Sabres Announce GM Jason Botterill has been Fired. Kevyn Adams Named GM

[Thorner]

12 hours ago, Randall Flagg said:

Your fierce defense of known trash makes this crusade puzzling 

Not at all. He liked Botterill, of course he'd be upset with this. 

4 minutes ago, darksabre said:

I'm pretty surprised at how viscerally angry Sabres Twitter is. I expected indifference, but I think their hatred of the Pegulas is much stronger.

It's been a good long while now I've felt more optimistic after reading here than on twitter. I know what you mean, with the dislike of Botterill I think people wanted to be happy but at least over there, it's complete anger at the Pegulas like you say, and the fact they hired a first time GM. 

Edited June 18, 2020 by Thorny

[Thorner]

12 hours ago, dudacek said:

Jeremy White nailing Botterill’s issue: this sense that if you just wait long enough things will get better, instead of seizing the day and make it better.

Come on man I've been arguing that point for years lol

[Randall Flagg]

5 minutes ago, Thorny said:

Not at all. He liked Botterill, of course he'd be upset with this. 

Definitely, I was poking at the logical cloaking mechanism he used on top of those feelings.

I mean I don't think he's wrong to be worried about Adams' resume. But the whole certitude of failure from an unknown while formerly being boundlessly optimistic about a known abject failure was something I couldn't resist pointing out 

[Thorner]

12 hours ago, dudacek said:

I woke up this morning kinda sad.

Taking Botterill’s hands off the wheel was a good thing, a necessary thing. Gutting the hockey department might have been a necessary thing as well.

But the Pegulas didn’t make these changes because he was a bad GM with a bad staff, they made them because they wanted to make philosophical, business-related changes and they didn’t like the way he reacted to their directives to get leaner.

And we were left with a skeleton crew in charge of knowing and analyzing and exploiting the team and the league, led by two men with limited knowledge of same, and a suggestion that they wouldn’t have the resources needed to overcome that.

It seemed like we headed for more of the same.

Listening to Adams improved my mood. Not because he was articulate and personable and seemed in tune with the issues, but because it reinforced to me how broken the organization has been and how ineffectual, even reluctant it was under Botterill to address that.

Adams has been given a blank slate to fix us. I have no idea if he can, or if he will, but the opportunity is there.

And that means we are in a better place.

This has been worrying me, too. That they made the right decision for the wrong reasons. But that goes back to what we were talking about yesterday, that we need a stroke of luck. They've had bad results from making decisions for the right reasons, maybe we'll get a good result from making a decision for the wrong reasons. Things do work out that way often.

And also, I think it's pretty clear there was at least a certain, reasonably high level of dissatisfaction with his on the job performance, in order for that final straw to be a tipping point. 

[Brawndo]

11 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

I keep coming back to what Adams said about scouting and analytics working together. It really sounded like these two things were viewed separately to the detriment of the team. Maybe Adams is aware of what Seattle is doing. They hired a legit analytics department (3 or 4 ppl so far) and sound like they are incorporating all of that into their team building. Maybe we will do that, based on Adams wanting some scouts also familiar with analytics. If that was the case it could be amazing. That would be something I would love to be a part of, if I were a scout. 

Adams mentioned he has a great relationship with Ron Francis who moved Eric Tulsky into, a Full Time Role with Carolina and has created Seattle’s Analytics Department. If he can replicate this in Buffalo

10 hours ago, darksabre said:

Again, it's very weird that he's this well informed about the org from top to bottom.

 

10 hours ago, darksabre said:

Yeah, that's definitely the most interesting tidbit. This whole situation seems driven by that relationship. If Adams was the "conduit" to Kim that she said he was, then it's not unreasonable to expect that Nightengale's complaints were heard, investigated, and found to be legitimate.

The work requested from Nightengale under Botterill was to give data to support the decisions that Hockey Ops made, not to give data to help Hockey Ops make decisions 

6 hours ago, bunomatic said:

Are TP/KP still trying to raise money for a shiny new football stadium ? Was that nixed ?

sounds like they’re bleeding money with whats happened in the last 24hours. 

Would they cut costs in one sport to helpget what they want in another?

One of the rumors surrounding their purchase of the Bills was that the NFL is expecting them to build a new stadium or have a massive overhaul of New Era Field.  Their existing lease agreement is up in 2023 and any chance of public money towards a project disappeared thanks to Covid. 

[Thorner]

11 hours ago, Randall Flagg said:

Apparently he mentioned how the Amerks success was largely driven by guys who would never be sabres. 

He's hitting talking points that I would have never mustered hope for getting talked about by people who matter. Excitement level slowly creeping up 

Which is funny, because it's obvious, and talked about all the time here. That we are getting excitement from this again just cycles back to just how far off of "normal inadequacy" Botterill was. I don't even want to rip him anymore cause it feels wrong when he's no longer in the chair. I wish him the best. It's just very apparent at this point. 

11 hours ago, darksabre said:

Again, it's very weird that he's this well informed about the org from top to bottom.

Is it? Didn't WE know all these things??

[Andrew Amerk]

20 hours ago, erickompositör72 said:

The hypothetical just happens to be sexist trope. Congrats on either not realizing it or disingenuously pretending it isn't. 

I wonder how much longer any male in her position would get before the labels of "incompetence" started.

Cue the denials...

If Kim was the owner, and Terry was the incompetent Prez, he would probably have been getting crap far sooner. 

[darksabre]

12 minutes ago, Thorny said:

Which is funny, because it's obvious, and talked about all the time here. That we are getting excitement from this again just cycles back to just how far off of "normal inadequacy" Botterill was. I don't even want to rip him anymore cause it feels wrong when he's no longer in the chair. I wish him the best. It's just very apparent at this point. 

Is it? Didn't WE know all these things??

Adams lurks on Sabrespace (e5)

[Thorner]

8 hours ago, SwampD said:

Have we heard from Krueger about all of this yet? 

He's hitting up the local bars, he wants to hear from US.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Thorny

[dudacek]

2 hours ago, PASabreFan said:

Kevyn said on one of the shows this AM that Krueger is someone he can "learn from." The perfect setup would be RaKru as hockey president, Kevyn as his right hand man GM and a top notch coach. If Ralph had better assistants, we'd virtually be there already.

It doesn't explain the vote of confidence three weeks ago. I think something truly weird happened yesterday morning. Maybe Botterill pulled a George Costanza and tried to get his butt fired. There's a bit of info. somewhere around here that Jason was still negotiating with Chris Taylor as of yesterday. The Pegulas get wind of it, and Botterill and his scooter are out the door. "We weren't being heard."

These things are rarely about one thing, but there had to be a tipping point.

23 minutes ago, Brawndo said:

Adams mentioned he has a great relationship with Ron Francis who moved Eric Tulsky into, a Full Time Role with Carolina and has created Seattle’s Analytics Department. If he can replicate this in Buffalo

 

The work requested from Nightengale under Botterill was to give data to support the decisions that Hockey Ops made, not to give data to help Hockey Ops make decisions 

That is disturbing. He never struck me as someone lacking in integrity.

 

[Thorner]

8 hours ago, Crusader1969 said:

I just can't get over how many jobs were lost because they played a goalie 30 times with Vision Issues. its mindblowing.

Why was JB entrenched 3 weeks ago and now everyone is fired? 

Get a good goalie tandem, upgrade 2C and lets GO!

The WAR Hutton would have added would be like...maybe 2 games. I suppose if you mean jobs would be saved by making the 24 team playoffs, then true. 

Agree with the 2C part definitely. 

Edited June 18, 2020 by Thorny

[Randall Flagg]

46 minutes ago, Brawndo said:

The work requested from Nightengale under Botterill was to give data to support the decisions that Hockey Ops made, not to give data to help Hockey Ops make decisions 

This would be pretty insane if it means what I'm thinking it does?

[Thorner]

3 hours ago, PASabreFan said:

Kevyn said on one of the shows this AM that Krueger is someone he can "learn from." The perfect setup would be RaKru as hockey president, Kevyn as his right hand man GM and a top notch coach. If Ralph had better assistants, we'd virtually be there already.

It doesn't explain the vote of confidence three weeks ago. I think something truly weird happened yesterday morning. Maybe Botterill pulled a George Costanza and tried to get his butt fired. There's a bit of info. somewhere around here that Jason was still negotiating with Chris Taylor as of yesterday. The Pegulas get wind of it, and Botterill and his scooter are out the door. "We weren't being heard."

I think that's kind of what we already have, titles be damned. Once we get a couple new assistant coaches. Adams said that was on the table now, right?

25 minutes ago, dudacek said:

These things are rarely about one thing, but there had to be a tipping point.

That is disturbing. He never struck me as someone lacking in integrity.

 

Wasn't the tipping point just that Botterill refused to fire all those people?

[IKnowPhysics]

List of Sabres employees terminated yesterday:

https://mobile.twitter.com/frank_seravalli/status/1273383490365636610?s=21

22 in total.

Scouting staff reduced from 21 to 7.

[PerreaultForever]

5 hours ago, thewookie1 said:

While the Pegulas seem to be incompetent franchise runners that doesn't necessarily mean they are completely incompetent in all aspects of business. The past 9 years the Pegulas have muddled and befuddled and thrown bags of money at the Sabres to no effect. Any businessman would eventually get confused by the fact his money doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything. 

Or, a simpler answer. They feel they do know how to run a business so in their minds it can't be their fault for hiring bad and inexperienced people. They simply refuse to look in the mirror for the source of failure. Rich man narcissism strikes again perhaps. For them the one simple answer is one they don't consider.

5 hours ago, thewookie1 said:

Step 1 of purging everything seems about done but I'd still want to go through what's left and make sure everyone is on the same page. Then you go and find a couple vets of front office stuff like a Dudley and you painstakingly rebuild the front office from the ground up. We have until about October/November for the draft so we have at least 3/4 months and a bonus month to fix everything. Krueger set up one or two entire hockey programs and Adams set up and ran the Hockey Academy so building Hockey Operations seems to be up both their alleys.  

I've advocated the burn it down rebuild the entire team structure on all levels for years and if that's it, I'd be on board, but I see zero evidence or desire to hire any sort of experienced Dudley type person. Rather just another inexperienced man at the top, this time a loyal to the owner one, but still, just a lot of ideological spin to justify a cost cutting strip down. 

I think we all realize many organizations will cut down and try to save money in various ways due to this whole covid new world we are in but until they start to build something on these ashes there's no chance of anything positive coming out of this.

(and if you think respected veteran guys like Dudley will come work under/below a rookie in this situation, you're dreaming)

[French Collection]

3 hours ago, PerreaultForever said:

Or, a simpler answer. They feel they do know how to run a business so in their minds it can't be their fault for hiring bad and inexperienced people. They simply refuse to look in the mirror for the source of failure. Rich man narcissism strikes again perhaps. For them the one simple answer is one they don't consider.

I've advocated the burn it down rebuild the entire team structure on all levels for years and if that's it, I'd be on board, but I see zero evidence or desire to hire any sort of experienced Dudley type person. Rather just another inexperienced man at the top, this time a loyal to the owner one, but still, just a lot of ideological spin to justify a cost cutting strip down. 

I think we all realize many organizations will cut down and try to save money in various ways due to this whole covid new world we are in but until they start to build something on these ashes there's no chance of anything positive coming out of this.

(and if you think respected veteran guys like Dudley will come work under/below a rookie in this situation, you're dreaming)

Another guy you can cross off of the “guru” list is Brian Burke, he called the Sabres a clown show after the bloodletting.

[LGR4GM]

19 hours ago, Crusader1969 said:

I just can't get over how many jobs were lost because they played a goalie 30 times with Vision Issues. its mindblowing.

I think this oversimplifies things and gives a nice scapegoat. While this may have been the incident that sealed Botterill's fate, the Sabres were bad for this reason and several others. 

[inkman]

3 hours ago, French Collection said:

Another guy you can cross off of the “guru” list is Brian Burke, he called the Sabres a clown show after the bloodletting.

Good?

[bunomatic]

3 hours ago, French Collection said:

Another guy you can cross off of the “guru” list is Brian Burke, he called the Sabres a clown show after the bloodletting.

And rightfully so

[WildCard]

 

[LGR4GM]

Im going to help save you some time

 

[kas23]

I wonder what this means for the draft. With no one at the helm, do they still have a draft board? If not, do this mean we’ll be trading them away for assets (2C)?

 

Also, does hiring a “business” (or non-NHL) guy mean that we won’t be shy with offer sheets?

[GASabresIUFAN]

Remember Adams revealed the team’s new motto during his radio interview; “doing more with less.”

That just doesn’t bode well for the future.  We have tried that before.  Remember video scouting and a shared farm team.  This destroyed our prospect pipeline and our development system and created the foundation of the mess we are in now.  Just to emphasize this, TP just reduced the scouting dept from 22 to 7.  

Now add an inexperienced GM, a paired down hockey department, incompetent ownership now more interested in saving money then winning, and the general acknowledgment around the league of owner incompetence and what do you get.  A recipe of even more failure to come.  

The funny thing is I’m ok with Jbot being shown the door.  I’m even ok with trying to save some money, but firing Taylor instead of working with him and hiring an inexperienced yes man as GM were steps to far. 

Our only hope is somehow we get lucky and Adams is smart enough in year one to play it cool using a scalpel to the roster rather then a hatchet or the Pegula’s sell the franchise.  Odds of either of these things happening? Zero!

Edited June 18, 2020 by GASabresIUFAN

[LGR4GM]

2 minutes ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

Remember Adams revealed the team’s new motto during his radio interview; “doing more with less.”

That just doesn’t bode well for the future.  We have tried that before.  Remember video scouting and a shared farm team.  This destroyed our prospect pipeline and our development system and created the foundation of the mess we are in now.

Now add an inexperienced GM, a paired down hockey department, incompetent ownership now more interested in saving money then winning, and the general acknowledgment around the league of owner incompetence and what do you get.  A recipe of even more failure to come.  

The funny thing is I’m ok with Jbot being shown the door.  I’m even ok with trying to save some money, but firing Taylor instead of working with him and hiring an inexperienced yes man as GM were steps to far. 

Our only hope is somehow we get lucky and Adams is smart enough in year one to play it cool using a scalpel to the roster rather then a hatchet or the Pegula’s sell the franchise.  Odds of either of these things happening? Zero!

 

[Curt]

7 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

Im going to help save you some time

 

This is definitely extreme, but I don’t feel negatively about it.  The organization has been a disaster.
 

Maybe it will be better to have a 35 person hockey department with everyone having a closely aligned vision, as opposed to a 60 person department where everyone isn’t necessarily the right fit.

Im in wait and see mode.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Curt