Archie Lee

I think he has a tonne of leverage. He starts by telling Adams he wants out. Then, if he isn’t moved by a certain date, he tells the world. His full NMC kicks in this summer on July 1. So the leverage is, trade him now when his value is high and there are lots of options, or trade him later when he’s pouting and his play sucks and you can only trade him where he wants to go. None of this seems consistent with Dahlin’s personality. But the leverage is there. Now, we could just say no, but the damage would be done. Terry, best to just fire Adams before it come a to this.

It is absolutely bonkers, that Adams looked at Dahlin and Thompson, two star-level, players, and concluded that the best way to serve them and take the next step as a team, was to surround them with kids under 23.

It’s incompetence. Adams isn’t unintelligent, he’s just not a good GM. I stand by my view that the early success post-Eichel (the better than expected outcomes in 21/22 and 22/23) had the adverse impact of convincing Adams he knew what he was doing. He found no reason to deviate from the path he chose, as the path was leading the team in the right direction (54 points to 75 points to 91 points). What he failed to recognize was that the success was driven almost entirely by the emergence of two players. Dahlin and Thompson went from being disappointing performers in 20/21 to star and then near super-star level performers over the next two years. This, I think, insulated Adams from reality. It was my hope that he was capable of learning from the lessons of the setback that was his do-nothing 2023 off-season. Sadly, the sham coach search leading to the Ruff hiring, the lack of any change to the d-corps, and the roll-back of a top-6 featuring Cozens, Peterka, Quinn, and Benson, was evidence that Adams had learned nothing. Now, inexplicably, he is going to get a third chance to show he can adapt and grow, on the job.

I agree. Lots of comments out of Ottawa that their GM, Staios, was not enamoured with Norris’s game. It’s pretty clear that this trade was as much about two teams moving on from players that they no longer had faith in, as it was about them acquiring players that they coveted. With that in mind, it might be more likely this does not go well for either team, than it is that it will be a win/win.

Ok, but if Cozens finds his game in Ottawa, the important variables won’t be the water, or the humidity, or the cuisine. The variables will be the hockey environment: who he plays with, what he’s asked to do, how well he is coached, what the expectations are, etc. If Cozens turns it around in Ottawa, then it means he WAS capable of turning it around and that the reason it wasn’t working here was less Cozens and more Sabres (of course, way too early to conclude anything).

It’s happened twice in hockey, that I recall (Lemieux and Lindros). Not for over 30 years though. There hasn’t been an organization pathetic like the Sabres are, in the 30 years since Lindros. I could be wrong, but I think the national discourse on the Sabres is going to be brutal in the off-season; particularly in the podcast universe, where I think a lot of younger people get their hockey info.

G Great post. Two comments. 1). I’ve been a defender of UPL’s, but I’m not letting him off the hook. He has to be better. No question his poor play has been a significant factor. 2). The one thing I would add to your list, is Ruff. The big selling points for Ruff (aside from the history), were accountability and structure. There have been no signs of increased accountability. For what it’s worth, I never really thought it was an issue. I think the team performed about as reasonably could be expected under Granato. The team’s failures under Granato, were related to their shortcomings (experience, grit, etc.) and not to a lack of commitment, caring or being accountable. As for structure, this was always a myth when it came to Ruff. Last year’s Devils were a great example. Yeah they had injuries and goaltending issues (all Ruff’s recent teams have goaltending issues), but if he had established anything close to the sort of “structure” that we have been told he establishes, the Devils would not have sunk from 3rd overall to 23rd. Teams with “structure” don’t implode in that fashion.

Honest question: how close are the Sabres to having an elite prospect say: “Don’t draft me.”?

RE: Islander d-men, Pelech is, I think, a LHD. Pulock and Mayfield are RHD, but both have full No Trades. I think we will need to look elsewhere.

This isn’t quite true. I understand what you are getting at, but Granato did get a positive result in his first two full seasons. We can revise history (I’m not accusing you of doing this) by ignoring that those teams far overachieved expectations, but the reality is that Granato oversaw back to back seasons where the team had a 20 point followed by a 17 point improvement. The Sabres were expected to be at the very bottom of the NHL in 21-22 and to be nowhere close to the playoffs in 22-23 and they finished much higher in the standings than expected both years. Again, I’m not pounding the table for Granato, but the backslide last year was in no small part due to the putrid off-season Adams had (Erik Johnson and Clifton replacing Lyubushkin and Stillman; that’s it). And the backslide wasn’t huge. Last year, Granato “failed to move the needle”. What’s happening this year is so much worse than “failing to move the needle”. The Sabres are awful. We are moving closer to year two of Krueger level-bad, than to what we were in Granato’s full seasons. It’s not all on Ruff. Some of it is, I think, related to players simply knowing they are defeated. Our GM preached accountability, and then took none on his own shoulders. We are seeing the end result of two years of mismanagement and neglect. Ruff is part of the problem. He is not part of the solution (as a HC anyway).

Peterka only spent one year in the AHL. Quinn spent two...sort of. There was no OHL season in 20-21 and the AHL played a shortened 29 game season with no playoffs. Including the 10 game playoff run in 21-22, Quinn played a total of 70 AHL games and Peterka played 80. I don't think there is any one player that was pushed into the NHL too quickly. More generally, none of Cozens, Krebs, Peterka, Quinn, Benson, and Kulich needed to be in the NHL as soon as they were. With the possible exception of Cozens, since the WHL played a shortened 24 game season in 20-21, there is just no evidence that any would have been hurt by staying in junior, or the AHL for another year before graduating (maybe Cozens, as the WHL played a shortened covid-season in 20-21, that might have provided no value to his development). Collectively, we simply had/have, too many young players on the team at the same time. Better yet, a couple of Peterka, Quinn, Benson, Kulich, and Rosen, should have been traded for veterans over the past two off-seasons. We would still be quite young with a decent prospect pool.

It's going to take some time to sort out if this was a good trade for the Sabres. My one prediction is this: it will become clear fairly quickly that Dylan Cozens was not single-handedly dragging the Sabres down from being a team that could compete to make the playoffs to being a basement dweller.

I did a little research this morning. https://records.nhl.com/records/general-manager-registry In the post-expansion era of the NHL (back to 1967-68), there have been 6 general managers who have made it through their first 5 seasons as GM with one team, without making the playoffs. Max McNab, Washington. McNab was not the Caps 1st GM. He took over in year two and held the job for 6 full seasons before being fired early in year 7. Incredibly, he was later hired by the Devils, where he also never made the playoffs. 11 years total, no playoffs. Eddie Johnson, Pittsburgh. The Pens never made the playoffs in Johnson's 5 years there, from 83-84 through 87-88. He then was hired by Hartford, where he did amake the playoffs 3 years in a row (though the Whalers weren't that good in those years). Mike Milbury, New York Islanders. Milbury did not make the playoffs until his 7th season on the Island. He did not work as a GM again after his time in NY. Don Waddell, Atlanta. Wadell was the GM of the expansion Thrashers. They did not make the playoffs until year 7. He eventually redeemed his reputation with Carolina and now with Columbus*. Doug McLean, Columbus. McLean was the Blue Jackets 1st GM and never made the playoffs in 6 years. He has not worked as a GM since. Steve Yzerman, Detroit. The Wings have not made the playoffs in 6 years under Yzerman. As of today, they are 2 points out of the last WC spot, but are on a 3-6-1 slide. Yzerman did make the playoffs 5 times with the Lightning, including making it to the cup finals in 14-15. Adams will join the list once this season is over. So too might Bill Armstrong in Utah, who has been with Arizona/Utah for the same 5 season stretch; though, Utah is still in the race, 4 points out and playing good hockey at 6-3-1 over the past 10. Basically the 6 can be split into 3 groups. 1.) Guys who worked for expansion teams (McNab, Waddell, McLean). 2.) A local legend who built a great team as a GM in another city and is now getting every benefit of the doubt (Yzerman). 3.) Two men considered among the worst GM's in history (Milbury and Johnson). I will let you slot Adams into the category you think he belongs in; for clarity though, he doesn't qualify for categories 1 and 2. *On Waddell, am I remembering correctly that there was a brief moment this past off-season, before he signed with Columbus, where there was speculation that he was coming to Buffalo as POHO? Or was I just dreaming?

Why the HaHa! I think Benson will be fine. But the situation isn’t great and it’s reasonable for people to have concern about the impact of the Sabre environment on any player (Benson included). It wasn’t long ago that the idea of trading Quinn was openly mocked by people projecting a 40 goal and 80 point season. Things can go south quickly.

I thought that pretty much everyone, both teams, looked flat. There were even a couple of times where a Sabre half did something that would normally have set Bennett off and Bennett just seemed to shrug and skate away. It was an example of two teams who knew the likely outcome in advance and decided, for the most part, to just get through the game without anyone getting hurt. The exception was the 4th line types (Greer/Dunne) who can’t afford to take a night off. Kinda sad to watch.

You are talking about fan expectations. I agree they fell short there. I’m talking about what the people who crunch the numbers thought was realistic for last year’s team. The analytics community was pretty clear in their view that the Sabres overachieved with their 91 point season in 22-23. When Adams did nothing to improve the team that off-season, the point projections for the Sabres for 23-24 were around 83-85, which was where they finished. I remember listening to a podcast where the analysts were saying that the Sabres were the team that most people will disagree with them on, because the Sabres were viewed as up and coming. But the numbers simply did not support they had the talent level of a playoff team.

I don’t have the analytic communities pre-season point projections for the Sabres in front of me. My recollection though is that in Granato’s first two full years we exceeded expectations and then last year we slid back to meeting expectations. It wasn’t like we collapsed last year, we just played more or less to the expected level. I’m not longing for Granato, but in hindsight, from an outcome standpoint, what stands out is not the 23-24 regression but rather that he managed to get this team to 91 points and just short of the playoffs in 22-23. This season, in contrast, has been a disaster. Part of this is likely out of Ruff’s control (it’s not all on Ruff). But for much of the year there was a bit of a narrative that Ruff just needed time to coach the Granato out of the players. It is a bit of a unique outlook to blame the last coach, who produced better outcomes with arguably less to work with, instead of the current coach.

To your first paragraph, could that not also be an argument that it was and remains the coaching? In other words, Donnie and his staff weren’t good and Lindy and his (mostly the same) staff, are no better or worse? Also, we had 62 points last year at the 61 game mark (54 this year).

I think Ruff has done an awful job. The only things I can really say in his defence are that we are too young and inexperienced, and that the general roster make-up is not good enough. It’s possible that we are, as much as bad coaching, watching the collapse of a fragile team’s confidence as caused by the GM’s failure to address roster shortcomings; ie: Scotty Bowman in his prime wouldn’t get this team close to the playoffs. But, I think we have been much worse than we should be. I reject arguments that Ruff is undoing the bad habits from the Granato-era or that we have a bunch of privileged punks who never had to play defence and are struggling to adapt to Ruff’s system. It shouldn’t take this long to address those issues, to the extent that they are even a thing (which I don’t think they are). Ruff has been murder on goalies, going back to his time in Dallas. Perhaps it’s coincidence, but that seems highly unlikely. In a vacuum, if I could change only one area this off-season, choosing from changing the management team, to changing the coaching staff, to major roster changes, I would change the coaching staff.

I agree with all of this. I also think that in Buffalo he was carrying the additional weight of being one of the few players who would stand up for a teammate. I realize the last game he played as a Sabre has clouded that a bit, but the reality is that Cozens was one of the few who would step up. Further, willing as he is, he's not a great fighter. I think his playing style may have been neutered, to a degree, by the realization that nobody was coming to his rescue (I think this is true for many of our players actually). I'm expecting a short-term bump from Cozens. I'm not making predictions on his ability to sustain it though. He will have more teammates in Ottawa who will drag him into the fight though, and more that he can drag with him too.

I wouldn't trade our 1st rd pick this year, for all the reasons you have expressed. I guess I should qualify that by saying if a team was willing to trade us a legit 1st line all-star level player who is under 28 and signed long-term, then I would consider it, but we know that isn't happening. My view is that we are in the position we are in because Adams has not moved quickly enough to trade the assets he has already drafted. I'm not sure why this is. He has to know that there is no room for all of them and, of course, that not all will meet the level of promise that they held on draft day. He has failed, for lack of a better term, to properly "layer" our young players. I don't want to quibble over the specifics of which of our young players, starting with Adams's first draft, should or should not be traded; what I think is true is that he should have traded more than just Savoie (I'm not counting Josh Bloom). In my view, at least two of Quinn, Peterka, Rosen, Kulich, Benson, should have been dealt in the last two off-seasons, for veteran players. There is no guarantee that the trades would have been good with the desired outcome, but not making such moves has made it nearly impossible for us to take the step that was needed to be a playoff team. And, it has had the additional negative impact of causing diminished asset value. Barring an unrealistic trade offer for our 1st rd pick, we need to keep the pick as it gives us a rare opportunity to get a star level forward. And it affords us yet another opportunity to move 2-3 of the young players I mentioned, without gutting our prospect pool. If we trade Peterka, Quinn, and Rosen, as examples only, we would still have Benson, Kulich, the prospects in Rochester, and the forward we draft with the top 5 pick. If managed properly, we are in no immediate danger of draining the good young forwards from our pipeline.

It was a year ago, so I understand the memory-fog on this. But, Pronman didn't grade Colorado an A+ on that deal. The Athletic typically has two writers grade a trade. The writer who gave Colorado an A+ on the Byram/Mittelstadt trade was Duhatschek; he gave Buffalo a B. Pronman gave Colorado a B-, and the Sabres a B+. He correctly identified, I think, that Byram is the better player. His trade grade was close, on my read, because he thought Colorado was getting what they needed in the moment and because Byram's injury history made him a riskier acquisition (than Mittelstadt).

Then why not just say that?

They certainly have flexibility, if that is what you mean. This is because they have several pending RFA's, and none of the players they have under contract have meaningful trade protection (Dahlin's NMC kicks in July 1, I think). But then, I didn't say or imply that they have no flexibility. I said they have no room to make a meaningful addition without moving out a larger contract. A few additional things in response: - With Greenway and Zucker extended, the Sabres have no prominent UFAs. Their only current NHL players who are UFAs are Reimer and Bryson. - Aside from Byram's $3.8 million expiring deal, the Sabres have no bigger contracts coming off the books; and I assume for now that the intent is to extend Byram. - The cap-hit on the Skinner buyout increases from $1.44 million to $4.44 million this coming year - Per PuckPedia, the Sabres have 15 NHL players under contract for next season with a projected cap hit of $71.39 million; that includes Skinner's cap hit - That leaves the Sabres with 8 roster spots to fill with 24.11 million in cap space - RFA's are Peterka, McLeod, Quinn, Byram, and Bernard-Docker. - AFP Analytics 25-26 contract projections puts the range for the extensions of these players, between $17.6 million and $22.4 million. My opinion is that they are low on their projections for McLeod and Peterka, and high on their projection for Quinn - If you extend our RFA's with conservative projections, splitting the difference at $20 million, it leaves the Sabres with 20 roster spots filled and a cap hit of $91.39 million. Add a goalie (Levi?) and a couple of 4th pairing D-men (Johnson and Bryson?) on low-level contracts and the Sabres are at $94 million As I stated, there is no room to add a meaningful player this off-season without moving out a prominent player or significant contract. The most certainly do not have "plenty of room to add to the roster", without moving existing players.

I agree. There are lots of coaches with new teams this year, who got their systems in place pretty early. I reject that our players are incapable.