Hockey Perspective From the Buffalo Sabres HC Don Granato
It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Don Granato .
Let me explain a few (of many) reasons why I’m enamored with the Buffalo Sabres head coach.
Quotes within are from Don’s media availabilities and The Buffalo News and Buffalo’s WGRZ.
Background - Overcoming adversity
Don grew up in a hockey household as a brother to Tony Granato (Wisconsin Men’s HC) and Cammi Granato (HOF women’s player). As a player at Wisconsin, he won an NCAA national championship and had a short professional career in the ECHL. Don immediately got into coaching, was quickly in line to become an NHL coach, but then was diagnosed with cancer.
He beat cancer and went on to coach at the US National Team Development Program (USNTDP), including the absolutely loaded teams with the likes of Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Matthew Tkachuk, Zach Werenski, Charlie McAvoy, Seth Jones, Jacob Trouba, Quinn Hughes, Tage Thompson, Josh Norris, etc.
Don was soon back in the NHL as an assistant with the Sabres. Again, his health became an issue via life-threatening pneumonia in October 2019. Doctors gave him minutes to live unless he was sedated. He woke up two days later.
"It enhances your perspective." - Don Granato
Overcoming that level of adversity truly does enhance perspective quickly. What is Don’s perspective?
Humble & Present
"It's okay to show vulnerability. You know, I don't know everything, and I don't claim to be the greatest coach there is by any means. And I think the players can compensate for my deficiencies."
Don has an elite hockey mind, but understands there is no way any human can possibly have all the answers. Simply put, Don embraces reality and deals with the task at hand and what is in front of him.
"I do have a lot of compassion for guys and want to do whatever I can to help these guys. If they're giving me what they can give us as coaches, you know, they're coming to the rink every day prepared and they're passionate about their sport,"
If you listen to his media availabilities you can feel his passion for never being a victim. He understands self-pity helps no one.
For Don, it’s all about being present on what needs to be accomplished today. Long-term vision with a short-term focus on action to actually make that come to happen.
Development View & Managing the Emotional Wave
As Red Gendron used to say, “90% of the time, the team that gets off the bus with more talent wins.”
While being a serial winner with championships to boot, Don doesn’t win over development. Rather it’s winning through development.
"We do want the best for them when we go to work every day... our job is to make the Buffalo Sabres better. And the winning is going to take care of itself."
Rather than preparing the road for the players, he prepares players for the road ahead. That means constantly giving challenges to players so they can gain experience to learn and grow through.
While it’d be great if progression and development were linear, that is not the case in reality. Don faces this fact head-on and ensures that they never get too high or too low emotionally and are able to cope with whatever comes next.
Most NHL coaches “protect” young players by playing them in sheltered roles and responsibilities, Don goes with the exact opposite approach. He actively places young players in spots where they gain experience against the best players in the world.
This is not the first time Don has turned around a team via development. When he was coaching junior hockey (Green Bay Gamblers, USHL), he selected young players rather than adding older players. While the first season was difficult, his team went on to win the next championship and won the next two regular seasons.
Concepts over Systems. Never cliché
“All those little clichés you hear, Donny doesn’t really use those he just says support each other and play” - Kyle Okposo (Sabres player)
Similar to our Hockey IQ Podcast guest Martin St Louis, Granato coaches concepts and reads first and foremost.
He realizes that coaches don’t play the game and cannot make decisions for players. Rather than “you need to do xyz” in a specific sense, he will often use the best question in hockey, “what did you see?”
The second piece to concepts over systems is fitting the team’s systems to the players at his disposal, as opposed to fitting players into his system. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had”
Practices & Small Area Games
When it comes to using practice to develop players, Don uses fun as the driving force. This translates to players excited about coming to the rink and ready to be challenged physically and mentally. If you watch a practice you’ll see plenty of fun game situations and small area games, not a structured and neat-looking practice. It’s a bit chaotic looking, which is how hockey is played.
One non-negotiable with Don is that players must practice hard. Really hard.
Unlike when most coaches skate their players when practices are going poorly, Don breaks into competitive small area games instead of threats and skating the team.
We do that for 5-6 minutes, it’s amazing when we go back to practice. They’re awake; they’re back awake.
Effectiveness and Efficiency over Talent
One of the biggest misconceptions among players, scouts, agents, and parents is that skill/talent should equal playing time. This is not true. Coaches care about effectiveness and efficiency.
That all we want as coaches, as GMs, we want results. We want to see that a guy is contributing. That’s how we are rating them.
While talent will often get players more opportunities, effectiveness is what continues to allow players to seize and keep that opportunity.
Challenging Players Positively
“I think he challenges everyone,” recalled Tage Thompson.
When Granato took over as head coach, he very deliberately matched his top young players with the other team’s best in order to help them gain those experiences.
"I think a lot of guys, including myself, owe Donnie quite a bit. He challenged me when he took over and pushed me to become a better player. I think it's that simple. A lot of the strides I made are partly because of him pushing me or had a lot to do with him pushing me." - Casey Mittelstadt
When he took over….what did he do? Challenge young players and coach them to their strengths.
A culture that sees all people as flawed is compassionate and forgiving—a safe place that encourages creativity and independence.
"Behind the scenes, we were challenging these guys very, very much, which is a big part of it, because we need them to be better," Granato said.
Transmitting Belief
“Donny’s style is he’s very calm. He’s detailed in the way that he looks at the game we’re playing. … The players clearly trust him and like playing for him. Now, when you have that trust, you can push them because they know that he understands their game and has their back. That’s the relationship that’s important between coach and player. He knows where he wants this team to get to and how we get there.”
A leader/ coach has one major role that is overlooked. Probably because it’s extremely basic and simple:
Transmitting belief to your people.
Without that, nothing is possible. Given everything we’ve looked at (and way more), you can see that Don is transmitting belief to his players. They’d all go through a wall for him because they know he believes in them and transmits the to them consistently.
"But the thing I felt was that he trusted me as a player. He really saw what my potential was, and I felt comfortable playing out there. I wasn't thinking too much." - Rasmus Dahlin
Bonus for those that want more… Recently Don has been on an absolute tear with his press conferences. He gives the answer and goes deep into the why behind it. Tuning in has been like getting a Ph.D. level hockey coaching course. They’re available via YouTube on the Buffalo Sabres channel. We created a playlist on our YouTube channel of our favorite ‘Donny Meatball’ videos.
Further Reading
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