The two geniuses that were chased out of Buffalo

Where would the two Buffalo teams be right now? If the Sabres hadn’t fired John Muckler and Bills owner hadn’t canned Bill Polian, just how would the Buffalo teams have fared the past decade?

Right now, the two former Buffalo General Managers have built their two respective teams into juggernauts. Muckler has the cream of the crop in his Ottawa Senators. To be fair, Muckler took over a team that was already a good one, but added the right ingredients and now the Senators are practically unstoppable. The same can be said, and even more, about Bill Polian’s Indianapolis Colts. The Colts are 12-0 and are fast approaching the dream season only accomplished by the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

John Muckler was hired by the Buffalo Sabres originally as the director of hockey operations. Before he came to Buffalo, Muckler was an assistant coach for the Edmonton Oilers Stanley Cup teams in 1984 and 1985. In 1990, he was the Oilers head coach and led them to the Stanley Cup championship once again.

With the Sabres, Muckler spent a couple years behind the bench and was also the team’s GM from 1993 until he was chased out of town. It was during the successful 1996-97 season when coach Ted Nolan led the Sabres to the top spot in the Eastern Conference that he was named the NHL executive of the year by The Sporting News. Muckler and Nolan had been arguing the entire season and didn’t see eye-to-eye. It centered around Dominik Hasek’s problems with the Sabres coach and it finally ended with both Muckler and Nolan leaving the team after the season. Muckler quickly found a job with the New York Rangers from 1997-2000 as their head coach.

On June 12, 2002, Muckler joined the Ottawa Senators as their new general manager. Since then, he has worked wonders with the Sens and has them primed to go all the way to the Stanley Cup finals this season.

Muckler was dead serious in getting the Senators the talent to finally get over the huge hump in the playoff road that blocked them year in and year out...the Leafs. Muckler purchased a couple of Leaf blowers and one big Leaf stopper. First, Muckler fired long-time coach Jacques Martin after the Sens were kicked out of the playoffs the last time by the Leafs and this summer replaced him with Bryan Murray. Next on the things to do list was getting a good goaltender who would be able to come up big when it counted the most. He went to retired former Vezina Trophy winner Dominik Hasek. Muckler and Hasek went back to the Buffalo days when the Czech goalie was in his glory. So far the experiment with the 40-year old Hall of Fame-bound goalie is a huge success. Hasek, after having a groin operation to finally fix his perennial problem, has been back to his old form, to the delight of Muckler and the Sens fans.

An even bigger move was signing free agent Marian Hossa to a huge contract and then turning around trading him to Atlanta for Dany Heatley. Heatley has been a ball of fire so far this season with the Senators. In 25 games, Heatley has 19 goals and 22 assists.

The Senators were the first team to break the 100-goal mark and are on pace to get an all-time high 138 points. After 25 games, the Sens were 21-4 with 42 points. Their most lopsided win was in Buffalo’s HSBC Arena, which used to be a house of horrors for the Senators. The Senators blasted the Sabres 10-4 and Muckler’s new team made a bold statement to his former team.

Bill Polian is another sports mastermind that was chased out of town. Polian first became the Bills general manager back on December 30, 1985. The Bills had suffered two straight 2-14 seasons and Polian built the team up to become the most dominant team ever in the NFL’s AFC conference.

In his first year, Polian really went to work in rebuilding the team from the ground up. First, he talked Jim Kelly into coming to Buffalo after the Bills former #1 pick refused to play in Buffalo and joined the USFL for a couple years. During that 1986 season the Bills had a rough start with head coach Hank Bullough, and Polian brought in an old friend Marv Levy to rescue the team. The next couple years, Polian got busy drafting some outstanding players such as Bruce Smith, Nate Oddoms, Shane Conlon, Thurman Thomas and working out a deal that brought Cornelius Bennett to Buffalo. While working closely with Marv Levy, Polian made a recipe that was molded into the best team Buffalo ever had. The Bills went to four straight Super Bowls and the handwriting of Polian was all over those teams. Polian was named the NFL Executive of the Year Award in 1988 and in 1991.

Polian was very outspoken and even once told the Buffalo fans to "get outta town" if they didn’t like how the team was being run. His brash manner often got him into trouble with the two people over him in the organization, Ralph Wilson and team treasurer Jeff Littmann. Because of a situation between Polian and Littmann as fiery as the Muckler-Nolan feud, Polian was let go as the Bills GM on February 4, 1993 to the shock of the Bills Nation.

Polian then went to the expansion Carolina Panthers and molded a great team in almost an instant. In just their second year of existence, the Panthers just missed out in making it to the Super Bowl, losing in the NFC Championship game. For his efforts, Polian was once again named the NFL Executive of the Year. Bills fans were fuming over the loss of Polian even more as the team started to head to the bottom of the pack.

With his success in turning around the Panthers so quickly, a golden carrot was offered Polian by the Indianapolis Colts owner Robert Irsay. He offered Polian the keys to the Colts car...President and GM if he would sign on the contract he was holding. Suddenly, Polian was now wearing the Colts logo on his jacket. He has turned the Colts into a smooth running machine, one that has finally vaulted ahead of the New England Patriots and are on the verge of repeating the feat only the Miami Dolphins have accomplished, a perfect season.

But all the success hasn’t curbed Polian’s vibrant emotions or his mouth. With the Patriots having a curse on the Colts for the past few years in the post season (similar to the Toronto Maple Leafs curse on the Ottawa Senators the past 10 years in the playoffs), Polian really wanted to win the Colts matchup with the Pats as badly as he ever wanted to win a game. Polian got so wiled up that he made a scene in the press box when the Pats and Colts locked horns earlier this season. His boisterous rants could not be ignored by the Patriots media two rows below the raucous Polian. The reporters for the Providence Journal took exception to Polian’s antics and wrote an article the next day called "Press-box sideshow," written by The Journal's Tom Curran. Polian was upset when Pats backup QB Doug Flutie decided to rollout on one final play before the clock ran out and Polian shouted "break his leg." That was the last of a night of outbursts by the Colts President where he continuously pounded the table in front of him, tossing his notebook, punching a his left fist into the air, leaping from his seat and "cursing unintelligibly under his breath."

It seems that Polian hasn’t lost his youthful vigor.

When asked to compare his current undefeated Colts team to those 4 Super Bowl Bills teams, Polian says, "We have not achieved what those Bills teams achieved. No one is ever going to go to four straight Super Bowls again. You cannot make a legitimate comparison in terms of team achievements until we equal what they did, at least one time."

Polian does go into greater detail when comparing the coach from that great Bills team and the one directing his current Colts. Tony Dungy draws a very close comparison to Levy.

"Both coaches are amazingly similar," remarked Polian. "Intelligence, modesty, sincerity, clarity of thought, of speech. Ability to focus a team and their approach to the game. The approach is eerily similar."

"Marv always preached that if you picked the right people and gave them direction, the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts," Polian went on. "That was a special group with a special bond, and if you were around them for any length of time, you realized that.

"I think we have people here (in Indy) who could do it. If there's anything comparable, it might be that. I'm seeing that. Yes I am."

During his farewell speech in Buffalo after Wilson fired him, Polian said this about the team he had forged, "They're a very special group of men. Cherish them, you will not see their like again."

The Bills fans now see his words as dogma. The Bills haven’t made the playoffs since 1999 and haven’t been to the AFC Championship game since the year after he left.

Both the Bills and Sabres fans wish that neither Muckler nor Polian had gotten run out of town. They can only dream of the championships denied them because of the shallow thinking of the Sabres and Bills owners.

Copyright © 2005 Bills Thunder & Rick Anderson, all rights reserved.