Archie Lee

Conceptually, I like the idea of bringing in a centre who can play wing (or moving Thompson or Cozens to wing) and giving Krebs a shot at 3rd C. If we signed Stephenson, as an example, he could play LW to start and if Krebs flounders or a C is injured, you have a 3rd C available to slide over. I don't see us acquiring anyone who is above the level of 4th C who can play 3C in a pinch though.

There is an enormous gap that exists between giving no grace to a franchise that has floundered for 13 seasons (quite reasonable) and beating up on the character of a 23 year old because he dared to post a photo of himself relaxing with a cocktail (quite unreasonable). Carry on as you wish though.

I think we offer Bryson a 2-3 year deal at around $1.2 million that clearly establishes his role as being an organizational 6-9 d-man. His future likely hinges on whether he will accept something like this in order to stay or whether he prefers to test the waters to see if he can get a larger role elsewhere. If we qualify Bryson, and I will be very surprised if we do, it will be a clear sign that Adams has not learned lessons from last offseason.

I like the idea. Seattle, I suspect though, has every interest in getting back to the playoffs this year. I don’t think they trade those 3 made for playoffs vets for our about to become overpaid d-man who doesn’t fit, the top prospect that Sabre fans value the least and a 2nd. It’s not a deal that makes them better. You can make it work value-wise, but I don’t see it as practical from Seattle’s perspective.

I think that is more than the initial poster is suggesting. It was two assets: 1.) Quinn or Power, and 2). 11 OA or one of our top prospects. Power and Quinn are not in the same category in my view. Power's value as a recent #1 OA who has the potential to be a #1 d-man, is orders of magnitude greater than Quinn's. Power for Tkachuk straight up is likely fair. Power probably has longer term value, but Tkachuk simply brings elements to a team that it seems every team wants (and that we don't have). I would trade one of our young wingers (Quinn, Peterka or Benson) and #11, for Tkachuk. I think it would take more though. I think if you went to every team in the league and said you can have either Tkachuk or #11 in this draft plus Quinn AND Savoie, that the vast majority of teams take Tkachuk without the slightest hesitation. One point though, without a Skinner buyout, any such trade for a high-priced player leaves us pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel for an entire 4th line.

You are correct that if they can convince Kane to take such a deal then they could fit him and a bigger contract under the cap.

My sense is that it is tied to Adams’s extension and the 2 years left on Granato’s deal. If Ruff is successful and wants to keep coaching, he will get extended. Pegula likely did not want to commit any money past two years. Which is also why Ruff was likely the best/only vet coach option. No other veteran successful coach (maybe Boudreau) would have accepted a two year deal.

To your 2nd paragraph, I encourage you not to take anyone’s word (including mine) for how much cap space we have. Go to capfriendly and utilize their armchair GM tool. Once you sign UPL, Krebs, Joker and Bryson to even conservative deals and promote a few ELCs to backup roles, there is not enough space left to add two 5-6 million $ contracts. There isn’t. Even if you move Joker and replace him with a low level contract, there isn’t space for two bigger $$ additions. To your 3rd paragraph, I don’t think that having an internal cap that comes in at, say, $81.5, dooms the season. It does make it tougher to upgrade the roster though and thus lowers the chances of success. I do think though that people are underestimating Ruff’s willingness to accept less than ideal circumstances while overestimating the influence he will have. He is the league’s 2nd oldest coach. A year out of the league would likely render him irrelevant to future coaching competitions. He wanted to coach in the NHL this year and coaching the Sabres again is likely viewed by him as a good way to cap a great career. I’m sure he thinks there are good pieces here that might allow for success (and he would be right), but I don’t think current evidence supports that he set a number of conditions that relate to him having a high degree of influence on anything other than coaching.

I hate to keep coming back to the same thing, but Kane+Cirelli (or the equivalent) is not possible without both a Skinner buyout and a commitment to being a cap team (neither of which is likely). Kane took a bit of a prove it deal with the Wings last season and then went out and proved it. He was a legitimate difference making winger. He is going to get $6 million plus unless he prioritizes a Cup and opts to sign with a contender for less. Assuming conservative extensions for our RFA's, the $12 million it would cost for Kane + Cirelli eats the rest of the cap and still leaves us with 2/3 of a 4th line to find. I would love it if this were a possibility (ie: we buyout Skinner, commit to being a cap team and make Kane/Cirelli type deals), but I can't see it happening.

I think Mittelstadt's deal will come in at 5-6 years and between $5-$6 million per, and I think that is what he would have gotten whether he was here or in Colorado. Cozens and Thompson got their deals after having more impressive seasons than any that Mitts has had, specifically when it comes to goals scored. Mitts's performance and value when compared to the seasons that led to the Cozens and Thompson contracts, brings Mitts in at a lower AAV. I don't have any great issue with starting next season with Krebs getting a shot at 3C. The problem though is we are very thin at C and it will be tough to find a 4C that is good enough to move up for an extended period in the event of either an injury or Krebs not working out. Not to mention, we have no clear option for moving someone into a top 6 role if Thompson or Cozens are out of the line-up. Not to mention, it would be good to have a 5th C also. What I struggle with is why Adams seemed so willing to discard what was a near perfect situation that he had with Thompson, Cozens, Mitts. At least, near perfect for a team without a true #1C. The best option, in my view, going into next season would have been to move Mitts or Cozens to the wing in the top 6 with Krebs at 3C. Then if you have an injury or if Krebs is just not getting it done, you have a 3rd middle-to-top-six C available to slide in to a centre role. Why Adams did not see the value of this, or thought that it was less valuable than adding Byram to the D corps, I don't understand. (Note: I'm not down on Byram at all, and think he makes our D better. I don't see his skillset as redundant. Injuries happen on D also, and with Byram we are set-up with 3 strong puck-moving D who can QB a PP; that's not nothing. Also, there are still 3 back-end positions to fill with more defence focused players. That Clifton and Joker aren't ideal defenders does not make it wrong to acquire Byram. There are options that other teams would exercise to upgrade on Joker/Clifton.) Now, if the plan is to go out and get a centre/LW in free agency such as Chandler Stephenson, or to trade for a Cirelli or a Colton, and to replace Joker with a more more physically-imposing and defensive-focused player, then it all comes together for me. Though this should be the plan it is highly unlikely to occur. For one, it would require a Skinner buyout, which should happen but won't (a Skinner buyout would allow us to spend on both a 3C in the Stephenson/Cirelli range and a 2nd pairing R shot D upgrade to Joker). For two, until proven otherwise I suspect we still have an internal cap that will come in closer to $80 million than $87.7 million. And third, many acquisitions and attempted acquisitions of the Adams era were rumored in advance (it was known we were in on Chychrun, Greenway had been rumored, the Byram for Mitts swap was discussed in the media weeks before it happened). The two centres linked to the Sabres last year were Cates and Laughton from the Flyers. A potential deal with the Flyers might be dead, but it is that quality of C that we are likely to add.

Not saying you are wrong, but based on what? Carolina’s owner was paying Waddell a 7 figure salary as GM, to not be the GM?

And, it's not used to identify the best players...it's used to identify the best players that we can afford and who will come to Buffalo. I don't think the analytics department said to Adams that he needed to go out and get Stillman. More likely is that we needed a D-man and the analytics department said if all you are prepared to pay is Josh Bloom and $1.3 million in cap, then Stillman is about as good as you are going to get.

I don't think we have any idea the degree to which they do or don't listen to the analytics department. Every team, it seems, now has their own models that they use that are different from the public models (why have an analytics department if you can just subscribe to a few websites). Maybe we did largely follow what our analytics department recommended. How would we know?

It's perhaps a different topic, but I do think that the struggles that Buffalo, Ottawa and Detroit have had in getting out of their death spirals and back into the playoffs, has served as a cautionary tale to teams that might otherwise opt to start a rebuild. When you purposefully decide to be a bad hockey team, the road to becoming good again can be long and dark. Teams are going to hold on and squeeze every win they can out of their aging line-ups. Nobody above us or around us in the standings, is going to concede anything.

I don't think Tampa is going anywhere soon, but I do think that once the slide hits they will vanish faster than the Bruins. The distinction I would make between them and the Bruins is that the Bruins have really limited the number of big contracts that they have; I think this has allowed the Bruins to have much better depth down their line-up. The Bruins currently have only 4 players with contracts higher than $6 million with Swayman possibly joining the group this offseason. Tampa has 8 players over $6 million and are still, reportedly, looking to keep Stamkos. The Bruins, to their credit, never seem to need players like Conor Sheary or Jonas Johansson to fill out their line-up. Of course, Tampa has two recent cup wins so they know what they are doing.

The H is often dropped today and players are either LD or RD or LD/RD. The distinction has little to do with what hand the player is and also doesn't attempt to address if they are good or bad at playing one or the other. It simply means that they almost exclusively play one side, or they play both sides frequently enough that they can be labeled as playing both. Dahlin and Power, in my view, are correctly noted as LD/RD as they play both sides and play both sides well (though, I'm sure the underlying numbers show that they are better at one side over the other).

It is possible that the big UFA RD (Pesce, DeMelo, Roy, Tanev) just won't come to Buffalo. If any would consider coming to Buffalo, and there is a Sabre tax to be paid, then the cost might be an extra year on the term as opposed to a higher AAV. So, instead of Pesce at 6.25 x 5 years maybe it is 6.5 x 6 years. Such a move is sustainable so long as they are willing to eventually move something else out. This, to me, is why you have a good prospect pool. If you sign one of the UFA d-men, then in a year you might not be able to keep all of Byram, Samuelsson, Quinn or Peterka. So you then move one or two for a pick/prospect and promote Johnson, Kulich, Savoie or Rosen. If the team is successful, this will eventually happen regardless of whether you acquire higher end talent through free agency or trades. The upside of acquiring such talent through free agency is that you retain your prospects and can utilize their ELC's when you need to move a veteran out. The downside of acquiring such talent through free agency is it will likely cost more in AAV and/or term. In both cases, you are sacrificing a degree of flexibility in one area and keeping some flexibility in another. Also, the thread title is "...what moves should Adams make..." not "what moves will Adams make...". So the point, I think, is to live for now in a world where anything is possible.

I’m not sure if you are being cheeky, but it could be UPL. Joel Hofer is coming along. The current best may well be Binnington. Adin Hill? Somewhat interesting is that of the last 10 cup winners, 7 had a Canadian starting goalie who came out of major junior (Crawford, Fleury, Murray, Holtby, Binnington, Kuemper and Hill).

Hopefully: Dahlin and Power on the 1st pair. Elite and similar to Heiskanen/Harley in Dallas. Samuelsson with either Joker or Clifton would be a fine 3rd pair. Sign Brendan Smith and he can be with Bryson on the 4th pair and serve as the 14th forward too (and fight a few guys). That leaves Joker or Clifton as the odd man out (likely Joker) as we need to get a veteran 2nd pairing partner for Byram. Hopefully we are in on DeMelo, Roy, Tanev, Pesce. Johnson can go to back to Rochester and get called up if/when there is an injury; he’s on deck if we can’t afford to keep Byram after next season. The Russians are in the hole for 2026-27.

I don't remember this either. He has expressed that he would be cautious about signing a player in free agency out of concern that it is often the case that a good player who has reached UFA status will command a higher AAV or longer term (or both) than might be reasonable based on the player's age. I don't recall him saying that he would not take a player in trade who is on a long-term deal. Of course, the unsaid is always "the right player for the right price".

I agree, but I also don’t think he should. Adams can’t completely abandon the plan. If there is a team left that we could resemble it is Dallas. The comparables aren’t perfect, but Cozens is our Roope Hintz (who was splitting time between the NHL and AHL at Cozens age). Our backend is built to be like the Stars (UPL or Levi are Oettinger, Dahlin is Heiskanen, Power is Harley, Samuelsson is Lindell). Peterka or Quinn need to become our Robertson (or a reasonable facsimile). Benson is Stankoven and maybe Savoie comes up mid-season and we have two Stankoven’s. Tuch is something between Pavelski and Benn. What we are missing are the Marchments and Tanevs and a 3rd centre (and I think a DeBoer).

This is kind of the point I think. There are people making straight-faced arguments that the league was full of guys making $750-$800 K who are better than Okposo and Girgs, as though we would have been better this year with Ryan Lomberg and Steven Lorentz as 4th line wingers. The reality is that it is not players like that who make teams like FLA so much better, it’s players like Barkov, Tkachuk and Reinhart. It’s probably worth remembering (not directed at you), that when Adams started his rebuild he had no idea that Thompson was going to become a 30-40 goal scorer and 70-90 point man (and it still isn’t clear that he will be consistently). The goal from the onset was that the prospect and draft capital acquired in the recent tear down would yield such players. The plan I’m sure was showing patience for our prospects to develop. None are close to being elite level NHL forwards at the moment and I’m not sure any actually project to be. Getting elite level forwards will require a lot of patience or a big trade (we do have elite D and possibly G, in my view).

Re: Power, it is true that he needs to learn how to physically impose himself defensively. The risk I guess is that it just isn’t in his make-up and never happens. But he retrieves and moves the puck out of danger zones so effortlessly that I think we don’t even notice the positive impact he has on possession and zone time. He is much better than Byram in my view.

Brendan Smith fits this role and can serve as both the 8th D and 14th forward.

I have no interest in carrying water for Granato. Better coaches than him get fired all the time. That said, what is strange to me is to have the view that the Sabres are poorly built and missing many elements of a playoff team (very true) while simultaneously concluding that their head coach should have somehow squeezed a playoff spot out of them. It’s not unreasonable to conclude that Granato was part of the deficient make-up of the team. It is not at all or in any way strange to say that the Sabres did not have a playoff style or calibre lineup last year.