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Has to get a lot better at driving possession in favor of Buffalo. He's a #4 defender, and you want to pay him 7 mill or more a season. Also, Jokiharju was positive too, should we have kept him? You can keep Byram, but then power needs to go. Also you got any evidence at all that Byram played against other teams best?

A smaller slower Curtis Samuel. Hopefully he can be returner.

He'd already brought Moore in prior to the draft and they agreed they'd touch base again after the draft. So, Beane already knew he likely was adding Moore to the WR room. Still chalk it up to having to do an interview while being exhausted and hearing the discussion before he actually got on the air as rubbing him the wrong way. This is, what, his 8th year here, and ottomh this is the 1st time he's been accused of being defensive and dismissive in an interview. If it starts to happen consistently, will then possibly care about it.

I can assure you that Beanne has had this in the works before putting Jeremy in his place.

I’ve seen Kevyn a couple times since Sunday and he doesn’t seem upset or anything…. I can never tell with him.

He has to get a lot better to what? Earn a $50M contract? Agreed. To help the Sabres? He already does. Byram gave team a full season of 20+ minutes a night as a plus player against the other teams' best. I'm shocked at how many people seem to take that for granted. How many Sabres defencemen have done that over the past decade? Pretty sure there are 4, and people want to drive two of them to the nearest airport. The 3rd is Dahlin and the 4th is Brandon Montour, another skilled D this board stupidly wanted to get rid of. By all means, trade Byram. Just understand that even if you are replacing him with somebody different who can eat the same minutes, you still haven't made the team any better.

That's because he didn't use a high draft pick on one. That was the criticism.

My only issue is that Samuel and Shakir are basically the same player but they are all talented. Maybe one of Samuel or Shenault can pop.

I definitely had Rossi over Quinn. That's who I wanted and would still make that pick today easy. I don't remember being all that aware of Jarvis. I liked Holloway then and still do today. If I was picking today, I would take Eklund over Power, but at the time I thought Power was the right pick in a draft lacking top-end talent. So far, he has not lived up to #1 pick expectations in any way, but again, I'm inclined to give him some grace because defensemen almost always take a while to get going. Hedman wasn't anything until year 5. Pietrangelo took 4-5 years. Yeah, there's guys that jump right in like Ekblad, Doughty, Makar; but it's not unusual for them to take a while to get there. My concern is this injury is going to set him back big because he really needed this summer to work on his game and get stronger. I just don't have a really bad taste about taking him because it was a weak draft for top-end talent and he seemed to have the most potential. Will Eklund or anyone else had been better? We need another year or two to probably know. Cossa over Rosen? Sure, but he's played 1 NHL game. No idea what he's gonna be. Can't argue one way or another there. Leinonen, give me Hutson there of course; other than him it's a crap shoot. It's a good debate. With hindsight, there are several different picks any of us would have made. Bottom line in the end is Adams sucks at his job. I just don't have HUGE issues with his drafting. Or not nearly as much as everything else he's done or failed to do. But I guess when drafting appears to be your "strength" and it's really been pretty "meh" we kind of arrive in the same place.

Also that burner with the unusual name — Shenault?

WR room is now … Shakir, Samuel, Palmer, Coleman, Moore … and someone like Shavers maybe?

But that would offend the league’s gambling overlords. That will never happen.

We’ll see what happens with the reshuffle

That's great! Makes Beane look more odd from the other day. Dude literally went and got a wr the same week he melted down about being asked about wr... weird. I like this signing. He's still young. He's cheap. Decent upside.

Everybody eats!

Booya…maybe

He doesn’t have inside info They sabres social media people don’t know anything

Yet

He's gotta to get a lot better. Also that's such an indictment of how terrible buffalo's defense is. Byram is a 4 at best right now and I don't see anything saying he'll ever be a 2. How long should we wait until he figures it? How much should we get he does. Everyone shouldn't be getting 7yr deals. It's stupid and it locks you into guys that are flawed. They need to move on from Power or Byram. Keeping both is bad team building.

I’m glad Beane takes a macro approach to managing the roster. Instead of pigeon holing a receiver into an immediate large role, when rookie receivers are notoriously slow starters and quite frankly bust at a high rate. They are most likely much higher on Coleman than I am. I am also fairly optimistic about Palmer. We’ve seen average receivers flourish under Josh and good receivers flounder. A room starting with Shakir, Palmer and Coleman is promising but we’ll see if it comes to fruition. I don’t think any of the WR outside of Travis Hunter are going to blossom in the NFL. At least not anytime soon.

I had Eklund rated 1st overall, I stick by that. Had Rossi and Jarvis over Quinn, I stick by that. Peterka is Adams best pick followed by Benson. The rest is, ok. Hence why Forton should be fired. You could swap Rosen for Cossa and then Leinonen for several better rhds.

That's fair and I don't necessarily disagree at all. Quinn hasn't lived up to a #8 pick, but his arrow was pointing up until the Achilles injury. That can be a rough injury to recover from so I think he gets a little longer runway to arrive as a result, a bit of a mulligan for this year. If he spends 2025/26 looking like the same player he was this season, then yeah. I'd be leaning towards bust. I preferred Rossi then and still do now. At this point, I'd really prefer Holloway who had a nice season for STL and looks like a good power forward, something this team needs more of. Give me Jarvis over Jack, too. But the wildcard is would Rossi/Jarvis/Holloway have become the players they are here? Would Quinn have been better in MIN/CAR/STL? As for Power, looking back, that 2021 draft sucked as far as top-end talent. There'll be some good players, but I doubt any that will produce like your typical #1 overall. Who do you take instead? Beniers? Nice rookie year, middling since. Kent Johnson is coming along in Columbus, but not at #1 overall expectations. McTavish has been okay for the Ducks, but again, not like a #1 overall. Luke Hughes? Meh. Eklund? He's progressing, but nobody had him rated that high. Guenther - same. I'm still bullish on giving Power time. Rosen, could have had Wyatt Johnson, but there's rally not much below him. Again, bad draft. In 2022, nobody really stands out below Östlund. Kulich seems like a good pick. They're still pups. You're probably right about Benson. Overall, aside from 2020 I cannot take much issue with his picks. Nobody stands out to me below who he selected. I agree aside from Peterka, his non-firsts do not look to be exactly pounding at the door. And that is where good GMs find value. He hit it out of the park with Peterka, but so far nothing else.

Personally expect we can speak to his drafting. He's drafted in the top 10 pretty much every single year (at least 3 out of 4 and gets a top 10 pick once again this year); only Benson and Kulich of all his 1st round selections has looked as good or better than what you'd expect to get at his draft slot and at minimum 2 of them look to be underperforming where they were selected (especially when compared to guys that were still on the board) and a case could be made that at least 1 other is underperforming. And even the selection of Benson comes with an * because if they didn't have Savoie on the same junior team they probably wouldn't have gotten to know him nearly as well as they did. Of his post-1st round picks only Peterka (who was a great selection and a smart move up) has exceeded expectations. There are a LOT of 2nd round picks he's gotten to make and not many have flashed the wow factor nor are expected to be a top 6 guy. With the exception of Novikov, are any of the D tracking to be top 4? Are any post 2nd round guys tracking to be that diamond in the rough that makes top 6 / top 4? (Maybe Poltapov, but can't recall if he was 2nd round or not and he's locked up in the KHL for a few more years anyhow.) He's shown to be middling at drafting. Sure somebody might turn out to be a late bloomer and truly surprise, but you can't expect it. And when your operational model is draft great and build your core through the draft & through youth traded for during the great purge, middling simply isn't good enough.

I too am glad that I've avoided the gambling bug. I do the normal stuff -- March Madness brackets, Super Bowl squares, fantasy football -- but have always stayed away from the real sh1t. Somewhat ironically, I sort of enjoy the "degenerate gambling" banter on a podcast I regularly listen to. Maybe it's akin to getting a contact high from someone else's smoke.