MURRAY EXTENSION THE RIGHT MOVE
BY: MATT CLOUDEN
About an hour before the puck dropped on the 2016-17 Buffalo Sabres season, the team announced that they had signed general manager Tim Murray to a multi-year contract extension. This move ensured that Murray would be able to continue to oversee the ongoing rebuild of the Sabres organization that he has led since he was hired in January 2014.
While it may be rare that a general manager that saw his team finish in 30th place two years in a row is granted a contract extension, this could not be a better move for the Sabres organization as a whole.
Many see Murray’s job beginning with the 2014 trade deadline deal which saw longtime Sabres’ netminder Ryan Miller make his way to the St. Louis Blues with Steve Ott for Jaroslav Halak, William Carrier, a first and a third-round pick. Since then, Murray has not been shy in making a blockbuster deal, including the ones that brought Evander Kane, Ryan O’Reilly and Robin Lehner into the fold.
Simply put, Murray’s approach is essentially the complete opposite of his predecessor Darcy Regier, and that, along with his no-nonsense style has endeared him to many Sabres fans, and rightfully so. The Sabres were an abject disaster when Murray took the helm. He inherited a roster that Regier began gutting the year before; a roster loaded with marginal NHL talent and no real direction or identity.
After determining that the best way up was to tear the whole thing down, Murray used the resulting two straight second overall selections to add two dynamic and talented players in Sam Reinhart and Jack Eichel. While doing that, Murray also added to the stockpile of draft picks that Regier began amassing, giving himself both trade and draft capital to replenish the roster and prospect cupboards simultaneously.
Now, two and a half seasons later, the Sabres are clearly on the rise. The injury-plagued start to the season has dampened the fans’ enthusiasm over the past few days, but it certainly was palpable in the days and months leading up to the season. This is a team, when healthy, that can compete night after night with the better teams in the NHL, something that could not be said even as early as December of last season.
And sure, the prices paid for some of the pieces Murray has acquired is certainly up for debate, not to mention how good, or worthwhile in other cases, the pieces he acquired are.
And yes, there are still holes on the roster. You can’t go outside in Buffalo without hearing someone ask when he was going to get his top-four left-hand shot defenseman or find another top-six left wing.
But that in and of itself shows how well Murray has done: the fans care again.
It is not hard to admit that being a Sabres fan has been tough since the Philadelphia Flyers squeaked by them in the first-round of the playoffs in 2011. Losing is hard, and to be honest cheering for your team to lose is even harder. Yet now the young core is established and the next wave is budding in Rochester. There are productive veterans in various roles across the roster and there are enough pieces floating around that another deal may potentially be reached to bring in another established guy.
Basically, the mood is different in Buffalo when it comes to their hockey team, and Murray has a lot to do with that. So he absolutely deserves the right to see his trades play out and his draft picks develop because he has, in basically two seasons, made the Sabres relevant again, when they couldn’t have been any more irrelevant when he started.
Things are fluid, especially in the NHL, but ensuring Murray will be the guy to oversee the team for at least the next three years is a great move for the Sabres, and one they should be lauded for.