BUFFALO, N.Y. — No one likes a canceled flight, unless it means catching a ride home with an NFL coach.
And that's exactly how West Seneca native Jason Guenther spent his Sunday evening. Guenther was hoping to get home to Buffalo when his flight was canceled, leaving him and several others stranded at the Atlanta airport. One of those people happened to be Sean McDermott, head coach of the Buffalo Bills returning home from his daughter's softball game.
"We were supposed to take the 325 from Atlanta to Buffalo that got eventually canceled. I saw Sean McDermott, I talked to him for a little bit and then we kind of went our separate ways," said Guenther.
After neither made the standby plane, however, they met again on the Delta line and decided to find their own way home.
"He heard other people talking about it. So Sean had booked his flight first and then I did it and then he's like, yeah, if you can get on the flight, we can rent a car and, you know, we can go home together." Guenther said.
The pair ended up catching a flight to Pittsburgh first, then renting a car together to make the 3½ hour trip back to Buffalo. During the trip, they discussed things like coaching, sports, previous careers, and more. Part of what made the trip so comfortable, Guenther notes was how much it felt like talking with "a regular guy."
"We just started talking about coaching life, just everything, it was like I knew him for years. I don't idealize people so it was just a normal person. I think that's why he felt comfortable taking me. Because I'm not, you know, some super fan. I respect him as a coach." he said.
As a coach himself for the Nichols high school hockey team, Guenther bonded with McDermott over what they found were similar coaching philosophies. He admires the care that the Bills coach has for the people he works with, describing his respectful nature as part of "why the Bills are doing so successfully."
"I like his coaching style, and admire his player-coach to player first mentality. If you coach the individual, the player, then it translates into winning. So he just builds a really good culture and he really, you know, he's done what people said he couldn't do in Buffalo. Hopefully, we take it all the way to the Super Bowl this year." he said.
Going forward, he plans to take some of what he learned from his unexpected road trip with the Bills coach and apply it to his own practice. As a hockey travel coach and skills instructor, he's got plenty of time in the rink to do it.
"I'm on the ice about 40 hours a week and I can't get enough of it. So I'm going to take a lot of that, what he told me what we talked about. And you know, take some pieces to put into my coaching philosophy, raise the bar a little bit so I can someday be half the coach that Sean is." he said.