Fans in favor of a complete teardown of their favorite NHL team should take note of what’s happening right now with the Buffalo Sabres.

Tearing down is easy. The Sabres are proving, again, how hard it is to build back up.

On Thursday, the Sabres completely cleaned house. They fired GM Tim Murray along with coach Dan Bylsma. On Friday, owner Terry Pegula met with the media in Buffalo to try and explain the reasoning and what’s next.

To his credit, he started by taking the blame.

“Accountability starts with me,” he said. “We are not happy with our season this year, and there are no excuses.”

Then, in explaining one of his mistakes since taking over the Sabres, he expressed that he wasn’t hands-on enough in hiring the current regime.

“I can tell you I was not involved in the last GM-coach search to a large extent, and I regret that move,” he said. “That’s all I’m going to say about that.”

It’s a mess.

But the words that Pegula kept coming back to when discussing the Sabres organization were structure, discipline and organization.

“All of that stuff goes together with character,” he said. “You’ve got to have character throughout the organization.”

In other words: culture.

In completely leveling the organization to the absolute roots on Thursday, the Sabres have lost that culture. That’s not to say it was the wrong decision -- the Maple Leafs are doing just fine having gone through the same process. So are the Edmonton Oilers.

Those processes have revealed how that once you’ve stripped things down their core, it’s best to land a generational, franchise-changing center to expedite the process of culture change. Meanwhile, the hockey landscape is littered with rebuilding franchises still waiting for the pingpong ball to fall in their favor to get back to where the Oilers and Maple Leafs have traveled.

The Sabres believe they have that generational player in Jack Eichel, whose production when healthy this year certainly suggested he’s in the same stratosphere as Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews.

But the success of those franchises also can be attributed to strong GM-coach tandems who also believe in culture.

Peter Chiarelli, Lou Lamoriello, Mike Babcock, Todd McLellan -- these are culture guys. These are the kinds of guys who identify what it takes to win and remove the rest. Lamoriello waited too long to rebuild the Devils in large part because he never wanted to lose the mindset of winning at all costs in New Jersey. It’s what makes Lou Lamoriello Lou Lamoriello.

But former Sabres GM Tim Murray’s greatest sin wasn’t related to culture. It was rushing the process, using many of the young assets gathered in the rebuild to bring in veterans before it was the right time. Hindsight has helped provide the perspective that this franchise needed another year collecting and cultivating the young talent so that there would be depth up front and a young defense that matched its forward group.

For example, the first-round pick the Sabres sent to the Senators for Robin Lehner turned out to be Colin White. He’d be a helpful piece in Buffalo. So would Travis Konecny, Sebastian Aho or Brandon Carlo -- other players taken in the same range of that draft. Passing on Charlie McAvoy, Mikhail Sergachev and Jakob Chychrun to grab Alexander Nylander is looking like another mistake, with the defense still in need in Buffalo. We probably wouldn’t be talking about culture if the Sabres’ defense had McAvoy and Carlo manning the back end right now to go with Rasmus Ristolainen and Brendan Guhle. We also wouldn't be talking about culture if Murray had landed Mike Babcock, Steven Stamkos, Jimmy Vesey or other Sabres targets that never came to fruition.

So now Pegula has wiped the slate clean and will try again.

He tipped his hand during Friday’s press conference, suggesting that experience will be a big factor in who he brings in next to run the Sabres. This often happens in personnel moves. If the last hire was the young, inexperienced assistant GM, and that doesn’t pan out, the next hire is often the experienced, veteran general manager -- the pendulum usually takes a swing in the other direction.

But here’s what we also know about Terry and Kim Pegula. They’re progressive thinkers when it comes to utilizing every bit of advancement available to running an organization. They’re generous with their resources. They deserve credit for that, even if it hasn’t come with a payoff yet.

Along with their traditional hockey staffers and slew of scouts, the Sabres also have a coordinator of analytics-related hockey evaluation, an injury prevention specialist, a human science specialist and two applied sports scientists. That’s just what they have listed on their website. Many teams aren’t publicizing the staffers or companies they use in sports science and analytics.

The Pegulas were also early adopters of wearable technology that gathered data on players while they were on the ice. The Sabres’ reputation around the league is one that is completely sold on these advancements.

“They’re all in on that stuff,” said one NHL source Thursday.

So targeting someone with experience is fine, but it also has to be someone who meshes with that philosophy and belief system. In the world of hockey, that’s not always an easy marriage. Perhaps the answer is as simple as Dean Lombardi, who would bring a wealth of experience to the job and who has always kept an open mind about the use of analytics -- even if his decision-making didn’t always follow what analytics suggested would be a wise choice. If we were creating the perfect job for Lombardi, it would be as the full-time GM for the men’s national hockey team at USA Hockey, but that’s another story for another day.

The key will be finding that mix of experience and progressive thought, which is why it would be inaccurate to say the Sabres have limited their list right now. It’s still an open book.

If the Sabres do eventually pass on talented assistant GMs like Nashville’s Paul Fenton, Tampa’s Julien BriseBois, Pittsburgh’s Jason Botterill and Columbus’ Bill Zito in favor of experience, there are two clear targets that make sense among current general managers: Calgary’s Brad Treliving and Arizona’s John Chayka.

Treliving still doesn’t have a contract beyond this season with the Flames, despite reshaping that roster into a playoff contender. He’s the modern GM -- a mix of relentless bird-dogging as a scout and progressive thinking that includes his willingness to use every evaluation tool out there. He’d be a great fit, unless the Flames are smart enough to get him signed quickly.

Chayka is the most interesting name. He has four years left on his contract with Arizona, and seems completely content to see the rebuild in the desert through. But he also has to share personnel decisions with coach Dave Tippett, an arrangement unique to the Coyotes. There remains a cloud of uncertainty on where that team will be playing in the future. In Arizona, Chayka will always have to deal with budget constraints that don’t exist in Buffalo, and he’s a Niagara-area kid. The analytics company that he founded, Stathletes, is based in St. Catharines, Ontario -- 30 minutes from Buffalo. He’d have to at least listen if the Sabres received permission to talk to him. If they’re smart, they’ll try.

But it’s early. Pegula said the timeline to make the hire will depend entirely on how the interview process goes.

“We’re going to move as quickly and efficiently as we can,” he said. “Sometimes you talk to half a dozen or so people and you need to talk to more people. It’s all a function of how our meetings go.”

Time pressures exist thanks to a looming expansion draft and entry draft, so speed is a factor. More important is getting it right.