my current employer fires me, I'd have to be on the brink of starvation to ever consider coming back in a lesser role, and I still don't think I'd do it.  I'm can say with a degree of certainty that Lindy isn't starving. 

[Eleven]

2 hours ago, Let's Go B-Lo said:

Let's not regress to stupid.

[Eleven]

3 hours ago, klos1963 said:

Where does winning 3 cups fall into that definition?  It's really hard to argue that Quenneville isn't one of the most successful coachs in NHL history.  Getting more out of less shouldn't be a gauge, winning is. And who determines what less is? Maybe they were just underestimated, something that happens all the time.

It's really hard to not spell "coaches" correctly. How do you screw that up? 

And are you kidding me?  The guy fell into the perfect team at the perfect time.

[TrueBlueGED]

2 hours ago, Weave said:

It's not a de facto exclude.  This team lacks experience, especially experience with what it takes to win at this level.

Bylsma didn't. He was bad, too. I'm not against hiring an experienced coach, but to say experience matters so much that you'd just say no to a stellar up and comer is really the wrong way to go about it. 

Teams are about to get a treasure trove of information with player tracking. I want a coach who can understand it and exploit it to his team's advantage. I want someone who understands the NHL in 2019, not 2009. And so on. 

[darksabre]

I'm a little tired of the Nolan hate. I know most of us who liked him only suggest him jokingly, but there's no denying that players like him and work really hard for him. It might not be a sustainable way to coach a hockey team, but it works in the short term and that shouldn't be discounted. He's a motivator if nothing else. 

[Eleven]

2 minutes ago, darksabre said:

I'm a little tired of the Nolan hate. I know most of us who liked him only suggest him jokingly, but there's no denying that players like him and work really hard for him. It might not be a sustainable way to coach a hockey team, but it works in the short term and that shouldn't be discounted. He's a motivator if nothing else. 

So hire him as an assistant..  He's no better than a motivator and we both know that.

[...]

Been traveling all day.  The firing was no surprise.  Did JBot have a presser?  If so, did he indicate he had a plan for the next coach?

[TrueBlueGED]

4 minutes ago, darksabre said:

I'm a little tired of the Nolan hate. I know most of us who liked him only suggest him jokingly, but there's no denying that players like him and work really hard for him. It might not be a sustainable way to coach a hockey team, but it works in the short term and that shouldn't be discounted. He's a motivator if nothing else. 

The grinders love him. There's no evidence the high skill players that actually win games love him. 

[Eleven]

2 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

The grinders love him. There's no evidence the high skill players that actually win games love him. 

Barnaby was probably all about Nolan.

[Scottysabres]

3 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

The grinders love him. There's no evidence the high skill players that actually win games love him. 

You mean, like the high skill players we have now that win games for us (insert eye roll here)

[TrueBlueGED]

2 minutes ago, Scottysabres said:

You mean, like the high skill players we have now that win games for us (insert eye roll here)

They do win games for us. Swap out Eichel, Reinhart, Skinner, and Dahlin for low skill grinders and we'd be the tank teams (ya know, teams that won a lot less). 

[SwampD]

18 minutes ago, darksabre said:

I'm a little tired of the Nolan hate. I know most of us who liked him only suggest him jokingly, but there's no denying that players like him and work really hard for him. It might not be a sustainable way to coach a hockey team, but it works in the short term and that shouldn't be discounted. He's a motivator if nothing else. 

I was tired of the hate when he was here.

19 minutes ago, Eleven said:

It's really hard to not spell "coaches" correctly. How do you screw that up? 

And are you kidding me?  The guy fell into the perfect team at the perfect time.

They didn’t win without him. It’s not luck. It’s just a confluence of events,... with every team.

...except Bowman. Dammit.

 

There are so many ways to win.

Edited April 8, 2019 by SwampD

[Scottysabres]

2 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

They do win games for us. Swap out Eichel, Reinhart, Skinner, and Dahlin for low skill grinders and we'd be the tank teams (ya know, teams that won a lot less). 

Ok, ok, you got me. Those players did bring us from dead last to 5th from dead last ?

and ummm.........they were on the team when we were dead last......oh snap.....(insert multiple eye rolls here)

[eman]

23 minutes ago, darksabre said:

I'm a little tired of the Nolan hate. I know most of us who liked him only suggest him jokingly, but there's no denying that players like him and work really hard for him. It might not be a sustainable way to coach a hockey team, but it works in the short term and that shouldn't be discounted. He's a motivator if nothing else. 

I liked him. His teams played entertaining hockey and he won NHL Coach of the Year. (and the reason he won it was because he took a team of questionable talent at the time and got them into the second round of the playoffs, when most NHL pundits had the Sabres on the outside of the playoffs looking in) The players they had did bust their ass for him and the NHL realised finally who Dominik Hasek was. Keenan let him go for nothing because he hated his style of play, thought he flopped too much.

[eman]

18 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

They do win games for us. Swap out Eichel, Reinhart, Skinner, and Dahlin for low skill grinders and we'd be the tank teams (ya know, teams that won a lot less). 

Apparently not enough of them, just ask Phil Housley.

[darksabre]

44 minutes ago, TrueBlueGED said:

The grinders love him. There's no evidence the high skill players that actually win games love him. 

Pat Lafontaine doesn't count eh?

[TrueBlueGED]

6 minutes ago, darksabre said:

Pat Lafontaine doesn't count eh?

Not really. It was 30 years ago. Thirty! 

[klos1963]

56 minutes ago, Eleven said:

It's really hard to not spell "coaches" correctly. How do you screw that up? 

And are you kidding me?  The guy fell into the perfect team at the perfect time.

No Einstein, it's not hard to spell coaches, sometimes people make mistakes when typing and don't proofread . You, on the other hand, are the one that comes off stupid, dismissing coaching 3 Stanley Cup championships as 'perfect team, perfect time'.

[Broken Ankles]

3 hours ago, PerreaultForever said:

Torts might not if Columbus goes out again in round 1, which is likely. 

Hard pass.  His teams have either been knocked out in the first round or missed playoffs altogether in 14/18 years of his coaching.   Plus his style is antiquated and an annoying personality.  

[Brawndo]

Nolan was a very good motivator as a coach, he was not very good with the Xs and Os. Even Mike Harrington, who was one of Nolan’s Biggest Fans, mentioned after watching Bylsma’s First Couple of Practices that TN did not have a system remotely close to today’s NHL Standards. 

With Cooper, Cassidy, Babcock, Julien and now Quenneville in the Atlantic, it’s imperative they get this hire right.