Archie Lee

I’m mildly disappointed in this. A couple of the vibes guys, Anderson and Hinostroza, were rewarded with one year deals that I don’t think they would have received from another team. With that as a backdrop, it seemed Pysyk was worthy of a similar deal to serve as our 7th D. OK, I’m over it. Still…

I don’t know what Comrie will be, but I do think he was the UFA goalie with the most upside. He is UPL plus 2 additional years of development. He very well might be ready to be a #1.

I do hope the Sabres do some things today. A goalie obviously, a vet D man, maybe take a cap dump and get an asset with it. I really don’t think you build a championship team by signing players to big UFA deals though. I’m content to watch our Eastern Conference competitors fall over themselves to give big money and term to players who will be of little help to most of them. Phi, Det, NJ and Ott can’t all make the playoffs this year. Some of these teams will look a bit foolish as early as Thanksgiving.

This won't be a popular option, but let me make a half-hearted argument for David Rittich. Prior to being dealt to Toronto late in 2020-21, Rittich had played in 129 games over 4 seasons with the Flames. He went 63-39-15 in those games with a .908 save %. In 2018-19 he started 45 games, went 27-9-5 with a .911 save %. In 2019-20 he started 48 games, went 24-17-6 with a .907 save %. Rittich's game fell off a bit in 2020-21 when the Flames brought in Markstom and he became the back-up. He was not a fit in Toronto and was a disaster last year in Nashville playing behind Saros. The arguments against Rittich are obvious. He was never more than an average starter and his game has seemingly fallen off a cliff over the last 16 months or so. The arguments for him are: he has shown he can start 40+ games and post around average NHL #'s; he is relatively young, turning 30 next month; he will be available (unless I missed him signing in Europe), cheap and won't be demanding term. Goaltending is just so unpredictable. Would it really be shocking if Rittich signed somewhere, became the starter due to injury and had decent #'s over 40-45 starts? Year to year it seems the goalies who move around are as likely to have disappointing seasons as they are to have good ones. Maybe Rittich is just a guy who plays better when he is the starter.

Well I could not have been more wrong. Did not see the Sabres taking 3 forwards. Love that all 3 have centre potential though. This is probably reading too much into the selection of 3 forwards but it made me think of two things: 1) The Sabres think they have their top 4 D for the foreseeable future in Dahlin, Power, Jokiharju and Samuelsson ; and/or 2) Adams got good vibes from the meeting with Ryan Johnson’s reps. Two years from now when our top 4 D are maybe making $25+ million combined, we will need some ELCs up front.

There are a lot of “you tube” scouts who love Lambert. Generally, those who love him seem to think that people who don’t are overthinking things. The more I watch on Lambert the more I think he is going to dominate the WJC this August and then the WHL with Seattle. By New Year’s there could be a bunch of teams wondering how they missed the signal for the noise.

Speculation has Campbell getting a longer term (3+) deal at north of $5 million and possibly in the $6 million range. It would be inconsistent with everything Adams has said for them to be in on something like that. Especially when you consider Campbell is far from being a sure thing and we could have cap issues as soon as year 3 of such a deal.

I think this is correct. Also, Anderson worked all of the Covid year with Samsonov and Vanecek. Maybe we have some intel on these two. Though, the Russia situation might negatively impact Washington’s ability to move Samsonov.

Do you mean can’t recommend “enough”…? Or can’t recommend?

Kuemper is the big UFA goalie prize this off-season. He was pretty average, at best, in the playoffs, but whoever gets him is getting a true top 10 NHL goalie in my view. After Kuemper, the next big 3 are Husso, Fleury and Campbell. Husso was awful two years ago. Fleury was objectively bad last year and Campbell had a good 1st half to last season and a poor 2nd half. It will not be shocking if Reimer is as good or better than any of Campbell, Husso and Fleury this coming season. The Sabres could and likely will do worse than James Reimer.

Nobody said it was or thinks it is the Sabres’ draft board.

If that is the Sabres list then we are getting Savoie or Kulich at 9 (don’t see Slav, Wright, Cooley or Nemec dropping to 9) and likely one of the guys in 6-10 range (Kulich to Trikozov) at 16. With the Sabres having the 3 first rounders and with them being so spread out, I’ve really focused on the prospects largely projected to go top 40. Unless we go off the board (possible) we will get 4 guys who have garnered a lot of attention. Maybe it is just because our draft position this year has caused me to dig deeper, but there are few combinations for our top 4 picks that I think I would be disappointed in.

It is not lost on Adams, I'm sure, that the two teams in the Cup Finals, widely considered to be the best run teams in the league, were built through the draft. The key trade acquisitions were either young when acquired (Sergachev, Cernak in Tampa; Girard, Compher in Colorado) or were not acquired until the team was clearly ready to compete (McDonagh in Tampa; Kadri, Toews, Kuemper in Colorado). Acquiring top UFAs means overpaying, even for good franchises in desirable locations. Our path will be through the draft, nurturing our own young players and then eventually needing to trade assets for pieces that are missing.

I understand why, for some, everyday that the Sabres are not a playoff team will be viewed in the context of 11 years of losing, failure and mismanagement. This is completely understandable. We all have different outlooks and viewpoints and it is not unreasonable for a fan who invests time, money and emotion into a pro-sports team to expect that the primary goal of each season is to win. For others, it is is easier (maybe even necessary from an emotional point of view) to separate what is currently happening from prior years of futility. Adams can't undo what happened in the previous decade; all he can do is take the resources available and use them to try and build the team that he envisions. Adams has really only been fully in charge of the team's direction since they fired Krueger; thus far, acknowledging that he isn't batting 1.000%, the team has steadily moved in the right direction. I agree with you that the reasonable conclusion from the Bishop trade is that the Sabres have no intention to acquire contracts that take us much higher than the cap floor. Where I differ from you is that I don't see this as a bad thing. Acquiring higher-priced veteran contracts can only be done at the expense of giving up young and valuable assets through trades or through singing UFAs who might block younger players and/or cause cap issues in the longer term. Adams is clearly not prepared at this point to do these things. Although the plan may take longer to show results than I would like, it does seem sound. My perception is that we are no longer the league laughing stock when it comes to team management, with Chicago and Philadelphia having taken over the role. I'm going to wait and judge the results.

I agree with your overall sentiment, but it is too early to say that the Rosen selection didn't work or, for that matter, that the Quinn one did.

I think this is a good reminder that some teams, and quite possibly the Sabres, will have internal rankings that are very different than any so called consensus or consolidated ranking. My tendency is to watch the draft and hope a highly ranked player falls to us (ie: Rossi). What is at least as likely is the Sabres will think highly of a lower ranked player and we will be initially perturbed by who we select.

I think there is a near 0% chance the Sabres trade for Kane this off-season. A trade for a player with Kane’s pedigree raises the fan expectation level for immediate success far beyond what the current regime has interest in. All indications are that the organization is in the stage of wanting expectations to grow organically as the team’s young players get better. A Kane acquisition this summer changes the dynamics in ways that the hierarchy has no desire for.

I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I'm not certain that the Sabres will be in the market for any mid-higher-priced UFA's like Campbell or Subban, let alone Fleury. The Bishop trade could be Adams getting the jump on a low dollar-high cap contract of an injured player because he knows he is going to need at least two of them. If we assume the following: - that Quinn, Peterka, Fitzgerald and Luukkonen are all on the 23 man roster to start the year; and - that Olofsson and Bryson are back on reasonable contracts (under $6.5 million combined); and - that Bjork is not being waived (I know people want this, but there is no real reason to think it will happen) then that only leaves 3 roster spots: one goalie and two skaters. Those positions could be filled, for example, by Campbell, Subban and Trocheck for a total of $16 million. That would put us well above the cap floor. But those positions could also be filled by Anderson, Pysyk and Hinostroza, who, with modest raises, would still come in well under $4 million. Adams plan is likely something between those two extremes, but if it ends up being the latter, we will need another Boychuk/Bishop-like contract to get to the floor.

I'm not saying you are wrong, because I don't know what happened. I have gone back and read the articles/columns from free agency and Ullmark's departure though, and I don't find any that state the bolded. I did find one article from the Buffalo News that indicated Ullmark wanted 6x6 to stay in Buffalo, which perhaps suggests the Bruins matched the Sabres offer and that Ullmark attempted to leverage this to get more out of the Sabres. Regardless, my larger point is that there has been no definitive account in the media of what the Sabres offered Ullmark and whether it came before or after Boston's offer. With that in mind, I contend that it is at least as likely that the Bruins matched the Sabres's offer as the other way around.

I have no inside knowledge so would not say that the bolded is incorrect. But, I think it is at least as likely that the Sabres gave their best offer in advance of free agency and that Boston then matched this. In this scenario, Ullmark's agent then asked Adams if the Sabres would increase their offer to beat Boston's. Adams said no to this as they had set their value at 4x5 and were not going to go 5 years or increase the AAV. Personally, I would have gone 5x5 for Ullmark, but I don't think I have seen anything that confirms Adams was caught trying to save some cash. I think he just placed a value mark on Ullmark and was not going higher.

I'm 95% with you on Ullmark. While I would not label him a top 10 NHL goalie, the reality is there are less than 10 current NHL goalies who have shown they are consistently year over year better than he is. A year after Ullmark left the Sabres there is no prospect goalie knocking on the door. Ullmark was not blocking anyone. He would have capably filled a 1A or 1B or 2A role (take your pick from year to year) for a not ridiculous amount of money for 1/2 a decade. That said, where I differ slightly is on the bolded above. I don't think I can conclude, yet, that the loss of Ullmark is plaguing the team. For one, not having Ullmark had minimal impact on the Sabres a year ago. Sure they may have better weathered a few mid-season periods where the losses were mounting, but at best they might have been a 78-82 point team with him playing 50 games. With him we would still have been way out of the playoff picture and still picking 9-11 in the draft. On a go forward basis, well we just don't know what will happen yet. I'm on record as saying I think we will be very fortunate to find as good a goalie as Ullmark for similar $$$ (and I don't think we will even try to do so); but we don't know how this will play out just yet.

Chicago fell apart as a contender when Toews and Kane received their big extensions after their 3rd cup win in 2015. They went from making $6.3 each per year to $10.5 and with that any hope of retaining the sort of quality depth that is needed to truly contend went out the window. They still had a couple of years where they performed very well in the season (5th overall in 15/16 and 3rd overall in 16/17) but then the bottom fell-out. By giving Matthews and Marner max AAV immediately after their entry level deals expired, the Leafs skipped over the 2-3 year window where they could have been top of the list cup contenders. Instead they went directly to the part where they scramble year after year to add critical roster pieces on the cheap.

I think this is correct, though I saw a mock on nhl.com yesterday that had Jiricek falling to us (the other dude in the mock draft had us getting Savoie). This is a draft where I would not be shocked if the guy we take at 9 is a guy I was thinking of for 16. Basically after the big 5 that you mention there is a group of 20-25 players I would be fine with getting 3 of. Based on the Quinn and Rosen picks, we may be likely to take players who rank a little lower in the consolidated rankings than where we are picking.

Yeah, the focus is largely on the teams what missed the playoffs as possible destinations for Trotz. There are teams in the playoffs that could make a change too. If the Leafs lose rd 1 he could be a candidate there. Dallas seems ready made for Trotz if this is it for Bowness.

I think that looks good. The only part that I don’t think is semi-reasonable is the Fleury signing.