'He's there now' | How Don Granato earned the Sabres' head coaching job

Don Granato felt out of place as he quietly stepped into a banquet room full of former Buffalo Sabres.
Granato, about to begin his first season as an assistant coach with the Sabres in 2019, had been instructed to stop by the gathering prior to the Sabres' annual Alumni Golf Tournament at Park Country Club. He felt stares from alumni attempting to identify the outsider who had stepped into their room.
The uneasy feeling lifted after Granato introduced himself to alumni association president Rob Ray, prompting a welcome reception from the former Sabres in attendance. But the sense of pride he felt among those in the room remained at the forefront of his mind when he was appointed as interim head coach a year and half later.

"I remember the feeling like it was yesterday," Granato said. "I didn't feel like I belonged in that room. Here's a room full of alumni, of guys who had blocked shots and sacrificed, and their families sacrificed. [They] took punches to the face to be a Sabre. You could see the pride and sense that they still had even as I walked in that room.
"When Kevyn offered me the position of interim head coach, I wanted that. That was on the core of everything that I wanted to try and bring to our team, to find a way to try and get our players to experience something like that, to play for something greater than just themselves."
Granato will have the opportunity to continue to foster that attitude after being introduced as Buffalo's full-time head coach on Thursday. The hire came after a lengthy, exhaustive search in which general manager Kevyn Adams met with candidates from various leagues around the globe.
That due diligence proved to be a worthwhile learning experience. But as the process continued, Adams felt strongly that the Sabres already had the right man for the job. Granato, meanwhile, never considered pursuing another vacancy.
"This is the position I wanted to be in," he said.

A hockey environment

Granato grew up one of six siblings in Downers Grove, Illinois, a village located 22 miles west of Chicago. His parents, Don Sr. and Natalie, had their first date at a Blackhawks game.
It was alongside his siblings that Don Jr. first displayed a knack for coaching. He organized basement tournaments, going so far as to use stencils and a ruler to carefully create brackets. He collected VHS tapes of Wayne Gretzky and used them to splice together highlights and encouraged his siblings to use a slideboard - a tool designed for speed skating - to conduct stickhandling drills.
"Looking back, he was already a coach before he knew he was a coach," his younger sister, Cammi, said.
Cammi went on to have a Hall of Fame career with USA Hockey, captaining the United States to a gold medal at the 1998 Olympic Games. Brothers Tony, Rob, and Don Jr. all went on to play collegiately at the University of Wisconsin. Tony went on to a long career playing and coaching in the NHL before taking the head coach job at his alma mater, where he resides today.
But while hockey was the primary focus in the Granato household, it was less so in the area where the siblings grew up. Don finished high school in Burnsville, Minnesota and recalls being awestruck by how hockey dominated the area's attention.
It's the same way he feels about coaching in Buffalo.
"The demand of the challenge is what excites me," he said. "To walk in, I fully believe we have a huge opportunity right in front of us. I think our players have started to grasp that with excitement and energy. So, the demand of Sabre fans, the demand of our hockey community is right where I want to be.
"I love that. You play the game and you go to bed at night for years and years and years as a kid and then a coach, even as a manger, and you just want to be in a hockey environment where people appreciate hockey and winning. I feel I couldn't ask for more in that regard."

Getting out of the way

Don's cerebral perspective became a source of comfort for Cammi during her playing career, when she would often look to her brother for advice during rigorous Olympic camps in Lake Placid or at times when she felt she was underperforming.
One piece of advice carried a bit of irony coming from a man who has coached hockey for three decades.
"I remember him one time telling me, 'You can't have the coach out on the ice with you,'" Cammi said. "If you're worried about what he's thinking when you're on the ice, you're not going to play well. So, you've got to take that away."
That philosophy came into play early on during Granato's stint as interim head coach. Granato took over on March 17 with the Sabres mired in franchise-record winless streak that would soon reach 18 games.
The team found itself in position to snap the streak in Philadelphia on March 31, carrying a three-goal lead into the second intermission. Granato did not address his players ahead of the third period, opting instead to turn control of the dressing room over to them.
"A lot of coaching is getting out of the way," he said that night.
The Sabres held on to win, 6-1. The move foreshadowed Granato's approach with a young roster. He would challenge his players but also empower them.
The approach was familiar to Cammi, who remembers her brother reading books by John Wooden and taking a keen interest in the psychological aspects of coaching.
"When you feel like you have a good relationship with your coach - and I know this by experience - you feel empowered to play and just be yourself," she said. "You can make a mistake and know it's not being dissected that way. … They give you the freedom to play to the best of your abilities."
Such was the approach Granato took with Rasmus Dahlin, the highly talented defenseman who had admittedly struggled through the first part of the season. Granato gave Dahlin the green light to play to his instincts while challenging him with the most minutes of any Sabres player after April 1.
Dahlin was among a group of players who excelled while being challenged with top-line or top-pair responsibilities. Tage Thompson, Casey Mittelstadt, and Rasmus Asplund were united as linemates and enjoyed the most productive stretches of their young careers. Dylan Cozens was trusted to play his natural position of center against the likes of Nicklas Backstrom and Sidney Crosby.
Granato implemented a possession-based style on the ice that would be entertaining for fans and players alike. Even when he pushed them with exhausting practices or cut individual ice times, players kept sight of the fact that he had their best interest at heart.

"I think he challenges everyone," said Thompson, who was demoted from the Mittelstadt line for a brief stretch late in the season. "I think that's what we need. I think that says a lot about him. Obviously, he sees a lot in us and knows what we're capable of and holds us to a higher standard.
"I think, for me personally, some of the things he was preaching was just being consistent every single night and being able to take over games. I know we both believed that I'm capable of that."

The right time

Cammi Granato never heard her brother complain about the long wait he endured before becoming an NHL head coach, even when a bout with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2005 slowed what to that point had appeared to be an NHL trajectory.
Don, by that point, had won championships at the USHL and ECHL levels and had an AHL Coach of the Year award to his name. He would make six more stops across 13 years before arriving in Buffalo, including two turns as an NHL assistant and an invaluable five-year stint coaching the country's premier young talent with the U.S. National Team Development Program.
He almost never made it. Prior to the start of his first season in Buffalo - just over a month after his appearance at the Alumni Golf Tournament - Granato was hospitalized with severe pneumonia triggered by a bacterial infection in his blood. Doctors at Buffalo General told him he had minutes to live unless they sedated him. He woke up two days later.
When he re-joined the Sabres that November, he spoke about how the perspective he gained from the experience only amplified his appreciation for his job - the same appreciation that kept him patient with each passing stop, certain his shot to lead an NHL bench would come eventually.
Now that he's made it, he feels he's right where he belongs.
"It feels like he's deserving," Cammi said. "I think he was deserving of it before, but I think it just puts into perspective how precious life is and the elation, the joy we have for him to have this opportunity that he was destined to do at some point.
"He's there now."