The Buffalo Sabres are in the final stretch of the 2020-21 regular season with just three games remaining the rest of this week .The Sabres will close out their home portion of the schedule on Tuesday night against the New York Islanders at KeyBank Center, and then wrap up the season with a two-game set with the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday and Saturday.
This stretch will also mark the final three games for Don Granato as the interim head coach of the Sabres.
In 25 games since taking over for Ralph Krueger behind the Buffalo bench, Granato has led his club to an 8-14-3 record, while also dealing with a number of other issues including injuries and the trades of a few roster players before the NHL Trade Deadline.
Granato's 25-game record as the interim head coach may not look all that impressive, but the team has responded well to the tutelage in that time, with a number of players turning their games around and producing despite the season being a lost cause. Players like Casey Mittelstadt, Tage Thompson, Rasmus Asplund, Anders Bjork, Rasmus Dahlin and Henri Jokiharju have all shown significant progress in their game after Krueger was fired as head coach back on March 17.
With three games left in the season, the goal for the Sabres will be to try and play spoiler to the Islanders and Penguins when it comes to playoff seeding. Both teams have clinched berths in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but it will be about trying to take as much out of these final games, while possibly dictating which team will face one another when the postseason gets underway.
Monday night saw the Sabres come-from-behind to take a 4-2 win from the Islanders at KeyBank Center.
It was Sabres forward Sam Reinhart who took over in the third period with an assist on the game-tying goal, and then taking matters into his own hands with the go-ahead goal with just 4:04 remaining in regulation. Reinhart also added an empty-net goal to seal the win, while also registering his 25th goal of the season, which ties a career high.
With the injuries that have depleted the goaltending depth this season, the Sabres were forced to turn to their sixth-string goaltender in Michael Houser, while Stefanos Lekkas backed him up while signed to a professional tryout. Despite the likely nerves of making his first-career National Hockey League start, Houser was poised and composed all night, making 34 saves on 36 shots faced for his first win in the NHL.
As the Sabres get ready to close out their season series with the Islanders on Tuesday, Houser will get the start in goal again, hoping to make it a perfect 2-for-2 in his career at the top level.
Granato took some time on Tuesday to join the "Howard and Jeremy Show" for his final appearance of the 2020-21 season on WGR. He talked about his team's gutsy win on Monday, while also reflecting on his time spent as the interim head coach of the Sabres, and more.
Here is some of what he had to say:
Granato on Houser's win in his NHL debut on Monday:
"We were all excited. I'll be honest, we were all a little nervous as well. As a coach, you put the work in and then when you walk on to the bench, it's like the great unknown at 7 p.m. [ET]. What is going to work that you tried to bring across to the guys, and what may not. Everything worked pretty well by the end of the game last night."
Granato on Reinhart stepping up as a leader on and off the ice:
"He's really taken more initiative. Obviously with Jack [Eichel] out and us in need of that; we lost a lot of veteran presence with the trades of Eric Staal and Taylor Hall, and [Kyle] Okposo going down [due to injury], 'Sammy' has really taken it upon himself to be more in-tune with what the team needed and what the players need. He's been more vocal. He's been more active in-between shifts, on the bench, even in practice as well. That initiative has helped the group, but it has transferred over into his own game.
"He's just feeling it, and he's believing it. He's got that look in his eyes on the bench that, 'I'm ready for my next shift, get me back out there. I can do this. I can get done what we need to get done.' Whether it's offensively or defensively, so he's get a real strong appetite and obviously a lot of confidence right now."
Granato on his time as the interim head coach of the Sabres:
"I certainly don't want to diminish it, but from a learning experience, this has felt extremely natural to be a head coach and to deal with the chaos that's here. There's nothing that's happened that I didn't feel very well-prepared for in a sense of how to react to it, how to communicate to a player, how to react to a situation, or a bad loss or a bad period. I don't know how many games I've coached, but it's over a thousand, and so it's all really the same. It's just a different level."
"I've been very, very comfortable with it all, but I was most nervous when I accepted the position in the first conversation with Kevyn [Adams], the initial conversation there. Because what runs through your head is you know we're in the middle of this [losing] streak, you don't have practice time and you just basically have to snap your fingers because you're playing the next day. How are you going to turn this around? At that point, you know we're going to be [sellers] at the trade deadline. That was a real surge that went through me, but I also felt, 'I know I can do this. I know we can do this as a group, because I know the team is capable of it.' Everything else from that has been really routine."
You can listen to the entire interview below: