Sabres eschew common NHL practice, choose to stay silent

At the end of every NHL season, reporters make one final trek to the rink for a final media availability with players and management. It's locker clean-out day for players and the end-of-season press conference for the front office, and usually the front office updates the media on its plans for the future.

This happens in every NHL city -- everywhere except Buffalo, that is.

For the second time in four seasons, Buffalo's management did not meet with the press at the end of the season. As Mike Harrington of The Buffalo News said in a recent editorial, the Sabres were a team that devoted its year to the future, but management clearly did not have much to say publicly about that future. 

"All of the players spoke but management 'needs to lay low' now," Harrington wrote. "Sabres officials are trying to say General Manager Tim Murray had his end-of-season gathering the night they fired [coach] Ted Nolan but that’s an outright sham."

"The session was called on 45 minutes notice on a Sunday night, undoubtedly to keep the media crowd down. It was exclusively about the firing of the coach. And it was cut off after less than 20 minutes by a club public relations executive."

According to Harrington, The Buffalo News made a formal request the week before the draft lottery to speak with Sabres management. The request was denied. 

Buffalo organizationally does not want to talk, Harrington said. Perhaps they do not want to answer questions about a lost season, but their refusal to do what every other team in the NHL (and virtually every team in professional sports) does at the end of the season is mystifying.

"This is organizational arrogance to the highest degree, from an organization that has no business being so full of itself," Harrington wrote.

(h/t The Buffalo News)

Photo by Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images