Archie Lee

Yep. These scenarios never end with the GM who hasn’t figured it out in 5 years, suddenly doing so and going on to glory. Everywhere you look in the East teams are making front office or coaching moves with the intent of improving. The Rangers and Flyers didn’t bring in Sullivan and Tocchet for prolonged rebuilds. The Bruins made clear to their fans that losing is not acceptable. Columbus has $40 million in cap space and one, maybe two, free agents they would really want back; I’m not sure what they will do, but odds are they will do more than the equivalent of signing Erik Johnson and Connor Clifton. Montreal, Ottawa, and Detroit have passed us. Could that be fleeting? Maybe. But what has Adams done to have any confidence he will out manoeuvre Gorton/Hughes or Staios or Yzerman this off-season? Carolina has more cap space than us. So does Toronto. The best free agents will not be choosing the Sabres. At the end of last season, for the first time under Adams, there were reports of unrest amongst Sabres players. They are not dumb and they can see what other franchises are doing and how winning is valued elsewhere. If this season doesn’t start well, things will quickly implode.

If Adams was fired today and Dudley was hired as a senior advisor to help Pegula find a new GM, that would be amazing. Adding Dudley to advise Adams though, would only give me hope because Dudley might eventually get Pegula’s ear and explain that big changes need to be made. It would give me no hope for a quick turnaround . The scenario that is unfolding, has disaster written all over it. Adams and Ruff are, demonstrably, among the current worst to hold jobs in their respective positions in the NHL. And they are lame ducks. And players know, generally speaking, that the rest of the league looks at Sabre players and thinks they are likely better than what they have shown in Buffalo. If and when things start to go south, the booing will start and there will be zero motivation for the average Sabre player to lay it on the line for the current regime. Team failure will mean a new GM/HC and/or individual players being sent to a new team. Losing this year will be a no lose situation for many key Sabre players.

Another way of looking at is that he won 2 playoff series in the last 3 years. Over the last 3 playoffs, only 5 NHL teams have won more playoff games than the Leafs. Four of them are still playing. The other is Vegas.

The three veteran defenders that I would add, are Andersson, Ceci, and Ferraro. It’s not necessarily about being more talented as it is about being better balanced. Dahlin / Andersson Power / Ceci Ferraro / B Docker it actually would come in a little lower in salary than this past year’s group (including Jokiharju). Of course, if these D-men are available then they will be coveted by multiple teams. Also, I’m not convinced that any realistic moves will make a difference. I suspect we will continue to struggle defensively with whoever we add to the backend, so long as Ruff is HC and no new assistant is brought in to manage our d-structure.

I haven’t seen any rumours, but I assume the Rangers are going to try and move Kreider. They found ways to move Goodrow and Trouba. Their cap issues would mostly be resolved if they can trade Kreider.

There have been four signed offer sheets in the last 12 years. The Sabres have never successfully offer-sheeted a player (have they ever tried?). Last year's two signed sheets were quite narrow in their set of circumstances. For the Sabres to successfully offer-sheet a coveted player this off-season, would require them to move out equivalent value contract(s) for picks/prospects/nothing. Adams has shown no aptitude for the kind of roster maneuvering that would be required to do this. I don't think you need to worry about our 2026 1st being used in an offer-sheet this summer.

I wholly agree. Pegula took a shot on a bright young guy with somewhat of a related background. For a brief period (21-22 to 22-23), it seemed he might have been onto something. Then it went south. It’s time to take another shot at it. Maybe it’s a veteran guy and maybe it’s a newbie. There is no model guaranteed to succeed.

Mitch Love, Todd Nelson, Glen Gulutzan, Marco Sturm. This shouldn’t be complicated. There are no guarantees. We are not bringing Jim Nill and Peter DeBoer over from Dallas. When Adams and Ruff are gone (and they will be gone barring an unlikely 89 point WC2 finish that gets them multi-year extensions), the Sabres will be moving on to a new unproven GM. Every day that the Sabres don’t try to find their Nill, Cheveldayoff, Brind’Amour, or Carbery, is just a day wasted by putting off the inevitable. Adams is not going to be the first GM in NHL history to finally figure it out after 5 seasons of missing the playoffs with one team.

You’re right. In reality, I would prefer Adams and Lou to just Adams. I just hate that Adams now gets to become his own reclamation project, and gets to hire his own Advisor and Assistant. If Adams were fired and Rob Blake hired and Blake announced that he was bringing in Lou as a Senior Advisor, because what Gm in his right mind would not want to learn whatever he can from Lou, I would be over the moon with excitement. With Adams, it is all just a lame-duck-in-over-his-head-GM clinging to the only job he is going to have in the NHL (unless Pegula keeps him on in some capacity).

I know we are looking for solutions and not problems, but Barzal has a 22 team no trade list. He most likely did not negotiate this only to have the Sabres as one of the 9 teams he would be willing to go to.

What’s weird to me, is that you would think the Bills’ success would make it easy for Pegula to attract a good hockey man. Why can’t he approach someone like Rob Blake and just explain that he just hasn’t found a Beane or McDermott on the hockey side and that he thinks Blake could be that guy and the plan is to just stay out of the way. Give Blake a 4-5 year $20-$25 million contract and tell him to go out and find our young Montgomery or DeBoer or Cassidy. It should not be complicated.

I like the idea of Lou as a senior advisor only slightly more than I like the idea of Kevyn Adams staying on as GM, which means I really hate it. But, this is who you get as senior advisors: Either a recent GM who wants to get back in, or a really old guy who is driven by nothing but hockey and who just wants to stay involved in some capacity. I guess my big concern with Lou is that he advises Adams to be more bold. I mean, maybe the one positive thing about Adams and his general state of reluctance to make big moves, is that it has actually prevented more bad than good. If Lou’s impact is for Adams to be more bold, is that a good thing? Maybe. But maybe the best we can hope for is to survive this season with minimal damage and then move on to a new regime.

We could, but it is nearly impossible to imagine Adams doing so. Also, we don’t have our 2nd in 2026 (included in the Norris trade), which limits the options.

I don’t disagree with this. Better is better. But, how much of Samuelsson and Clifton being bad is coaching and system related? How much better would they be on Dallas? I look around the playoffs and see all kinds of d-men who were seen as journeymen, castoffs, not good enough, in some cases by the Sabres (Stecher, Klingberg, Sandin, Benoit, McCabe, Lyubushkin, Ceci, Petrovic, Collin Miller, Gostisbehere, Schmidt, Kulikov, Mikkola). It feels a little to me like our need to improve the 4th line and then watching Okposo win a cup and Robinson and Girgensens play in the playoffs while Malenstyn, Lafferty, and Aubé-Kubel all underwhelm (to be charitable). I’m not advocating for no player changes. I’m just skeptical that the talent of the type of player we are most likely to bring in, will overcome the bad coaching and system and culture that they will encounter here.

I think we are potentially wrong about both the defense and the goaltending. That doesn’t mean upgrades aren’t warranted. Of course, better players would be better. But, there is a world where I could see the following as a playoff calibre back end as soon as this year: Dahlin/Power (could be an elite pairing) Byram/Clifton (ok together late in season) Samuelsson/BDocker (third pairing, fine) UPL (needs a bounce back) Levi (is he ready?) What I struggle to imagine, is this being good enough with Lindy Ruff as our coach. His teams have been very bad defensively for most of the years since he left Buffalo and there is no assistant on the current staff who we could count on to successfully take over the responsibility for our defensive structure. If I had to bet on the players or the coaching staff, I would bet on the players.

Garry Galley would be great.

Perhaps one thing to consider in the comparison, is that Metsa is only 11 months younger than Bryson. Metsa was 24 when he started his last year of college. He was 26 at the start of this AHL season. Bryson has been a full-time NHL roster player, more or less, since he was 23. I’m not taking anything away from Metsa, or really trying to defend Bryson, but maybe people would think differently about Bryson if he had not played in the NHL prior to age 27.

To the bolded, I was thinking the same thing. But, when I actually looked at the teams that are potentially in the "rebuilding" category, I only found one name that more or less fits the description and who also doesn't have some level of trade protection that would likely eliminate the Sabres as an option. That player is Rasmus Ristolainen. It even fits a little with Samuelsson's dad having the history with the Flyers and Samuelsson being from that area. I'm not advocating for this or suggesting it is even remotely possible, but there aren't many (any) options that fit the criteria in a Samuelsson trade. FWIW: Risto appears to have become a much more low-event player than he was when he was here. If he didn't have the Sabre-history... Also, this shouldn't be construed as me thinking there are no options for improving our defense. I think there are lots of options. I don't think we need to make a big splash. I think we are more in need of a different type of player (experienced, more-physical defensively), than we are in need of "better" players.

Maybe I don't understand how offer-sheets work. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that in order to offer-sheet Byram in the $7-8 million range (what it would take to get him, I would think), the team making the offer would need to have their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rd picks in 2026, since that would be the cost. I don't think any team that has more than a 50/50 chance of missing the playoffs this coming season, is going to give up their 2026 1st for Byram. Also, the Sharks don't currently have their 3rd in 2026.

The Sabres are not in an impossible situation with regards to the salary cap and their roster. It is quite complex though. Extending our RFAs in pretty-much any realistic combination of expert projections, takes them right up to, or over, the cap. They are in a cap and roster situation that teams headed into year 5 of a rebuild, with no success to show for it, are not typically in. Typically, NHL teams in this sort of cap situation, have at least had some regular season successes. Also, serious NHL teams would typically entrust the management of this type of situation to a POHO and/or GM who has successfully navigated a franchise through such scenarios before. Adams has thus far not been able to build a playoff level roster, despite (I would argue) starting out with more assets than a GM would typically start a rebuild with. If Adams has not proven that he can build a winning team with all of the cap space and tradeable assets in the world to work with, then I don't know how he can possibly be expected to navigate the cap and contract complexities of the multiple moves needed this off-season to get the Sabres to the place where they have a playoff level roster. Could it happen? Sure. But, there is just no reason for optimism.

I remembered that there were reports on what Granato was making. So I looked that up and found a number of sources that report Granato’s extension lifted his annual salary to $1.9 million. So, Donnie did ok. A reasonable bet is that Adams makes north of that.

Victor Olofsson with his first career playoff goal.

Agreed. The Sabres made big mistakes long before Adams arrived. But, I think it is incredible (in the bad sense) that 4 years post the Power draft, considering the assets on the team in 2020-2021, that Adams has not produced a playoff team. It’s actually stunning and reflects that he truly is not capable of being an NHL GM. That Adams is getting a 6th year is negligence. I would not dream of telling any fan how to approach the off-season when it comes to expectations. But from my perspective, every draft pick, trade, front office hire, UFA signing or RFA extension this off-season, should be viewed in the context of “this is being done by Kevyn Adams; set your expectations accordingly”.

I was looking at Rob Blake's history with the Kings. He was an assistant GM for a few years after their cup seasons. They missed the playoffs in 16-17 and he took over as GM in 17-18. They had a single season resurgence back into the playoffs, and then started a rebuild in 18-19. They bottomed out in 19-20 and in the summer of 2020 they drafted Byfield 2nd overall. They missed the playoffs for one more season (the 2020 covid year), and in the 4 seasons since they have had 99, 104, 99, and 105 points. He had some misses. The Turcotte draft and the Dubois trade, being the biggest two. Perhaps in hindsight, Stutzle was the pick over Byfield. He couldn't get past McDavid and Draisaitl four seasons in a row. It seems to me that there is some parallel to the moment that the Kings drafted Byfield in 2020 and the moment, under Adams, that the Sabres drafted Power in 2021. I thought I would compare the rosters of the 19-20 Kings and the 2020-21 Sabres, the respective seasons before the Byfield and Power drafts. Kings / Sabres Kopitar / Eichel Kempe / Reinhart Toffoli / Hall Iafallo / Skinner Vilardi / Mittlestadt Lizotte / Cozens Amadio / Thompson Doughty / Dahlin Roy / Montour Martinez / Ristolainen Walker / Miller Quick / Ullmark Now, consider that one season after bottoming out and drafting Byfield, the Kings had a 99 point season and went on to average 102 points over the next 4. And then, Blake decided it was time to move on to see if someone else could get the Kings over the first round playoff hump. Contrast that with the Sabres. Four seasons after drafting Power we have averaged 82 points per year, we have not made the playoffs, and they are just now apparently getting serious about surrounding Adams with a veteran hockey man to assist him in how he carries out his duties. Would Adams voluntarily step down to allow another person to take the team to the level of just making the playoffs? Of course not. Adams knows that this is likely to be his only job as an NHL executive. Blake, on the other hand, will have a job with another NHL team as soon as he wants one. Imagine how different the outlook for the coming seasons would be, if tomorrow it was announced that Kevyn Adams has been relived of his duties and Rob Blake has been hired as GM. The Sabres are not a serious NHL team.

Watching the games last night and two things occurred to me. 1. As you note, I think the Leafs are certainly the most complete team in the East. Maybe in the league. They could win it all. 2. Of the goalies left, Oettinger is the best and I don’t think it is close. So I like Dallas’s chances. This should doom the Leafs and Stars. Also, a side note on Dallas. I’m watching them close out games with Cody Ceci on the ice (he played the last 3 minutes v. Colorado in game 7) and I’m thinking he would be a great partner for Power or Byram on our 2nd pair. He was available for a song last off-season. He is a UFA July 1. Of course, other teams will notice this.