Archie Lee

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.

The Sabres had enough talent to finish with 91 and 84 points the last two years. That's not anything to celebrate, but in aggregate those totals were neither a gross over or under achievement, in my opinion. I believe strongly that what we are seeing today (12 straight losses, on pace for 64 points) is the accumulated sum of GM/ownership complacency, malpractice, and neglect. Only 2 off-seasons ago (2023) the word was that the Sabres were starting to come off of some player's no-trade-clauses. By not being aggressively proactive the past two off-seasons, Adams has set this franchise back yet again. The young players on this team are not ready and the veterans have now lost hope. For the players, it isn't a lack of effort it is a lack of oxygen. On the positive side, I think we are still in the window where it is very fixable (not for this season, obviously). A fire-sale is not needed and nor is a massive overhaul. Adams made an enormous strategic error going into this season with the youngest roster in the league. We had 6 forwards 23 and under on the ice last night (Krebs, Cozens, Peterka, Quinn, Benson, Kulich). Plus Power and Byram on defence. Plus Rosen, Kozak, Johnson, and Levi as first call-ups at their positions. This is as talented of a 23 and under group as there is in the league. But, it is simply not the roster of an NHL playoff team. It wasn't in July 2024 and there is zero reason to think it will be in July 2025. The path is still there. I'm not advocating for the trade of any particular aged 23 and under player. But we simply have too many to be a successful NHL team. Right now, Adams is failing both his veterans and his youngsters by somehow creating an environment where neither can reasonably be expected to thrive. He is the man who created this. He is not the man to fix it.

It's incredible the negative impact that complacency has had on this team. I legitimately feel sorry for the players. I was bitter, at the time, when O'Reilly and Eichel wanted out. Today, I would not begrudge any of our players for publicly stating they don't want to be a part of this any longer.

I don't know. It could it be that our kids are struggling in large part because they are surrounded by too many other kids? Pluck a random 23 and under kid from our roster and put him on Dallas or Florida or Vegas or Washington and I suspect they are not struggling to the same degree? Maybe some, but not all. I'm not about to argue that Granato should have been kept, but it hard for me to square the circle that he was so bad as a coach that over the last two years combined he got this team to within 1 win of DeLuca .500, while Ruff is so good but can't coach the bad habits out of them. In defense of Ruff. This year's team is actually constructed worse. Not directed at you at all, but somewhere between July and today, we went from Ruff's fingerprints being all over the roster changes to this being all on Adams. It is mostly on Adams (and Pegula) to be sure, but clearly Ruff is not the coach who is going to positively reshape our culture.

Yeah. That’s it. Nothing else to learn. Looks great out there

Utter nonsense.