Archie Lee

I do want to see this team coached by a more experienced NHL coach with a winning pedigree. But, I also would have liked to see Granato coach a team that was built with winning in mind. I do think Granato could be a successful mid-season replacement for an underachieving team whose head coach is in the “hard to play for” category. It maybe just too early to read anything into who was fired and who wasn’t. I wonder if Appert is the fallback option. If Brind’Amour or Sullivan (or similar) are available and willing, they come in and decisions get made on Ellis and Wilford. If Adams can’t get his top choices, then Appert gets his shot.

The mistake is in equating a ranking of the talent and depth of prospect pools as relevant to how those pools are managed. That the Bruins are really good at managing the assets they have does not mean that their assets (in this case their prospects) are better. If you are saying you have more faith in what Boston will do with their limited prospect pool than what Buffalo will do with an objectively better pool, then you won’t get an argument from me. Buffalo’s prospect depth and talent is better though.

The Bruins would trade their prospects, including all those kids you mention, for Buffalo’s in a second. If the Bruins had our pool there would be 4-5 of our prospects who would have made their debut this year as the Bruins are in greater need of inserting a few players on ELCs. Now, there is no guarantee that a team can turn its top ranked prospect pool into a contending NHL team. That is clear. It is also clear that having a low ranked prospect pool does not mean you have to accept that you are just going to eventually be a loser. Make no mistake though, no NHL GM would take the Bruin’s prospect pool over the Sabres’ pool, and there wouldn’t be anything that resembles a debate. Of course, you know this.

You are correct that much of my thoughts are “in hindsight”. I don’t know how else to evaluate the situation. I was onboard with much of what he did and did not do last offseason. Now that the season is over it is time to evaluate the results. In hindsight, what’s worse for the future: That Adams didn’t have the urgent conviction of getting this team to the playoffs? Or that he so badly misunderstood where the team was that he thought Clifton and Johnson were the missing pieces? Maybe I’m the optimistic one. I think the organization can shift its level of conviction and urgency this off-season. I’m not sure we can overcome a GM who thinks that what we needed to take the next step was to replace Lyubushkin and Stillman with Clifton and Johnson.

I do not think Adams made moves last off-season with a conviction towards making the playoffs. At the end of last season, both Adams and Granato bristled when asked if they had missed an opportunity by falling short of the playoffs and also when asked if not making the playoffs this season would be considered failure. Note that I am not saying they are actively trying to lose. Rather, that they have not shown, in my view, any sign of accepting that not being a playoff contender this season is an unacceptable outcome. I agree with you that Adams has made clear what his intended pathway to success is. I am not eager for him to be replaced and want to see him continue as GM. I do think though that there are moments in a team’s progression where there needs to be a clear directional shift from rebuilding to contending. I’m not talking about a hollow “drill more wells” or “the rebuild is over” statement. I mean actions that set the tone. Last off-season, the decision to not make any changes on the coaching staff, to not move Olofsson (who Granato had lost all faith in), to bring back Jost, to not bring in a replacement for Quinn and change the make-up of the forwards, to not utilize existing cap space or draft/prospect capital to get better talent, to then start the season by rolling out a struggling Levi for 4 straight games, sent a clear message that winning was not an urgent matter for Adams and Granato (and Pegula, to be fair). There is no specific individual I want replaced, fired, cut, traded. What I want is for the Sabres to operate like a team that expects to make the playoffs in the coming season. There are around 22 or so NHL teams that operate that way in any given year. Not all are successful, obviously. We have not operated that way under Adams yet. My opinion is that he is a year overdue and that every year that he puts it off is a year that takes us further away and not closer to the goal.

Call the above what you will (committed, urgent, methodical, purposeful). The next time Adams makes such moves with the specific conviction of making the playoffs in the upcoming season, will be his first time.

I think you make valid points. While the Wings aren’t out of it yet, if they miss it will be 5 years out of the playoffs under Yzerman. I’m not sure they have enough high end young talent to move into perennial contender status. I also agree that longterm we are better positioned than Wash, Pitt, Phi, NYI and even some of the contenders (Bos, TB). Your last point about coaching and leadership is critical. Keep in mind that teams behind us are coming (or will at least be trying to). NJ will almost certainly add an experienced head coach and will get healthier over the summer. Ottawa sounds like they will hire Evason or Berube as their coach. They will get tougher to play against. Montreal is where we were 2 years ago; I saw a segment on one of the sports networks recently where it was indicated the expectation in Montreal (organizational) is that they are in the playoff race next year. There is no sign that the teams ahead of us are about to tank. I can’t help but think that the floundering of the Sabres, Wings and Senators has sent the message that deliberately being bad comes with risk of taking longer than expected to become good. At some point there needs to be some level of organizational urgency to end this drought. Last year at this time I thought we were better than 50/50 to end the drought this season. Right now I would put us at under 10% to make the playoffs next year. I just can’t find 8 teams in the East that I am confident we will be better than. How long until our current players have had enough?

Agreed. And FLA was playing for 1st in the division, so it wasn’t meaningless to them. Over the course of the season the Sabres needed about 6-8 more games like yesterday’s. Games where they dragged the outcome into extra time. Had they done that they would have won about 1/2 of those games and they would have 8-12 more points in the standings.

For sure. Im not saying they aren’t worthy.

Prior to this year, Weber and Peca had zero experience coaching in the NHL and far less overall coaching experience than Wilford or Christie. I’m not defending our staff, but at this point they are quite a bit more experienced as NHL assistants than Peca or Weber (in other words, experience is not a supportive argument for having replaced anyone on our staff with Peca or Weber). More broadly, I do agree the lack of NHL coaching experience on our staff has been an issue (though, our assistants now have over 12 years of NHL experience combined). The best supporting example is Jon Cooper’s start in Tampa. Prior to taking over, Cooper had zero NHL experience as either a player or coach. I’m not sure whose decision it was, but for his first 5 years as coach of the Lightning he had Rick Bowness as an assistant.

I’m hoping they trade some prospects for NHL players and make this pick. That would better stagger the ages of the young players in the pipeline.

Catton has “drop to the Sabres” written all over him. I’m ok with that.

I don’t get “old man hockey vibes” from Forton at all. Quite the opposite. He isn’t from the analytics era, but everything I’ve read and heard from him suggests he has embraced analytics as an important part of the scouting process.

We might be splitting hairs at this point, but if a GM trades a significant amount of prospect and draft capital without achieving the desired outcome, then “squandered” is as good a word as any to describe what they did. Of course, we don’t know how things would have turned out had they stuck with Murray and Bylsma. I think it probably turns out better than it did under Botterill.

I might have the source wrong, but I think it was Paul Maurice. He was quoted as saying that the role of a head coach is to design a game plan, teach the game plan and hold the players accountable for committing to the game plan. He then stated that the best coach n the NHL at doing this is Brind'Amour. I think Maurice and Brind'Amour go back a long way, so take it for what it's worth. There isn't a coach I would rather have though. Maybe DeBoer I don't think Brind'Amour is leaving Carolina. If he isn't extended yet though and they lose out in rd 1 or 2, a change is not impossible to imagine. Other coaches who might be vulnerable if they miss the playoffs or lose out early: Montgomery, Keefe, Sullivan. The Western teams already made their moves (McLellan, Evason, Woodcroft).

Murray was hired Jan 9, 2014. Most of the tear down started before he got here. The only big piece that he traded was Miller, who along with Ott netted some pieces and a 2015 1st. As someone else mentioned he also then moved Moulson for a couple of 2nds. The thing that happened under Murray's watch, and it isn't clear if this was entirely his plan or if he was instructed to accelerate the rebuild and then tried to do so as best he could, is he moved out four players (Armia, Grigorenko, Zadorov and Compher) recently drafted in rd 1 and 2, and the 1st rd picks that we got for Vanek and Miller, and Myers, Stafford, Lemieux and a 2nd, to return Kane, Bogosian, O'Reilly and Lehner. It's debatable whether he got good value; I would argue no, as I think only O'Reilly was both very good talent and a person without (much) baggage. At the time of the trade though, it served to do two things: 1.) It negatively impacted our organizational depth 2.) It made us negligibly better in the short-term, which served primarily to drop our draft position in 2016 and 2017. Now, we might have ended up drafting Olli Juolevi and Cody Glass, but we also could have ended up with Matthew Tkachuk and Cale Makar. If the argument is that Botterill was worse, I won't quibble.

Fair enough. I’m not thrilled with Adams at this point. I just think there is a better chance that he can figure it out than there is that Pegula can hire a better replacement.

If Adams is fired, then Pegula, who has maybe the worst hiring track record in NHL history, will be hiring a replacement. Adams has done enough positive things to make me think he is bright and capable. My preference would be to see if he has learned from his mistakes.

The Sabres are not a good team. It should be noted that the Sabres are going to finish about where the pre-season models, based on talent and past-performance, had them finishing. I think there are experienced NHL coaches who could have squeezed more out of the team than Granato did, but I honestly think he got them to about the level that their talent, experience and make-up reasonably allowed. I don’t think Granato is the best coach to take them to the next level. A normal NHL team that is committed to winning with any degree of urgency would make a change. I could though, absolutely see Granato being successful in the short-term as a “breath of fresh air” mid-season replacement for a cup contending team that is underachieving with a hard-ass coach who has lost the room.

Staying the course is the correct thing to do. But it doesn’t mean making no meaningful changes. Staying the course means you remain committed to the vast majority of your young core (Thompson, Tuch, Cozens, Peterka, Quinn, Benson, Dahlin, Power, Byram, UPL, Levi) and that you don’t “blow it up”. Staying the course doesn’t mean running back something that failed. There are many meaningful changes that can be made in an attempt to advance this team to the playoffs that don’t involve steering off the current course (coaching changes and adding veterans in key positions are the obvious examples). To not make such changes is to do the opposite of what successful and serious professional sports franchises do.

Adams (with an assist to Pegula maybe) is the culprit for this year’s failings. Swapping out Boosh and Stillman for Clifton and Johnson was ok. Clifton upgraded the bottom of our D-corps. Johnson was bad. The problem though is that there were multiple other areas that needed to be addressed. Our special teams were bad last year. Those areas typically fall to assistants yet we opted for no changes. Comrie was a disaster last year. We opted not to upgrade the vet goalie position. Quinn was injured before free agency and we opted not to bring in a vet replacement. Granato had lost faith in Olofsson and we opted not to move him and bring in a replacement. Teams that are serious about moving forward, address these issues (maybe not all of them, but some of them). We had two assistants in Rochester sought after by NHL teams. We let them go rather than promote. With Comrie we sacrificed talent for vibes. We gave the starting job to Levi though he had a poor pre-season. The best goalie out of camp should have started, not the struggling rookie. A veteran winger should have been signed to replace Quinn. We should have ate some of Olofsson’s salary and attached a pick to move him and then bring in another vet who better fit a bottom six role. By not doing these things, a clear message was sent to the team: there is no urgency and we will get there when we get there. That is not how playoff teams operate. The culture that lacked urgency in my view is the reason for the poor start to the year and the carry over to how poorly we start games. I’ve been a supporter of Adams. I think he handled himself extremely well through his first 3 seasons. No GM makes only good decisions. Through his 1st three years he did well to navigate a toxic environment and position us for success. He crapped the bed this past off-season though. He was afraid to embrace success and expectation and urgency. Our best chance of moving forward is that he has learned from his mistakes.

The Sabres are 6 points off their pace from a year ago. They had 85 points after 78 games a year ago. Interestingly, they were actually further back of a playoff spot last year as they were 6 out at this point and are 5 out at the moment. Frustrating for me is that after missing last year by 1 point and with obvious flaws, from the end of last season to now there were only two moves made that can be argued as attempts to improve the team in the moment. These moves were linked, the adding of two veteran D in free agency. One, I would argue, turned out fine (I’m not entirely unhappy that we have Clifton at his AAV for 2 years), the other was awful (E. Johnson). That’s it. Watching yesterday’s game, it occurred to me that the Sabres have many players who are ready to be on a team that takes the next step. They really did need their owner and GM to have faith in them and help by addressing some of the weaknesses. At minimum, there should have been one or two changes in the assistant coaches and one or two veteran forwards added in the off-season to replace Quinn (injury) and Olofsson (who Granato had lost faith in). There are no guarantees, but where would we be today had we swapped Ellis and Christie to Rochester for Alpert and Peca and had we traded for Toffoli and signed, say, Alexander Kerfoot in free agency? Maybe we aren’t further along, but at least we could say there was an attempt. The sad thing is, I see zero indication that Adams thinks there is any need for such moves even now.

He would hold all of them accountable. The only players Granato holds accountable are rookies and Olofsson.

I agree that there is risk. There are playoff teams right now though who are paying 8 million plus for their goalies. As the cap goes up, paying $10 million plus for two goalies who split the job would be a reasonable option for some teams. And, as you say, if both hit then you do have a good trade chip.

They aren’t making the playoffs. I know that. Still, last night I habitually went through the remaining schedule of all the potential WC2 teams. I actually think there is a plausible scenario where 88 or even 87 points gets you in. It makes me a little sad and frustrated that Adams did nothing to enhance the line-up at the deadline. The Mitts/Byram deal was a wash in the moment (strengthening one area while weakening another). 2-3 additional points since the deadline and we are right there. All that said, I suspect Tortorella’s rants in the past few days will have the desired impact on the Flyers. I think the Flyers come out tonight and make clear they are actually in the race and we will not be up to the physicality that they will display.