Archie Lee

Honestly, looking at our roster, who would you have on the ice at the end of the 3rd? We are a collection of kids, and 4th liners, and a small group of quality veterans who would not be on the ice to protect a lead in the final minute on other teams. This kind of game was fine 3 years ago. It was understandable if it happened 2 years ago. That we are 4 years into Adams’s rebuild and he still has not come close to establishing the right mix of players, is either incompetence or negligence. And still he does nothing.

Is this sarcasm?

Per NHL.com, we won 55% of face-offs. But, we lost the last 6-8 in a row. Face-offs matter when they matter. We won none when they mattered.

My argument would be that the pattern is not the result of us having a collection of weak-minded and soft players, but rather is the result of our owner and GM not being committed to properly supporting the core group of players that exists. The solution would be to try - just once - to fully support the core that we have. Or we can follow the pattern of not supporting them, losing, waiting for them to beg to be traded, and watch them win elsewhere.

Those numbers are interesting to me. We went 24-18-2 over the final 44 games last year. That's a 93 point pace. We were +21 in goal differential. This came after doing nothing mid-season to "spark" the team. No coach got fired. No major player acquisition was made. Luukkonen's game took off in January and he became the clear #1; that's the only real difference between 1st half and 2nd half. Maybe some players got healthier. It is just so incredibly sad to see the owner and GM have no commitment to ending this awful streak. How can Pegula and Adams not understand how their complete lack of urgency has served to negatively impact the psyche and performance of the players? This year is next to a lost cause. But last year's somewhat strong finish shows that a team can turn things around mid-season. Imagine what impact a positive player move might have on the team. Too little too late, almost certainly, for this year. I do not understand, though, how Pegula and Adams can fail to recognize how their decision to give-up on this season will ultimately lead to the same decision for the players. Or, at this point, one has to consider the possibility that they do understand the consequences of their neglect, and that they simply don't care. Either way, their dereliction of duty is shameful.

I maintain that Dallas is the most easily replicated model for us, based on our roster. UPL is Oettinger. Dahlin is Heiskanen. Samuelsson could be Lindell. Power or Byram are Harley. 5-7 level D-men like Dumba, Lundkvist, Lyubushkin, and Brendan Smith, are very attainable for the Sabres. Up front, the Stars don't have a true-elite-level forward. The two big differences, in my view, are: 1.) They have three under 24 aged forwards on their roster and have used four on the year. Comparably we have six and have used eight. 2.) They support their under 24 aged forwards with veterans who will take care of them and show them how to play and win in the NHL. The one other thing that separates us is coaching. Ruff is ok/fine, but there were no contenders calling. If DeBoer was fired tomorrow, like Montgomery he would be hired by someone else within a week (if he wanted to be hired). We are not likely getting an elite experienced coach to come here. We will need to settle for a Ruff-level veteran coach or take a chance on an assistant or AHL coach (I think Todd Nelson is an obvious choice for a coach who should get an opportunity). A good GM working under a committed owner, could get us to Dallas-level within a year.

Adams was hired 19 months prior to Montreal GM Kent Hughes. Adams had a full year head start on our rebuild. He also had the benefit of having valuable to elite-level assets to trade in Ristolainen, Reinhart, and Eichel, and the benefit, due to the Sabres prior history of being bad, of already having a stable of good to great young players in Dahlin, Thompson, Mittelstadt, and Cozens. He also had the benefit of greater cap flexibility than Montreal. It's a bit early in the year still, but Montreal being close to us is just sad. That Montreal appears to have passed us is shameful.

Luukkonen had his bad moments last year. On balance though he was very good. This year I think he has been mostly the same goalie, outside of the losing streak when the entire team was very bad. In the middle of the streak, he lost his confidence in my view. The Sabres had bad stretches last year, but nothing like the recent losing streak. My opinion is that the Sabres have clearly been a worse team this year. UPL does not entirely get let off the hook for his role in that, but he is near to the least of my worries. I think over 1/2 of the league's teams would swap their current #1 for UPL without much hesitation. Also, not all high danger scoring chances are created equal.

If we had given Zucker a 2 year deal we might have been able to get him at a lower AAV. Maybe I’m wrong on that and Zucker has just decided to be a mercenary and go to the highest one year bidder. But if he likes it here maybe he would now accept a 2x$4million deal, saving some money to put towards a different need.

Sorry if I have misread, but Mintyukov was picked right after Savoie. There’s a solid argument we could have taken him at 9. He was long gone by 16 though. In general, I agree that Östlund is not looking like a great pick. There were several players taken after who I would swap him for. You are right that he is going to need a lot of time in Rochester and maybe something will emerge. I’m not sure how much his injury has impacted his play when he has been in the line-up.

It was more a shot at our GM. I’m convinced Adams is paralyzed by this paradigm. If the young players are struggling they can’t be traded because he can’t get needed value. If they are thriving they can’t be traded because he doesn’t want to trade the wrong kid. Sabre fans are no different than all fans. We want to keep the kids we like (Benson, Kulick) and trade Isak Rosen and Gavin McCarthy for the missing veteran top-4 right-handed D.

Sabres have now moved from the “kids are struggling, we can’t sell low” stage, into the “kids are looking good, let’s stay the course” stage.

The two teams don’t seem like a good fit. Up front, the only player Detroit has who does not have trade protection who I would actively want, is Raymond; that’s not happening. Unless Detroit is wanting to reset their forward pipeline by trading us Raymond for one or two of our young forwards++ or something like that (seems ridiculous to even type it though). Rasmussen is the obvious guess. He has three years left after this at $3.2. He turns 26 in April. Is he basically a Greenway replacement? I don’t watch enough Red Wing games. On a Red Wing message-board, Samuelsson for Rasmussen was suggested. I’m not a fan of the idea. Also, knowing Adams, these last two games have served to reinforce his views on patience and on not putting pressure on or blocking kids. Last night we looked like the 22-23 Sabres: young, talented, and playing without the burden of expectations. The middle two lines were fun to watch and there is a world where patience pays off, I think. It didn’t get us close to the playoffs this year though, and next year will be a hope-shot at best.

Agreed. But I don’t see Adams admitting he made a mistake.

I agree with the bolded. Today though, I would say there is a substantially better chance that the lesson Adams learned is to not set any expectations re: playoffs. My bet would be that Adams believes, or will at least claim to believe, that too much pressure was placed on the team by making this a “win-now” year and that he should have stressed trusting the process over arbitrary outcomes. The reset will be to remove winning and playoffs as the standard and simply focus on gradual development and improvement, with there being no timeframe for an outcome that results in making the playoffs. This will, of course, be ridiculous. But I think there is a far greater chance, that the lesson learned is not that the roster was constructed wrong but rather that it was too soon to place any expectations for winning on this group of players.

We started the year with four forwards under 24 years-old in the top-6 and a fifth, Krebs, as the 13th forward. Benson is now on line 3 and Krebs and Kulich have been promoted to line 3. So we now have six of our top-nine forwards under 24. Add in two under 24 D in our top-4 and that’s 9 of our most important 13 skaters who are under 24. The Adams-plan is starting to come into focus. There will be no more talk of playoffs this year (why would there be?). The focus will shift back to how young we are and that we are building for long-term sustainable success. Trust the process. If we aren’t trying to win, nobody will be fired for losing.

I think there should be a 5th option of “they continue losing and stick to the plan”. It is what I think will happen. They won’t lose 13 in a row again, but they will continue to lose more than they win. Also, Adams will keep his job and there will be no indication he has any willingness to move off of his under 24 group of players. We will be San Jose if San Jose had Dahlin and a GM saying they are in win now mode.

No, I was thinking he might be an interim candidate and if not then likely he gets let go at the end of the year with everyone.

I don’t think I have advocated for trading for Pettersson (who isn’t that small actually). I just don’t think adding a personality like Miller would be good for the Sabres. He is an arsonist in my view. A veteran playoff team can absorb his personality for a year or two. In the end he will try to burn it down though. Adding Miller to the Sabres would be throwing gas on a raging fire.

You typically don’t see a GM in pro sports get a 2nd chance with a course correction. The Sabres are legitimately a lottery team this year. This is four years after we drafted 1st overall. We have a legitimate chance to do so again. Two years after missing the playoffs by 1 point and in a year where the GM himself stated we are in win-now-mode. There are many reasons to be terrified of any decision Pegula makes related to the Sabres. Barring a historical turnaround to this season, keeping Adams would just be further evidence that the Sabres continue to not operate like a normal NHL team.

I don’t agree with the “5 years of being bad”. The last two seasons, in my view, could be viewed as reasonable outcomes for a team that entered a tear down in 2020 (not trying to convince anyone to see it this way). There is a big-picture Sabres dysfunction element that Adams has become part of, to be certain. But there were moments the last two off-seasons where this could have gone a different direction and he could have made moves that would have positioned us to be a playoff team and chose not to. The lack of urgency that he has shown when it comes to putting an end to this ridiculous streak, is galling to me.

Solid posts. Thanks for bringing some topics up for discussion. No GM in major-league sports is judged on the “seemed like a good idea at the time” rule. They are judged on outcomes. Adams is trying to thread a needle. He is likely hampered by (charitably) a tight-fisted owner. But his attempt to simultaneously put a playoff team on the ice (his commitment, not mine), while also hoarding futures and not acquiring any older veterans who would require term, has simply been a complete and monumental failure. The Sabres had 8 players under 24 on their roster last night. They have used 12 this year. Anaheim and Chicago both have 7 under 24 players on their roster and have used 10 on the year. San Jose: 6 on the roster and 9 for the year. Adams needs to pick a lane. Are we in year 4 of his ongoing rebuild? Or are we legitimately trying to make the playoffs? Right now he is failing at both and has created an unholy mess.

By the off-season, Peca will either be the Rangers head coach or very available.

Not of this kind. A few more players who are wankers on the ice to the opposition? Yes. A wanker who doesn’t play defence and pouts when things aren’t going well and who doesn’t get along with teammates? No thanks. Trust Jon Cooper on this one.

Miller is weak defensively and a wanker to his teammates. Tampa benched him in the playoffs and could not get rid of him fast enough. He is a skilled player no doubt, but in my view he is an a-hole masquerading as a competitor.