Archie Lee

Brind'Amour? Or any experienced coach? Brind'Amour is a long shot I agree. Not absolute zero but near zero. There would be experienced coaches willing to come to Buffalo though, I'm certain of that. There are currently three coaches available who coached in the NHL playoffs last season (Gallant, Woodcroft and Evason), a guy who won a Stanley Cup 5 years ago (Berube). Some will get snapped up by other teams of course, but there will be more who join the list of unemployed (the list of high-end coaches who may be vulnerable to being fired after an early playoff exit is actually pretty long). There won't be enough chairs for everyone. If we want an experienced coach with a history of 45+ win playoff seasons, we will get one so long as we are willing to let Donnie go and pay what it would cost to bring in an experienced winner.

I think only one move would be needed. Jost and Johnson are out to make room for Thompson and Girgs. If Johnson comes back up, that is when another player would need to be waived, traded or sent down. I don't see a Comrie trade as making sense for anyone. While I do think he would be better on a team that plays with more structure (he probably should have just stayed in Winnipeg), his performance hasn't warranted interest from other teams. We likely would need to retain 1/2 his salary and I'm not sure that makes sense for us. The return we would get, even at 50% retention, might not warrant using one of the three retention spots. As we head towards the deadline, there might be players who would return more with retention (E. Johnson, Jokiharju, Girgs, Olofsson, Okposo, Robinson).

This must be a short term paper transaction. It leaves them with only 6 d-men on the 23. Something else will need to give in the next few days.

Every underperforming player on this team gets an asterisk from me for this season. This team was not, intentionally or otherwise, built to be successful. That is becoming clear. I do think there is a role for nearly every player on this team on a playoff squad, but collectively and with the current coaches they are not good enough. Until we get serious about icing and employing an overall playoff level team, there will be players who disappoint and who will be unfairly ridiculed for things that are largely out of their control. Power is currently in that group. I think of the nights when Eichel would be caught looking disinterested on the back check and people would think he is lazy. Or, the other nights when he would race back into his zone only to be lost in space, picking up nobody, leaving people thinking this guy can’t defend. Funny how those issues largely disappear on a veteran cup contending team with a top-level NHL coach. I don’t want to see any particular coach fired or any particular player traded. I just want to see the GM make moves and decisions that send the clear message that it is time to win. If we don’t do that soon, then we are just setting up Dahlin, Thompson, Cozens to be the next Eichel, Reinhart, Risto.

In what will almost certainly be our 13th consecutive year out of the playoffs, I won't make excuses for the team's record or performance or for management's failure to act. It is possible though that it just isn't realistic to expect this roster (the youngest in the league, with inconsistent goaltending), to play consistently good defence against NHL competition. It might just be that the team is not yet ready and able to play that particular way night in and night out. This perhaps supports your first point, that the roster as constructed is fatally flawed, but only if one views making the playoffs this season as a critical accomplishment (which most fans do, but which doesn't appear to be the case for the organization). I come back to what I've stated earlier, the core of the team's spine (top four centres, top four D, two best goalies), went into the season with an average age of 22 (Thompson the oldest at 26). We are 3-4 seasons away from that core being in the collective prime of their careers. It is not shocking to me that we struggle to consistently play structurally sound defensive hockey.

Recognizing that line placement (3rd line? 4th line?) is a bit subjective, per CapFriendly’s depth charts, Okposo is the 10th most productive 4th line player in the NHL. I have no issue with those who think it is time to move on from Okposo, but the most misguided narrative of this season is that Okposo has been bad. Frankly, we would be better off with 2-3 more Okposos than we would be without him.

I agree with your first paragraphs and strongly disagree with the conclusion of firing Adams. Of the 3 GMs Pegula has hired, Adams has by far been the best at executing an actual plan. There is near universal belief that any success Pegula has had in hiring quality people for the Bills or Sabres has been a happy accident. Pegula firing Adams would just result in him then taking another low % shot at hiring a new GM. I’ll pass on that for now. Adams was clearly reluctant to declare that this was a year with expectations. What I am somewhat shocked by is that he seems to have misunderstood that was not a narrative that he alone gets to set. The fans have no interest in another year of rebuilding. People would accept, begrudgingly, another year of growth where we take a run at the playoffs and fall short, but a year like this is only going to result in fans getting more brazen in voicing their displeasure. Good vibes have gone bad and may soon go toxic. The best we can hope for at this point is that Adams learns from his mistakes and course corrects. The challenging part for fans will be that if he indeed does this, it may take a little time and not be obvious at first. For example, while there are good coaches available now, it might be best to wait until the off-season when even better options are available. Regardless, at some point between now and the end of the next offseason, Adams needs to do something that makes clear that the organization now expects to win. He doesn’t have to say it, but he needs to do something that clearly positions the organization as one that expects to be a playoff team. If he doesn’t, and the plan is to do what they did this year and just make the team younger, then we are on the path to seeing the next group of star players ask for mercy and a move to another team.

22+ minutes a game playing every important situation. Wearing an A. Being the top-guy. World Juniors. Another deep playoff run with a contending team. Things that most elite 18 year olds get an opportunity to do. The sort of things, if not directly the same, for which Power and Levi were praised for choosing to do over turning pro.

For the record, I’m not giving up on this year and I am certainly not stuck on the development hamster wheel. I’m a bit frustrated that the organization has created an environment where an 18 year old can assume the role of the team’s balls. I’ve said all along that if we can be real .500 by as late as game 70 (76-78 points) we will be positioned for a possible strong finish and a run at the playoffs again. That should be the goal. Even better if we can get to real .500 by game 50 or 60. It’s only happening though if we get healthy upfront and multiple players returns to last year’s form. I reject the conclusion that Benson has been so good that we needed to keep him in order to have a chance at a playoff run. I think we have kept him at the expense of what would have been better development opportunities. I simply think that his future, and by extension the team’s, would have been better served by him being in junior. It’s cool that people disagree.

I get it. Benson has been “fine at the NHL level” or he’s “holding his own”, as you and others have said. I actually think he has been quite good and looks very much like an NHL player. He has been one of maybe 4-5 bright spots this year. He has been a reason to watch games. But the “we need him to win” argument kinda falls apart when we aren’t winning. I’m not predicting that Benson’s career will suffer from staying in the NHL. I don’t know the future. But there is a long list of players who made the NHL early and who failed to reach expectations. Generally it is concluded that such players were unnecessarily rushed. There is no player whose development was wrecked by playing junior as an 18 year old.

Benson could be playing 20-25 minutes a night, getting power play, penalty kill and last minute work in critical games while being a leader on a contending junior team and a world junior favorite. Instead he is getting 15 minutes a night with limited special team time on what to this point in the season has been a bad NHL team. We 100% disagree on how this should have been handled. Fair enough. It's all good. Cheers.

I'm not insisting on anything. Just expressing my view that the threshold for a non-playoff team to keep an 18 year old in the NHL who was not a top 5 pick should be higher than "he's holding his own". Precisely. Why the rush?

What message was sent to the roster in the off-season when Quinn was injured and everyone knew that the organization had lost faith in Olofsson and with rumblings that Tuch's health was precarious and with the league's deepest prospect pool and with 7-8 million in cap space, they opted for a competition in camp between rookies to fill a vacant top 6 position on the team? In this, seemingly, most critical of seasons, the message I think was clear: management did not consider this a critical season. No help is coming. Benson the player and person is not the issue: he is a breath of fresh air. That he was even an option for this team, in this season, is the issue. Now they are doubling down on their mistake.

What 18 year old would choose to leave his NHL team and teammates? It has nothing to do with what he wants, it has to do with what is best for him (for the record, I don't think they have made this decision based on what he wants). Benson is 17th in rookie scoring. He is not on the radar for the Calder Trophy. If the NHL had an all-rookie team, he would be on its 3rd line. I recognize that he has a mature two-way game, but does this team's season really hinge on the performance of the 17th highest scoring rookie in the league? Things have gotten so bad that an 18 year old who is not on the Calder radar and is not in the top 15 of rookie scorers, is one of our best and most consistent players? We had to burn a year of his entry level deal, deprive him of not one but possibly two opportunities of a lifetime (the World Juniors and a chance to win the Calder next year), just so he could be one of the best players on an underachieving team. Nobody, outside of a narrow group of Sabre fans who have decided they are fine with the team rushing this prospect, would fault the Sabres for sending Benson back to junior.

Benson has been great and we got a steal. He plays a very mature game and overall, at both ends of the rink, has been one of our top 3-4 forwards (maybe higher). But, with the games he missed, he is on pace for 33 points. He is not producing offensively like a top 6 player (few of our guys are). Are things so bad with this organization that we couldn’t find a middle six veteran this off-season who could get us 30 points and be solid defensively? That is the most frustrating thing to me. Benson had a great camp and looked ready for the NHL. Why was there room though? He should be terrorizing the WHL and leading Team Canada into the world jrs. Of course an 18 year old will chose the NHL and his teammates over a JR tourney. But 4-5 years from now, playing in the NHL will just be what he does. The world jrs are a once in a lifetime opportunity for a small group of kids. I’ve been a huge supporter of Adams/Granato. This is just a mistake. The Sabres right now are like a bad MLB team. That we won a game in Vegas, sandwiched between losses in Colorado and Arizona, doesn’t mean we are good and need to find consistency. The Oakland A’s can get a strong pitching performance and a couple seeing eye doubles and take a game from the Astros. Our forwards are getting healthy. We are going to need to make decisions. We are the 7th worst team in the NHL by points %. Let Benson go back. We just don’t need him here this year.

We are one of the 1 or 2 youngest teams in the league. Our average age does not place us as being a team on the cusp of its prime. The middle spine of our team (Thompson, Mitts, Cozens, Krebs, Dahlin, Sammy, Joker, Power, UPL and Levi) started the season with an average age of 22.8. It will be 3-4 years before they reach their collective prime. We are augmenting this group with players like Peterka, Quinn, Benson, R. Johnson and likely soon Kulich, Rosen and Savoie, only making us younger. Removing Okposo does not improve our PP, it doesn’t make our goalies more experienced, it doesn’t improve our D structure and it certainly doesn’t make up for the fact that Thompson, Tuch, Cozens and Olofsson are on pace to score less than 1/2 of the 142 goals they scored a year ago. Okposo is most likely in his final year here. I would not have any great concern if he was moved via trade. His time as a Sabre is passing to be sure. But moving on from Okposo as the captain does not begin to address the issues with this team. Okposo’s presence on this team is not the problem.

Yesterday while I was commuting, NHL Radio had a member of the Capitals broadcast crew on. They asked him about the motivation for the Caps’ signing of Ethan Bear. He stated that the Capitals had become an older team and they were making a conscious effort to bring in younger players, basically doing a bit of a reset on the go. It occurred to me at that moment just how young the Sabres are. If Ethan Bear was signed by the Sabres he would be our 3rd oldest D-man. The Caps, who had 3 veteran right shot D already, brought him in as a step towards getting younger. We are too young to seriously compete in the NHL. There are many things wrong with this year’s team, from bad off-season decisions to poor play and bad coaching. Kyle Okposo’s leadership and on-ice performance has not been one of the problems.

That’s disappointing. We really don’t need an 18 year old to have a 30 point season for us this year, do we?

Here’s hoping Benson is Canada’s 23rd player. There is no need for him to be in Buffalo learning how to underachieve. Go be the big man on the big stage and then help Savoie lead the Wild to a potential Memorial Cup. The Sabres can finish 23rd overall without him.

I didn’t hear it but was just thinking: what is that supposed to mean? Thanks. I should have kept reading.

My apologies. I have edited my earlier comments.

I have no insider information, so I don't know. The current situation, post-covid, might be different. We were a cap team under Botterill and in year one under Adams. Prior to the most recent tear down and trading of Eichel, Risto, Reinhart, I don't think there is a lot of evidence that our GM's were told they can't spend money or utilize assets in order to get better. Unless we are planning to trade some of our more established young players in the next year or two, we will inevitably be a cap team again within 2 seasons. RE: Botterill, my point really wasn't that he should have made a bold move at that time, but rather that he made the unusual choice to actually voice that he didn't think the team was as good as its record and therefore a bold move would be wrong. That was a bizarre message to send to your team. Adams, right now, seems to be doing the same thing but with inaction rather than words. As you seem to imply though, maybe Pegula is a such a terrible owner that there is little hope for us to have success under his stewardship.

I don’t think we are taking a run at the playoffs like last year. But when Tuch, Greenway and Quinn are back we will be better and will start to look, I think, more like a playoff team. Maybe a coaching change is what shows Adams has expectations. I don’t have a specific thing that I want Adams to do. I just think there is a point in a team’s upward trajectory where it’s appropriate for a GM to do something that makes clear the time is now. I’m not looking for a “the rebuild is over” public statement or for a firing or a big trade. I’m just wanting evidence that the plan is not to simply augment the existing young core with even younger players, because if that is the plan then there is no end in sight.

The current situation reminds me a little of the bizarre press conference that Jason Botterill gave shortly after the 10 game winning streak in 2018-19. The team was still positioned high in the standings and playing reasonably well. Expectations had been raised that the organization would make a move or two to address what were clearly team weaknesses. Botterill then tamped all that down by stating (and I'm paraphrasing) that while they were happy with what the team had shown to that point, they were not actually that good and there were no plans to do anything aggressive or irresponsible. Expectations were lowered and the team sagged from there. I'm not saying that Botterill's comments sunk the team's spirit, but I have to believe they did nothing to raise them. Similarly now, Adams can't quite seem to get himself to commit to the expectation that the Sabres are supposed to be good. If not now, then when? When Kulich, Rosen, Savoie and Östlund are good? When Levi and UPL are no longer young goalies who, understandably, struggle with consistency? When our top four D (Dahlin, Power, Joker, Sammy) have an average age of 26 to start a season (which won't be until 2027-28; it's true)? The good news is that Kevyn Adams is a rookie GM. Being patient and thoughtful are not bad traits. He has done some really good things and there is the possibility that he is learning from observation and from mistakes. To his credit, his approach has resulted in the team not being saddled with any disastrous contracts (Cozens and Power are going to be fine). My bet is that they get healthy and play a lot better in the 2nd half of the season and look more like the team that we thought they might be. The young core of players who in April looked ready to take the next step are all still here and ready. Now, we are just waiting for the GM to show he is ready too.