Taylor Hall wanted to connect with Ralph Krueger again, so on Sunday morning, hours before he would stun the hockey world by choosing the Buffalo Sabres, he and his old friend chatted on FaceTime.
Following a series of appointments in the Buffalo Sabres’ hockey operations department, General Manager Kevyn Adams’ first prominent test will arrive next month when the NHL holds an unprecedented October draft and free agency.
Access all of the webinars in the NHLCA Mentorship Program here!
NHL coaches can’t really coach right now, since hockey isn’t being played. So they’re spending their newfound time coaching one another. The NHL Coaches’ Association expedited the launch of its mentorship program by six months to accommodate the thousands of coaches stuck inside and looking for enrichment.
Buffalo Sabres head coach Ralph Krueger joined Andi Petrillo on Leafs Lunch. They chatted about how antsy the Sabres are getting to get back on the ice, the season they’ve had thus far, and we heard from Krueger on the recent webinar he hosted for hundreds of coaches.
Ralph Krueger finds himself about as far from an NHL rink as he could be right now, sitting back home with family in Switzerland in a scene he describes as “ghost towns everywhere.”
When Ralph Krueger first arrived in Buffalo back in June, he acknowledged he would need to educate himself on how the National Hockey League had changed during his six-year absence.
He came to Buffalo a relative unknown. When Ralph Krueger was hired as head coach of the Buffalo Sabres, he was not considered a slam-dunk candidate.
“You are trying to make the player into a better player and a better person every time you speak to him,” said Krueger, in his first season as Sabres coach. That was one of the lessons imparted to more than 100 coaches from the Swedish Ice Hockey Association who attended the two-day coaching clinic held here in connection with the Global Series.
Ralph Krueger sees things differently than most people. That’s true in the grandest of schemes with his role as a motivational speaker. It’s true in hockey, too. The Sabres coach has worked all over the world, which has helped him avoid the cookie-cutter mindset that develops when people stay in one place for too long.
No matter what happens during the NHL’s off-season, it’s hard to imagine a more interesting and risky behind-the-bench hire than Buffalo’s decision to bring Ralph Krueger aboard.
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