Archie Lee

The Sabres can win without Peterka. To state the obvious, there are 16 teams in the playoffs who did not have Peterka in their line-up. I actually could easily see the Sabres being a better team this year if they replaced Peterka and Byram with a couple of lesser talented veterans, like Bryan Rust and Cody Ceci (along with a couple of other changes, like slight upgrades on Lafferty, Clifton, Bryson, and Reimer). I think we would also need to upgrade at Head Coach to someone who truly does bring structure and accountability and does more than talk the big talk, but that’s another topic. The real story here though, assuming it’s true (and maybe it isn’t), is that Peterka wants out. The entire plot of the Adams GM tenure, starting with the Krueger firing, was a rebuild of talent and culture around those who want to be here. And 4 years later, with nothing to show for it, we saw video of first Adams decrying how unfair it is to expect any success given all that is stacked up against him, and then video a few months later of Ruff lamenting the bad culture. And now a young star wants out BEFORE his 2nd contract. Why is Adams still the GM?

Fair enough. My best guess is that the hockey world in general thinks more highly of Peterka and his potential than you do.

Peterka finished 51st in scoring in the NHL. He was born in 2002. Of the 50 players who outscored Peterka, only Wyatt Johnson was born after 2002. Sorry, but the idea that he is not paying on a 1st line or with anyone as good as Thompson or on PP 1 on most other teams, is just highly inaccurate. He is a burgeoning star.

A team with a good head coach will get him and he will become a dynamic offensive player who is not a defensive liability.

Under Shanahan, the Leafs made the playoffs the last 9 years. They have averaged 105 points per season in that time. Over the past 3 seasons, only 5 teams have won more playoff games (the 4 still playing, and Vegas). Shanahan was fired because the expectations in Toronto are now for a Stanley Cup Victory. There are Sabre fans who don't like the idea of Shanahan having a role with the Sabres?

On age, look at the Oilers and how long they struggled. Now McDavid, Draisatl, Nurse, and Nugent-Hopkins, are all in their later 20's to early 30's and they are thriving in the playoffs. Eichel and Reinhart are the same. Had the right person been in place at the right moment, we could now be watching a team driven by a core of Eichel, Reinhart, Thompson, Dahlin, Montour, and Ullmark. The GM of the Sabres has a difficult needle to thread. Dahlin, Thompson, and Tuch are probably the only core pieces who are ready to be true drivers on a win-now team But they need help and the GM needs to make wise decisions on which of the younger players can help the team now and in the future and which younger players would be better dealt for veterans who can help win now. Adams is two years behind on this endeavor and has shown no indication that he is up to the task.

Who are the other Jerry Forton specials? The Sabres reached just a bit when drafting Rosen. McKenzie's final rankings had him at 18. Rosen at 13, was not a huge reach. In my view, Rosen has been a bit of a victim of the organization he was drafted by. Somewhat weirdly, the "no blocking" philosophy has blocked Rosen. The Sabres routinely had 6-7 forwards under 24 on their roster this season. They were already too young. Yes, Benson and Kulich passed Rosen on their respective paths to the NHL, but we love those two players. I'll compare Rosen to Mackie Samoskevich in Florida. Samoskevich was drafted 23rd by Florida in the same draft as Rosen. McKenzie had him at #33. He is a late birthday and is 5 months older than Rosen. He is 5'11' / 180. Last year in D+4, Samoskevich had 22 goals and 54 points in 62 AHL games, quite comparable to Rosen's 20 goals and 50 points in 67 games. In 7 NHL games last year, Samoskevich had 0 points. This year he made the jump to the NHL full-time. But, he was one of only two forwards under 24 on the Panther roster. And, Florida was up against the cap and needed his ELC. He had a solid rookie season with 15 goals and 31 points in 72 games. What's important here, is that Samoskevich's most common linemate this season was Sam Bennett. He played over 250 minutes at even strength on Bennett's wing, with Evan Rodrigues being the other winger for the majority of the time . Rosen, in his time up with the Sabres this year, never came close to being paired with a single player or to having two regular linemates. His most common linemates were Malenstyn and fellow rookie, Tyson Kozak. Adams has set all of his young players up to fail. Some have risen above this. I'm not predicting anything when it comes to Rosen, and his value is likely pretty low. But I think it is far to soon to early to write him off as a bust.

Yep. These scenarios never end with the GM who hasn’t figured it out in 5 years, suddenly doing so and going on to glory. Everywhere you look in the East teams are making front office or coaching moves with the intent of improving. The Rangers and Flyers didn’t bring in Sullivan and Tocchet for prolonged rebuilds. The Bruins made clear to their fans that losing is not acceptable. Columbus has $40 million in cap space and one, maybe two, free agents they would really want back; I’m not sure what they will do, but odds are they will do more than the equivalent of signing Erik Johnson and Connor Clifton. Montreal, Ottawa, and Detroit have passed us. Could that be fleeting? Maybe. But what has Adams done to have any confidence he will out manoeuvre Gorton/Hughes or Staios or Yzerman this off-season? Carolina has more cap space than us. So does Toronto. The best free agents will not be choosing the Sabres. At the end of last season, for the first time under Adams, there were reports of unrest amongst Sabres players. They are not dumb and they can see what other franchises are doing and how winning is valued elsewhere. If this season doesn’t start well, things will quickly implode.

If Adams was fired today and Dudley was hired as a senior advisor to help Pegula find a new GM, that would be amazing. Adding Dudley to advise Adams though, would only give me hope because Dudley might eventually get Pegula’s ear and explain that big changes need to be made. It would give me no hope for a quick turnaround . The scenario that is unfolding, has disaster written all over it. Adams and Ruff are, demonstrably, among the current worst to hold jobs in their respective positions in the NHL. And they are lame ducks. And players know, generally speaking, that the rest of the league looks at Sabre players and thinks they are likely better than what they have shown in Buffalo. If and when things start to go south, the booing will start and there will be zero motivation for the average Sabre player to lay it on the line for the current regime. Team failure will mean a new GM/HC and/or individual players being sent to a new team. Losing this year will be a no lose situation for many key Sabre players.

Another way of looking at is that he won 2 playoff series in the last 3 years. Over the last 3 playoffs, only 5 NHL teams have won more playoff games than the Leafs. Four of them are still playing. The other is Vegas.

The three veteran defenders that I would add, are Andersson, Ceci, and Ferraro. It’s not necessarily about being more talented as it is about being better balanced. Dahlin / Andersson Power / Ceci Ferraro / B Docker it actually would come in a little lower in salary than this past year’s group (including Jokiharju). Of course, if these D-men are available then they will be coveted by multiple teams. Also, I’m not convinced that any realistic moves will make a difference. I suspect we will continue to struggle defensively with whoever we add to the backend, so long as Ruff is HC and no new assistant is brought in to manage our d-structure.

I haven’t seen any rumours, but I assume the Rangers are going to try and move Kreider. They found ways to move Goodrow and Trouba. Their cap issues would mostly be resolved if they can trade Kreider.

There have been four signed offer sheets in the last 12 years. The Sabres have never successfully offer-sheeted a player (have they ever tried?). Last year's two signed sheets were quite narrow in their set of circumstances. For the Sabres to successfully offer-sheet a coveted player this off-season, would require them to move out equivalent value contract(s) for picks/prospects/nothing. Adams has shown no aptitude for the kind of roster maneuvering that would be required to do this. I don't think you need to worry about our 2026 1st being used in an offer-sheet this summer.

I wholly agree. Pegula took a shot on a bright young guy with somewhat of a related background. For a brief period (21-22 to 22-23), it seemed he might have been onto something. Then it went south. It’s time to take another shot at it. Maybe it’s a veteran guy and maybe it’s a newbie. There is no model guaranteed to succeed.

Mitch Love, Todd Nelson, Glen Gulutzan, Marco Sturm. This shouldn’t be complicated. There are no guarantees. We are not bringing Jim Nill and Peter DeBoer over from Dallas. When Adams and Ruff are gone (and they will be gone barring an unlikely 89 point WC2 finish that gets them multi-year extensions), the Sabres will be moving on to a new unproven GM. Every day that the Sabres don’t try to find their Nill, Cheveldayoff, Brind’Amour, or Carbery, is just a day wasted by putting off the inevitable. Adams is not going to be the first GM in NHL history to finally figure it out after 5 seasons of missing the playoffs with one team.

You’re right. In reality, I would prefer Adams and Lou to just Adams. I just hate that Adams now gets to become his own reclamation project, and gets to hire his own Advisor and Assistant. If Adams were fired and Rob Blake hired and Blake announced that he was bringing in Lou as a Senior Advisor, because what Gm in his right mind would not want to learn whatever he can from Lou, I would be over the moon with excitement. With Adams, it is all just a lame-duck-in-over-his-head-GM clinging to the only job he is going to have in the NHL (unless Pegula keeps him on in some capacity).

I know we are looking for solutions and not problems, but Barzal has a 22 team no trade list. He most likely did not negotiate this only to have the Sabres as one of the 9 teams he would be willing to go to.

What’s weird to me, is that you would think the Bills’ success would make it easy for Pegula to attract a good hockey man. Why can’t he approach someone like Rob Blake and just explain that he just hasn’t found a Beane or McDermott on the hockey side and that he thinks Blake could be that guy and the plan is to just stay out of the way. Give Blake a 4-5 year $20-$25 million contract and tell him to go out and find our young Montgomery or DeBoer or Cassidy. It should not be complicated.

I like the idea of Lou as a senior advisor only slightly more than I like the idea of Kevyn Adams staying on as GM, which means I really hate it. But, this is who you get as senior advisors: Either a recent GM who wants to get back in, or a really old guy who is driven by nothing but hockey and who just wants to stay involved in some capacity. I guess my big concern with Lou is that he advises Adams to be more bold. I mean, maybe the one positive thing about Adams and his general state of reluctance to make big moves, is that it has actually prevented more bad than good. If Lou’s impact is for Adams to be more bold, is that a good thing? Maybe. But maybe the best we can hope for is to survive this season with minimal damage and then move on to a new regime.

We could, but it is nearly impossible to imagine Adams doing so. Also, we don’t have our 2nd in 2026 (included in the Norris trade), which limits the options.

I don’t disagree with this. Better is better. But, how much of Samuelsson and Clifton being bad is coaching and system related? How much better would they be on Dallas? I look around the playoffs and see all kinds of d-men who were seen as journeymen, castoffs, not good enough, in some cases by the Sabres (Stecher, Klingberg, Sandin, Benoit, McCabe, Lyubushkin, Ceci, Petrovic, Collin Miller, Gostisbehere, Schmidt, Kulikov, Mikkola). It feels a little to me like our need to improve the 4th line and then watching Okposo win a cup and Robinson and Girgensens play in the playoffs while Malenstyn, Lafferty, and Aubé-Kubel all underwhelm (to be charitable). I’m not advocating for no player changes. I’m just skeptical that the talent of the type of player we are most likely to bring in, will overcome the bad coaching and system and culture that they will encounter here.

I think we are potentially wrong about both the defense and the goaltending. That doesn’t mean upgrades aren’t warranted. Of course, better players would be better. But, there is a world where I could see the following as a playoff calibre back end as soon as this year: Dahlin/Power (could be an elite pairing) Byram/Clifton (ok together late in season) Samuelsson/BDocker (third pairing, fine) UPL (needs a bounce back) Levi (is he ready?) What I struggle to imagine, is this being good enough with Lindy Ruff as our coach. His teams have been very bad defensively for most of the years since he left Buffalo and there is no assistant on the current staff who we could count on to successfully take over the responsibility for our defensive structure. If I had to bet on the players or the coaching staff, I would bet on the players.

Garry Galley would be great.

Perhaps one thing to consider in the comparison, is that Metsa is only 11 months younger than Bryson. Metsa was 24 when he started his last year of college. He was 26 at the start of this AHL season. Bryson has been a full-time NHL roster player, more or less, since he was 23. I’m not taking anything away from Metsa, or really trying to defend Bryson, but maybe people would think differently about Bryson if he had not played in the NHL prior to age 27.

To the bolded, I was thinking the same thing. But, when I actually looked at the teams that are potentially in the "rebuilding" category, I only found one name that more or less fits the description and who also doesn't have some level of trade protection that would likely eliminate the Sabres as an option. That player is Rasmus Ristolainen. It even fits a little with Samuelsson's dad having the history with the Flyers and Samuelsson being from that area. I'm not advocating for this or suggesting it is even remotely possible, but there aren't many (any) options that fit the criteria in a Samuelsson trade. FWIW: Risto appears to have become a much more low-event player than he was when he was here. If he didn't have the Sabre-history... Also, this shouldn't be construed as me thinking there are no options for improving our defense. I think there are lots of options. I don't think we need to make a big splash. I think we are more in need of a different type of player (experienced, more-physical defensively), than we are in need of "better" players.