Archie Lee

None taken. But you are not speaking for me when you conclude that Krebs, Joker and #11 (+) are unwanted.

I could be wrong, but I think Laughton is a guy who maybe gets a late 1st or early 2nd, but I don’t think he is worth #11. As for who the Sabres could move the pick for, I really don’t know. It’s hard to come up with a good one for one (pick for player) example. A lot of the ideas I come up with, seem that they might be laughable to some. Would Calgary do Andersson and Kadri (with say a $1 million retention) for Joker, Krebs and #11? Maybe we need to add something else? We would need to buyout Skinner to make it work.

I’m not trying to convince you of anything on Adams. TW posted that GMs don’t get fired that quickly and you replied that you disagree. Sorry then, what was it about his post that you were disagreeing with? I don’t think it takes 5 years for a GM to turn around a franchise and I would lose no sleep is Adams was fired today. For now though, I have more faith in Adams figuring this out than I have in Pegula getting it right on his 5th GM.

For much of my life I assumed I would one day see the Sabres win the Stanley Cup. That assumption was formed in the era of the 16-21 team NHL (75%+ of teams in the playoffs). Setting aside the team's ineptitude for the past 13 years, I've come to accept that it is now less than likely that they will win a Cup in my lifetime. This does not cause me any stress or frustration. In a 32 team (50% in the playoffs) NHL, I do think it is time that we see winning a Conference Championship as the great achievement that it is. Winning a Conference Championship in the NHL today is a greater feat than winning the Cup was at anytime prior to this century (in my view). It's time for teams to pick up the Prince of Wales and Clarence Campbell trophies and skate them around the ice and pose for photos. Nothing about celebrating that level of achievement has to mean that they have lost focus on the biggest prize (the Cup).

I don't think he was expressing an opinion on Adams level of success. He was pointing out that GM's don't get fired as often as people think (certainly not at the same rate as head coaches). I've lost a lot of faith in Adams going back to July 1, 2023. I can't understand, though, how anyone would think the best option is for Pegula to pick another GM. The best option for now is to hope that Adams, who I think is clearly a bright guy, has learned from his mistakes and properly course corrects this off-season. I'm skeptical, but I prefer to see what Adams does in partnership with Ruff over having Pegula making a change.

I looked back at the last decade for trades that fit our current scenario (trading a top 15 pick from this year's draft, after the season and prior to or at the draft). I excluded from the list: trades that occurred prior to the end of the year where the pick occurred trades related to an expansion draft trades where more than one first was traded such as the Seth Jones trade the Vancouver / Arizona trade from 2021, which had as much or more to do with cap space as the players involved (if you want to include it, Van did get Connor Garland and Oliver Ekman-Larsson in that deal) Here is the list: 2015 LA traded #13 (Zboril) to Boston along with Martin Jones and Colin Miller for Milan Lucic 2015 Cal traded #15 (Senyshyn) and two 2nd rd picks to Boston for Dougie Hamilton 2017 Ari trades #7 (Lias Andersson) and Tony DeAngelo to NYR for Derek Stepan and Antti Raanta 2020 Pit trades #15 (Amirov) and Evan Rodriguez (and 2 prospects) to Tor for Kaspari Kapanen (and 2 prospects) 2021 Phi trades #14 (Rosen) and a 2nd and Robert Hagg to Buf for Rasmus Ristolainen 2022 Ott trades #7 (Korchinski) and a 2nd and a 3rd for Alex Debrincat 2022 NYI trade #13 (Nazar) to Mtl for Alexander Romanov and a 4th rd pick 2022 Mtl then trades the above pick (Nazar) and a 3rd to Chicago for Kirby Dach With the benefit of hindsight, only two of the acquired players would be in the category of worth getting excited about, those being Hamilton and Debrincat (add Garland if you want to include that trade). Hamilton had 3 good years in Calgary and then returned Lindholm in a trade with Carolina. We know how the Debrincat situation turned out. LA fans were no doubt excited about Lucic in the moment, but they (fortunately for them) lost him as a UFA a year later. Also, the players drafted either did not take the league by storm (sadly, Amirov has since passed away), or are still in development. Not sure what this all means, except that perhaps (on balance) it isn't likely that trading #11 would turn into a franchise altering move one way or the other.

Are you suggesting we trade #11 for Laughton? Or that he is the quality of player we could get for #11? I would hope we could do better than that. I would prefer to give Laughton's $3 million salary to Teddy Blueger or Kevin Stenlund in free agency and keep the pick.

One thing to remember about Briere, his first good NHL season was the year he turned 24.

When it comes to prospects there should be no rush. I don't mean that we should be absolute in not trading any. I also don't mean we should just patiently wait for this batch of prospects to be ready. The Sabre roster has many good pieces, but also some holes and some structural deficiencies. Serious NHL teams that have cap space and assets address their holes and deficiencies, they don't leave spots open for the prospect who shows best in camp. Adams failed in not recognizing that a shift in perception had occurred by the end of 22-23 and that it was no longer going to be good enough to miss the playoffs with some young guys doing some good things. By not taking advantage of the assets he had and moving the process forward last off-season, he ultimately took the team backwards. That failure cost him his plan, and likely some agency (and a coach his job). I think it would be a mistake though, to now over-correct and trade away their 1st rd pick and half their top prospects. The Sabres have lots of assets at their disposal and don't need to move their 1st rd pick or top prospects to enhance the roster (I'm not absolute on this, I just think if they do things correctly then holding these assets will ultimately pay-off). The lesson from the Amerk's loss is that there need be no hurry to rush any of these kids to the NHL. They can all be back in Rochester, get a year older, a year stronger, a year more mature, support them with a bit of a different style of coach and veteran player (much like should happen in the NHL this year) and let them take a run. If things go as planned with the Sabres, there will be difficult cap decisions to make before 25-26. Then there should be 2-3 of these young guys absolutely ready to step in and help and thrive at the NHL level.

I’m not down on Levi. I urge you though to have a look at the list of young AHL goalies in the last decade who have had seasons with a 920 save %. and higher. The list is pretty long. Some ended up being very good NHL goalies. Most didn’t.

I think this is a succinct way of putting it. We have picks, prospects, some young roster players and cap space. I’m not too hung up on what pieces we move or don’t move. Just take advantage of the assets we have to make the team better.

The alternative is probably a one year Swayman deal ($3.5 ish). A two year deal takes UPL to UFA status. If we want some of his UFA years, then I think we will need to approach $5 million per. Lots of risk either way.

Keep the pick. Keep all the top prospects* in Rochester (or wherever they are required to play) for another year. Buy out Skinner. Bolster the roster with veterans acquired through free agency or by trading lesser assets (Joker, 2nd rd picks or later). Make the playoffs in the NHL and compete for the Calder in the AHL. Promote 2-3 Top prospects on ELC’s to the NHL roster in 25/26 when the cap crunch comes. *I’m ok with trading one or two top prospects, but think the roster can be effectively remade without doing so.

I’m not defending Adams with this comment, but for the past 3 seasons he has not been seriously trying to bring in veteran centres (there is a valid criticism regarding it not being a priority). Since the Krueger firing, Adams has, more or less, executed his plan. We have just come to the 1st point in his process where the plan did not render the results he anticipated. This off-season we will learn a lot.

It’s not that the ownership group could not afford to buy him out but rather that there would be no point. There are virtually no cap savings. He is 33. He had 65 points in 80 games.

I’ll be a bit surprised if Keefe is not fired. I think he is a good coach, but the easiest change for the Leafs to make is to fire him and bring in any one of the veteran coaches available. I think their brass will look at how they played games 5-7 and target a coach who they perceive will have them play like that from the start (Berube). There will be calls for Marner and/or Tavares to be traded, but they both have full no moves. I suppose there are ways to convince a player to accept a trade. Both are UFAs after next season, so change is coming one way or another.

It’s all message board fodder, Dude.

In my view Ruff has largely been a coach who gets as much out of his team as could reasonably be expected. That’s good. He is not a coach whose system or intellect or force of determination will push a team to be more than the sum of its parts. I don’t think that changes for the better at this point of his career. The 23-24 Sabres are maybe marginally better with Ruff than Granato, but they are not a playoff team. I would argue that the outlier from the Granato era is that he somehow dragged the 22-23 team to within a point of the playoffs; that was a greater coaching achievement than the 23-24 season was a failure. We will be as good as the team that Ruff is provided to coach. Great roster improvement is needed for us to be in playoff contention.

I could not disagree more. Post-pandemic, 90% of NHL fan-bases would be so lucky to have such a fraudulent team to root for. Just looking at their roster and at who is producing for them night after night and it seems to me they have reached that point of critical mass where they have a high # of players who are either in, approaching, or just coming out of their prime performance years. Once you get down to 8 NHL teams, the road is tough (this is not the NHL I grew up watching where 12/16 or 16/21 teams were in the playoffs). Watching the Oilers and watching all the former Sabres who are in the playoffs, just reinforces how terribly the Sabres managed the post-tank years. It is really just the past couple of years that we should be a top 5-6 contender.

I think it is possible that the double-digit number of people who he spoke to, were people he spoke to about the idea of hiring Ruff. In other words: he did due diligence on Ruff by having many discussions with many people about Ruff before he hired him. Adams got a lot of praise for how he handled the press conference where he addressed firing Donnie. I’ve read that some think his demeanour on that day and on the day of the Ruff press conference was the most confident he has been since he became GM. I see the opposite. I see a guy whose plan failed and who is now scrambling. I see a guy who knows his options to move this forward with the speed needed to save his job are extremely limited.

You make many good points that I agree with. I would argue that there is a difference between “A” tank (the concept of tanking) and “THE” tank (the tank that we did). There was no appetite among any group associated with the Sabres (ownership, management, fans) to manage the tank in a way that we would now describe as proper (I don’t doubt you may have felt different at the time, but I would not say your view was representative of how fans felt in general). The expectation was that we would be terrible for 2 years, get a good player in 2014 and then McEichel in 2015 and then be back in the playoffs and on our way to contending within another year or two. There was never any intention, at least after Regier was fired, to manage the tank and rebuild “properly”. In other words, I don’t think “THE” tank can be separated from the failed rebuild. Note: you are, of course, free to separate them if you see it otherwise. I’m not speaking for anyone but myself, but I don’t see what happened from June 2015 to June/July 2018 as being separate from “THE” tank.

I'm not looking to make change for the sake of change. But, if we come back next year with the same top-6 D and Skinner, there won't be many roster spots or much cap space left to make substantial change. I'm onboard for a remade 4th line, but I don't see (as examples) adding Noah Cates through trade and the likes of Brendan Smith, William Carrier, Kevin Stenlund, etc. as UFA's as moving the needle all that much. And just adding players of that level (along with extensions for Joker, Krebs, UPL, Bryson) will get us within a couple millions of the cap.

Assuming the Sabres plan to be a cap team from here (no sure thing, I understand), then from a cap perspective, the only significant value in waiting a year is avoiding the 6th year cap hit of $2,444,444. The benefit in buying him out now is $7.5 million in space this season to remake the roster. From an actual dollars spent perspective, waiting a year saves Pegula about $3.7 million ( I think). For me it is the mix.

I’m fine with moving a high-end prospect or two this off-season. My preference, though, would be to address our top-end needs (middle six forward, 2nd pair D) through free agency and to trade some secondary pieces (Joker, B-prospects, 2nd rd picks and later) to fill out the 4th line and depth positions. If the Sabres are serious this off-season and spend to the cap (hopefully with a Skinner buyout), then whether they acquire new players via trade or free agency it will put them in a difficult cap position next year with Peterka, Quinn, Byram as RFAs (and Levi). I’m not afraid of that and indeed hope we are in a difficult cap position a year from now. I want them to have tough decisions to make regarding RFA’s or trading a vet or two to make space. If we are in such a difficult spot, then the more good prospects we have to challenge for vacated roles, the better. There should be no rush to trade or promote our top prospects. In 04-05, Vanek, Roy, Pominville, Gaustad and Miller were in Rochester and their average age to start the season was 21.6. Next year to start the season the average age of Rosen, Kulich, Savoie, Östlund and Levi will be a full year younger. I’m not opposed to trading one or two in the right deals, but improving through free agency and keeping prospect bullets in the chamber, so to speak, for when the cap crunch hits, should be an option.

Today? No. But that doesn’t mean we are headed in the Leafs direction (again, it feels stupid to say that because the Leafs are so much better than us). The Leafs actually have a lot of jam/grit in their line-up. It is just that they have tied half of their salary to 4 elite offensive players who collectively have little jam/grit. This has not allowed them to have a deep enough roster talent-wise. They can’t afford to spend on a goalie. Last night they were down 2 with 4 minutes left and they had Jake McCabe QBjng PP2. That is not a path we are headed on. We are actually built quite differently with goal and D prioritized from the backend. If and when we add bottom 6 grit/jam, we will see that our top players are quite able to stand up for themselves and their teammates (not all, but more than enough).