Explain how the same owner can have such a model NFL franchise and a trash heap for an NHL franchise, please? — Michael M.
The two leagues are different in so many ways. Building a winner in the NFL is not necessarily easier, but it is simpler. If you find your quarterback, that’s going to solve a lot of your problems. Free agency can help you flip a team quickly, and drafted players can make an instant impact. The timeline to rebuild an NHL team is longer. But this question is a fair question that comes up quite a bit, and I think there are legitimate explanations beyond the idea that Pegula got lucky in hiring Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane.
There’s a certain amount of luck involved in pro sports, of course. If Pegula picked Vance Joseph instead of McDermott back then, would this have worked out? If Brandon Beane hadn’t managed to trade up for Josh Allen or if he had chosen a different quarterback, how would that change the story of his and McDermott’s tenure?
But I believe Pegula, along with McDermott and Beane, deserves credit for what’s happened with the Bills. McDermott was a strong coaching candidate during that cycle, but it’s not as if he was considered the top prize. Pegula saw something in him and, more importantly, was willing to take his hand off the wheel and let McDermott change the culture of the building. That meant McDermott got control of the roster before the Bills eventually fired Doug Whaley, who had a close personal relationship with Pegula. Pegula then hired Beane, someone with whom McDermott had a prior relationship. Both McDermott and Beane had worked their way through the ranks and earned those jobs. They had conviction in their plan, and the early results helped Pegula trust them to do what needed to be done to fix the Bills. Good process doesn’t guarantee the success the Bills have had, but that was a solid process from top to bottom by Pegula.
What I can’t figure out is why Pegula hasn’t yet learned from that experience in how he’s operating the Sabres. Pegula’s track record hiring coaches and general managers is terrible outside of McDermott and Beane. But I can’t sit here and say it was all luck when the process to arrive at McDermott and Beane was so different from the process to arrive at general manager Kevyn Adams. The Sabres did not run a general manager search before hiring Adams. That wouldn’t even be allowed under the NFL’s Rooney Rule. Pegula hired Adams because, in his words, he was “loyal and communicative.”
“I’m going to label communication as one of the biggest issues with the Sabres,” Pegula said the day he fired Jason Botterill and hired Adams “We felt like we weren’t being heard.”
Adams had been serving as the senior vice president of business administration for less than a year when he was hired. He started working for the Pegulas in 2011 first as a Sabres assistant coach, then as director of the Pegulas’ Academy of Hockey and GM of Harborcenter, the Pegulas’ hotel, retail and practice rink complex during that time. That’s a much different resume than McDermott and Beane had prior to Pegula hiring them. It’s also fair to wonder how exhaustive the Sabres’ most recent coaching search was. It shouldn’t be shocking when you get bad results out of a bad process. But if the goal is for Pegula to be closer to the decision making with the hockey team, the current structure certainly makes that easier.
All of that combined with the fact that the Sabres haven’t spent to the cap since the pandemic are the main reasons things are different with the two teams. Owning an NFL franchise is easier from a business standpoint. The league’s revenue-sharing setup with massive television deals makes NFL teams profit machines. On the field, once you have competent leadership and a franchise quarterback, you’re in good shape to be competitive. When you end up with one of the best quarterbacks of a generation like the Bills have in Allen, you have a chance to win a Super Bowl every year. Owning an NHL team is harder by comparison, but it’s not nearly as difficult as Pegula has made it look.
www.nytimes.com
