A Common Fallacy

...in Gleason's recent frothing is agency displacement, a type of causation error based on a mistaken belief that a party or agent exercises a greater degree of influence or control than actually exists. Such was the case with yesterday's screed, where Gleason attempted to saddle Regier, a General Manager, with responsibility for the Regher/Leopold lineup's failures of defensive mechanics. Whether this is the result of Gleason himself misunderstanding the scope of a modern GM's role, or simply a craven belief on his part that the readership don't understand it (and who cares, so long as he can perpetuate a masturbatory NHL kingbreaker fantasy) is not really all that interesting, though it may be unintentionally amusing on occasion. What matters, for the purposes of repairing the club, is that it is wrong:

1. GMs are responsible for bringing a potentially effective set of talents together in the hope that they will compliment one another's abilities effectively. The GM is not expected to oversee the full range of fiduciary responsibilities to the franchise and be involved in coaching and conditioning; the failure rate among those who have attempted to play both roles simultaneously over the past 30 years speaks for itself, and for why the joint title has not been offered anywhere in some time.

2. Responsibility for failures of defensive mechanics, reflected in both the absurd average SOG/game Miller has faced and a penalty kill percentage that ranks in the bottom sixth of the league, rests with the coaching staff. The GM also does not bear primary responsibility for selecting the personnel who fill assistant coaching roles- that discretion wisely rests with the head coach almost everywhere in the NHL, and it was certainly true here under Lindy Ruff. Ruff has already taken the fall for the dysfunction, and it would be no surprise to us if his hand-selected group of former players behind the bench are also let go come June.

Why won't Gleason acknowledge this organizational reality? Perhaps because he decided to amuse himself on 3/24 by suggesting that a wide range of Sabres alumni should be invited into franchise leadership roles despite the obvious failures of Patrick, Adams and (sadly) Numminen to develop a successful defensive strategy with a team that, on paper, should at least have been able to limit opponent offense to league-average SOG/game. Fine-point evidence of the dysfunction: in his first two games as head coach, Rolston felt it necessary to force the team to play the umbrella, a formation taught at instructional levels and designed to force "offensive-minded" [read: reluctant] defensemen to limit their range of attack while focusing on puck control at the blue line. In other words, it's meant to force defensemen to actually play defense. We lost both of those games, no real surprise since the umbrella requires very strong corner work to produce offensive chances, but they were at least able to reach a level of consistency that had fans talking about whether the 8th playoff spot was within reach.

3. It might be useful for fans to also bear in mind that Rolston, allegedly due to concerns over his own authority as Amerks head coach, decided that he couldn't continue working with Jay McKee at the end of last season despite (or perhaps because of ?) McKee's popularity among players in both the Sabres and Amerks locker rooms (he was reportedly a fixture at training sessions during the lockout). How or whether this bears on his current relationship to the assistant coaches is an interesting question, but it's not actually a situation for which Regier bears fault. Few teams in the modern history of the league have ever been in the position to sweep out an entire coaching staff at once in the middle of a losing season, which makes perfect sense when you stop to consider where the coaching talent would come from. Mass-transplant of coaches from the minors into the NHL is neither a prescription for NHL-level ills nor a likely plan for successful prospect development.

4. Gleason's aforementioned "star chamber" theory for rebuilding the club was proffered with such complete disregard for numerous conflicts of both interest and personality that it would take me another long post to break them down, so I will settle with this: a former player who, by multiple accounts, made himself unwelcome in his own locker room due to an unrelenting need to proselytize his evangelical beliefs is not the person you entrust with player development in a league where recruitment is an international undertaking. Failure to grasp that relatively simple organizational reality speaks to the true scope of Gleason's incompetence as an NHL analyst.