from Jerry Sullivan of the Buffalo News,

This was a crushing blow for Pegula and Co. I'm not going to be phony about it. I was prepared with a column that said Babcock would be huge get for the Sabres and the city, further evidence that Pegula was making Western New York a destination for free agents.

Coming on the heels of the Rex Ryan hire, landing Babcock would have given Pegula the top two coaching free agents in the NFL and NHL. You could have argued that little Buffalo possessed the most dynamic head coaching tandem of any American professional sports city.

This shows that Pegula's money can't buy everything (including a quarterback). I haven't heard the financial details. Maybe the Maple Leafs didn't have to outbid Pegula to get their man. But it certainly looks as though Babcock didn't find the Sabres' situation quite so enticing as Buffalo fans had assumed.

Reports had Babcock turning away from the Maple Leafs as recently as Tuesday. The prevailing wisdom said they were too far away from being a true Stanley Cup contender. They didn't have enough promising young centers, or top players in the pipeline of any sort. They don't even have a general manager in place.

Some felt Babcock would be committing career suicide by going to Toronto, where he would join the long list of coaches and executives who couldn't turn the Laffs around and wound up getting skewered by the media.

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