Archie Lee

Sabres have now moved from the “kids are struggling, we can’t sell low” stage, into the “kids are looking good, let’s stay the course” stage.

The two teams don’t seem like a good fit. Up front, the only player Detroit has who does not have trade protection who I would actively want, is Raymond; that’s not happening. Unless Detroit is wanting to reset their forward pipeline by trading us Raymond for one or two of our young forwards++ or something like that (seems ridiculous to even type it though). Rasmussen is the obvious guess. He has three years left after this at $3.2. He turns 26 in April. Is he basically a Greenway replacement? I don’t watch enough Red Wing games. On a Red Wing message-board, Samuelsson for Rasmussen was suggested. I’m not a fan of the idea. Also, knowing Adams, these last two games have served to reinforce his views on patience and on not putting pressure on or blocking kids. Last night we looked like the 22-23 Sabres: young, talented, and playing without the burden of expectations. The middle two lines were fun to watch and there is a world where patience pays off, I think. It didn’t get us close to the playoffs this year though, and next year will be a hope-shot at best.

Agreed. But I don’t see Adams admitting he made a mistake.

I agree with the bolded. Today though, I would say there is a substantially better chance that the lesson Adams learned is to not set any expectations re: playoffs. My bet would be that Adams believes, or will at least claim to believe, that too much pressure was placed on the team by making this a “win-now” year and that he should have stressed trusting the process over arbitrary outcomes. The reset will be to remove winning and playoffs as the standard and simply focus on gradual development and improvement, with there being no timeframe for an outcome that results in making the playoffs. This will, of course, be ridiculous. But I think there is a far greater chance, that the lesson learned is not that the roster was constructed wrong but rather that it was too soon to place any expectations for winning on this group of players.

We started the year with four forwards under 24 years-old in the top-6 and a fifth, Krebs, as the 13th forward. Benson is now on line 3 and Krebs and Kulich have been promoted to line 3. So we now have six of our top-nine forwards under 24. Add in two under 24 D in our top-4 and that’s 9 of our most important 13 skaters who are under 24. The Adams-plan is starting to come into focus. There will be no more talk of playoffs this year (why would there be?). The focus will shift back to how young we are and that we are building for long-term sustainable success. Trust the process. If we aren’t trying to win, nobody will be fired for losing.

I think there should be a 5th option of “they continue losing and stick to the plan”. It is what I think will happen. They won’t lose 13 in a row again, but they will continue to lose more than they win. Also, Adams will keep his job and there will be no indication he has any willingness to move off of his under 24 group of players. We will be San Jose if San Jose had Dahlin and a GM saying they are in win now mode.

No, I was thinking he might be an interim candidate and if not then likely he gets let go at the end of the year with everyone.

I don’t think I have advocated for trading for Pettersson (who isn’t that small actually). I just don’t think adding a personality like Miller would be good for the Sabres. He is an arsonist in my view. A veteran playoff team can absorb his personality for a year or two. In the end he will try to burn it down though. Adding Miller to the Sabres would be throwing gas on a raging fire.

You typically don’t see a GM in pro sports get a 2nd chance with a course correction. The Sabres are legitimately a lottery team this year. This is four years after we drafted 1st overall. We have a legitimate chance to do so again. Two years after missing the playoffs by 1 point and in a year where the GM himself stated we are in win-now-mode. There are many reasons to be terrified of any decision Pegula makes related to the Sabres. Barring a historical turnaround to this season, keeping Adams would just be further evidence that the Sabres continue to not operate like a normal NHL team.

I don’t agree with the “5 years of being bad”. The last two seasons, in my view, could be viewed as reasonable outcomes for a team that entered a tear down in 2020 (not trying to convince anyone to see it this way). There is a big-picture Sabres dysfunction element that Adams has become part of, to be certain. But there were moments the last two off-seasons where this could have gone a different direction and he could have made moves that would have positioned us to be a playoff team and chose not to. The lack of urgency that he has shown when it comes to putting an end to this ridiculous streak, is galling to me.

Solid posts. Thanks for bringing some topics up for discussion. No GM in major-league sports is judged on the “seemed like a good idea at the time” rule. They are judged on outcomes. Adams is trying to thread a needle. He is likely hampered by (charitably) a tight-fisted owner. But his attempt to simultaneously put a playoff team on the ice (his commitment, not mine), while also hoarding futures and not acquiring any older veterans who would require term, has simply been a complete and monumental failure. The Sabres had 8 players under 24 on their roster last night. They have used 12 this year. Anaheim and Chicago both have 7 under 24 players on their roster and have used 10 on the year. San Jose: 6 on the roster and 9 for the year. Adams needs to pick a lane. Are we in year 4 of his ongoing rebuild? Or are we legitimately trying to make the playoffs? Right now he is failing at both and has created an unholy mess.

By the off-season, Peca will either be the Rangers head coach or very available.

Not of this kind. A few more players who are wankers on the ice to the opposition? Yes. A wanker who doesn’t play defence and pouts when things aren’t going well and who doesn’t get along with teammates? No thanks. Trust Jon Cooper on this one.

Miller is weak defensively and a wanker to his teammates. Tampa benched him in the playoffs and could not get rid of him fast enough. He is a skilled player no doubt, but in my view he is an a-hole masquerading as a competitor.

How does every winning team do it? You start by assembling a roster around them that you can win with. This is not on the players. It is on the owner and GM. If we move on from the current core, they will go on to careers like Reinhart and Eichel and Ullmark (I don’t mean Stanley Cups and Vézina trophies, I just mean they will go on to reach their potential elsewhere). It’s time to support the core, not dismantle it.

The Sabres’s roster is basically Anaheim with Rasmus Dahlin. Take Dahlin out with an injury and layer on the expectation of playoffs, and you get a team that looks like the Sabres. They are collapsing under the weight of unreasonable* expectations. * For clarity, I mean it is unreasonable to expect this roster of players to make the playoffs. It is NOT unreasonable to expect the GM to have assembled a playoff calibre roster at this stage of his tenure.

People thought similar things about Reinhart. Not that I think Benson will be that good. Like Reinhart, who was a year older (by birth year) when we drafted him, Benson should have gone back to junior. Reinhart played 4 years in junior including his 19 yr old season, which Benson would be in now. That Benson can hold his own in the NHL is a terrible reason for him to play here. It is a leading example of our GM’s failures.

For sure he could use better linemates, as could Quinn, Kulich and Cozens. Drop any of them on the Dallas Stars or Florida Panthers and they are doing just fine and nobody is arguing that they are holding those teams back. Put 8-9 players in this category on the same team and you are the Anaheim Ducks or Chicago Blackhawks. Put 8-9 players in this category on the same team and add playoff expectations to the mix, and you have the Buffalo Sabres.

Agreed, though I would have no hesitation in including Benson. I have nothing against Benson. I just don’t see that he is the sure thing you see him as (much like I did not think that Quinn was on verge of being a play-driving, 80 point, top 20 NHL winger). I like Benson a lot, I just don’t see him as untouchable. Further, I believe strongly that his presence on the roster the last two years has been a big factor in our demise. Not his play or personality (he’s fine and on balance has held his own in the NHL). But simply the notion that 15 months ago our GM thought adding an 18 year old was part of the solution. The 23-24 off-season of complacency that led to the addition of an 18 year old to our roster, led to the degradation of whatever winning culture they had developed by the end of 22-23. That’s not on Benson obviously. The Sabres are uniquely positioned. They have the youngest roster and one of the best prospect pools in the NHL. They have not one but two former 1st overall d-men who are among the most offensively gifted players at their position in the NHL. They have a legit 40 goal, potentially 50 goal, player in Thompson. They have multiple legit ready to win pieces. And incredibly, the current GM has been so bad at his job going back to May 2023 that we will be picking in the top 5 again. Imagine what a committed owner, a competent GM, and a legit NHL coaching staff could do with this combination of assets. Will we ever find out?

Yep. Not every move Sens management has made has worked, but they make an obvious attempt not just to make slight upgrades on the edges of the roster but to support t their young players by addressing critical needs (see goaltending). Adams is content to upgrade the 4th line.

If the only move is something like Petterson and Desharnais for Cozens and Byram, I don’t think it moves the needle for me. Pettersson is the best player in the trade I think, but we aren’t getting appreciably better (ie: playoffs next year) until we decide to support our core with players ready to play and win in the NHL. If we are still running out a group of not-fully-ready for-prime-time-kids, we are just going to be under-supporting Pettersson instead of Cozens and Byram. And we have seen how that goes.

The players who need support are the ones we have committed to. Thompson, Cozens, Tuch (likely), Peterka (likely), Dahlin, Power, Samuelsson, Byram (likely), and UPL. I’m not opposed to moving one or two in a hockey trade. But we need more McLeods and Zuckers and Greenways and Cliftons and not more Quinns and Kulichs and Bensons. We have lots of prospects and we will be drafting at the top of the draft again. It’s time to move off of some of our youngest players and off of some of our prospects and support the good NHL players we have. It’s actually well past time. This is not an indictment of ours kids and prospects, it’s an indictment of our owner and GM.

I think there is a scenario where you can have a contending team that includes a core of Thompson, Cozens, Tuch, Dahlin, Power, and Luukkonen. While the Sabre have done a poor job supporting there other young players, it is this core who they have failed the lost. This core was ready last year and instead of supporting them with meaningful veteran additions Adams was complacent and neglectful. It is not too late to add to this group and help them win. It will take some courage to move on from 2-4 younger players in order to support the core they had already committed to.

Agreed. I’m not close to writing off Quinn, but he is not playing like someone who can help us win hockey games. I believe that we should have moved one of Quinn/Benson and one of Kulich/Rosen in the off-season for veteran talent. We still should, though I think Quinn and Kulich likely have diminished value (certainly Quinn does). There is no reason to believe this group will be good enough to collectively play roles on a playoff team as soon as next year. In fairness to Quinn, he is playing in about the worst possible environment for a young player who is struggling with his game and his confidence. We have put all of these young players in a position that no other team does. The other teams that are down where we are (in the standings and in average age), are just looking for progression. We have put our kids in a position where they are expected to carry the weight of a 13 year playoff drought and rescue the fortunes of a failing (failed?) franchise. It has proven to be a little much.

I'm not giving up on any of them either. Dahlin, when healthy, is elite. I know there are still moments and stretches that leave us scratching our heads, but at his best his play is sublime. Good management teams (starting with ownership), build championships around players like Dahlin. It can still be done. Power is an elite offensive defenseman. He is on pace for a 54 point season. Do you want to know something shocking? Owen Power is tied for 2nd in the NHL for even strength points for D-men. He is tied with Quinn Hughes at 22 points, 1 point behind Cale Makar. That's not the shocking part. The shocking part is 33 games into this season, Owen Power does not have a single power-play point. Not one. His lack of production on the PP in part comes from being behind Dahlin and splitting remaining time with Byram. The other factor is that the Sabre PP is awful. It is not on the players and it is certainly not on Power. Yes, he needs to find a way to better utilize his size in the D-zone, along the boards, and in front of the net, and he simply needs to become more aware on that side of the puck. But, I doubt that the rest of the NHL looks at Power and sees a defensively weak player who can't be coached to be better. They see a kid who is an NHL top 5-10 offensive talent from the blue-line, whose ceiling has not come close to having been tapped. Byram? See Power, but not quite the same level. Byram is 9th in the league for even strength points for a D-man and has 1 PP point. His potential likewise remains largely untapped. The issue, and this goes back to mismanagement by Adams, may simply be that having 3 left-shot D-men with similar primary skill sets is not how you build a blue-line for the NHL. Moving one (Byram would be the obvious choice), should be an option when it comes to remaking the roster.