Krueger fine with being unknown
Buffalo’s new head coach brings a vast experience in hockey, soccer and life
Ralph Krueger doesn’t care if you have never heard of him.
Having just turned 60, the Buffalo Sabres’ new coach leans on the benefit of his vast experience — in hockey, soccer, and life as a father, husband, author and motivational speaker — to have stopped worrying a long time ago about how others view him and whether he might have something to prove returning to the NHL following a six-year absence.
“I don’t care about that at all. Not one second, not even a millisecond do I care about my popularity here,” Krueger emphatically said this month.
“I have zero fear in this job because I have nothing to prove to anybody other than I want this team to be successful and give back to the city,” he added. “But it’s not that I’m out to prove to people that I was an out-of-the-box hire.”
This off-season’s NHL coaching carousel featured seven changes. While it had the Florida Panthers landing the most highly-prized candidate in three-time Stanley Cup champion Joel Quenneville, the Sabres took the most intriguing approach in hiring Krueger to turn things around.
The other changes have Dallas Eakins in Anaheim, Dave Tippett in Edmonton, Todd McLellan in Los Angeles, D.J. Smith in Ottawa and Alain Vigneault in Philadelphia.
In Buffalo, the Sabres essentially split the middle in choosing between hiring a so-called retread versus a first-timer by luring Krueger back to hockey after he spent the past five years running soccer’s Southampton FC of the English Premier League.
The Winnipeg native is not exactly a fresh new face, though he is highly respected for the quarter-century spent in hockey on both sides of the Atlantic. He has coached Switzerland’s national team, led Team Europe to a second-place finish at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, and was as a consultant for Canada’s gold-medal team at the 2014 Winter Games.
He’s also not exactly a recycled entity either, despite having spent 2012-13 coaching the Edmonton Oilers before being fired — via Skype of all things — following a 19-22-7 finish.
If Quenneville benefits from having instant recognition when walking into a locker room, Krueger focused on making a good impression on a Sabres lineup featuring a majority of players who weren’t in the NHL when he was in Edmonton.
He began by reaching out to players by phone or personally, such as visiting with captain Jack Eichel and forward Sam Reinhart in Slovakia, where they competed at the world championships in May.
And Krueger then gripped his players’ attention during a precamp-opening speech that forward Kyle Okposo said was so impassioned several of his teammates were ready to run through a wall afterward.
Though Krueger prides himself for being always upbeat, that doesn’t mean he’ll avoid being critical.
“I’m not a smiley, friendly guy,” he said.
“Positive isn’t always friendly. Positive is constructive. Positive is working toward solutions. So if a player gets sent down, there’s an opportunity for him, too. And we’ll be clear on why and what has to be worked on.”