The Sabres’ head coach is currently in Sochi at the 2014 Winter Olympics, having just coached Team Latvia to its best performance in history. After upsetting a respectable Swiss team in their first elimination game, Latvia even managed to keep it close with Team Canada in the quarterfinals before losing 2-1.
Sabres fans have always been fond of Ted Nolan, and it’s not hard to see why. He gives great interviews, exudes a sense of humble integrity and toughness, and has a track record of getting bad teams to play above expectations. But Team Latvia’s surprising “run” in the Olympics this year could potentially catalyze fans, the media, and NHL front offices league-wide to take another look at Nolan.
That process seems to be well underway already, and even the curmudgeonly Buffalo News is on the bandwagon. Jerry Sullivan tweeted that it would be difficult for Tim Murray to replace Nolan after his Olympic success. Mike Harrington tweeted “We're getting to the point where Tim Murray needs to meet the plane back from Sochi with Ted Nolan's contract extension in hand.”
Allow me to pump the breaks for a second. Team Latvia’s record in their three group stage games? 0-3. The nail biter versus Canada? Latvia was outshot 57-16. You can’t credit Nolan with one of the best goaltending performances ever seen in international hockey, yet without it, the game would’ve been a blowout.
Even giving Nolan full credit for Latvia’s 24 hours of fame shouldn’t change our perception of him. He’s always shown a remarkable ability to coax competitive performances out of heavy underdogs. We knew he could do that in 1997.
Damien Cox hits on this point in one of the more unfortunately titled articles covering Nolan’s success with Team Latvia, “Coach Ted Nolan has Latvia’s hockey team dreaming big: Cox”, noting, “That’s Nolan’s modus operandi, right? Take something nobody else wants, turn a bunch of hockey players into a group of snarling underdogs ready to charge through a cement wall, and surprise the hockey world one more time.”
Building a team of snarling underdogs is impressive, but it leaves a crucial question unanswered: what can Nolan do with a talented team that matches up to its opposition? Would Nolan’s success with underdogs translate to even greater success with talented teams, or does Nolan have particular strengths as a coach that pay larger dividends to bad teams?
We don’t know because he’s never really had an opportunity to coach a good team, which must frustrate him. However, if I had to bet, I’d take the latter. It seems reasonable that Nolan’s ability to motivate and teach work ethic would be a bigger boost to a team at the bottom of the standings than to a team that’s already contending and confident. Additionally, his preference for veterans over prospects is the sort of simple coaching change that can increase competitiveness and winning in the short term, while potentially hampering a team’s development long term.
Have we already forgotten how horribly the Sabres botched Mikhail Grigorenko’s development and ELC? While blame for that rests with Darcy Regier, Ron Rolston, and Tim Murray as well, Nolan did not make any progress with the former 12th overall pick. With the Sabres rich in draft picks and prospects, there’s an obvious tension between Nolan’s strengths and the direction the team’s roster is moving. Ted Nolan might be the perfect coach for a team of 18 Matt Ellis clones, but the Sabres shouldn’t be a team of 18 Matt Ellis clones. Once top-end forward talent is here, the most important thing will be developing it. Nolan’s successes in Buffalo and Latvia say basically nothing about his ability to do that.
Latvia’s brief run was thrilling, and for Sabres fans disappointed that Ryan Miller is not starting on Team USA, a welcomed opportunity to have some Buffalo-centric fun on the international stage. But it would be a mistake to commit to Nolan based on two days of solid hockey and elite goaltending in Sochi.
The Sabres should make their decision to retain or replace Nolan based on their own evaluation of his abilities and performance in the NHL, and on how his skills fit with the team’s plans for reshaping the roster moving forward. If watching Nolan on TV in Sochi for a week tells Tim Murray more about his head coach than a season of working in the same building with him, we’re in trouble.
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