Archie Lee

What is frustrating, I think, is that a skilled GM is, generally if not always, a step ahead in evaluating his own players. An organization should be able to sort out its own players and identify the traits that will hold them back. Such players should be moved when their value is still high and before long-term commitments are locked into. I’m not implying this is easy or that any GM gets every evaluation correct. Going back to the end of the 91 point season though, it is largely where Adams has failed and what set the team back.

I think that we are generally talking about what Samuelsson was projected to be when he was a prospect. In Rochester, Seth Appert described Samuelsson as “miserable to play against”. There was no mistaking what Appert was inferring: Samuelsson was big, tough, and mean and he made opposing forwards pay a price for going to the hard places on the ice. Whether something changed in Samuelsson or Appert and others were just wrong in their evaluation, I don’t know. As an NHL player, he has shown only glimpses of being a player who is miserable to play against.

There was pretty much consensus among Sabre fans that getting a partner for Power was a critically important off-season objective. That partner appears to be Kesselring, who is 25 years old, has played 156 NHL games, was 6th in average ice time among d-men in Utah last year, and received almost no PK time (25 seconds per game, 9th among Utah d-men). Yes, there is context that should be considered when looking at his limited average ice-time over the course of the larger season. But, until he shows he can be an effective defender for 19-21 minutes a game in a Lindy Ruff system, it’s not unreasonable to have some skepticism.

In fairness, they did draft Benson.

Respectfully and honestly, can you provide some examples from Bruin camps in the last 5-6 years of multiple players who were competing for a job or two? Because, the idea of camp competition seems mostly a myth to me. I think most years, most NHL teams go to camp knowing who will be in their line-up on opening day, barring injury. Some years there are openings in spots 19-23 for the kid or AHL vet who shows the best in camp, or a team is up against the cap and they have a spot or two open for the player on an ELC or a league minimum deal to prove they belong in the NHL. But these aren’t the players or roles that typically make or break a season. Top 6 centre talent, youth and inexperience, coaching deficiencies, inconsistent to bad goaltending, ineffectual management. These are the Sabres’s issues, I think. I just don’t see camp competition or bottom of the line-up depth, as being big factors.

This is currently where I'm at. Though, depending on how camp goes, I could move Greenway to LW4 with Krebs and put Danforth or Doan at RW3 with Kulich and Zucker. I like Greenway, and actually think there is an argument for him at LW2. Greenway/McLeod/Tuch could be an elite shutdown line with a unique combination of size (all 3), speed (McLeod/Tuch), toughness (Greenway/Tuch), and a little nastiness (Greenway), in a threesome who are all adept at defensive play.

According to Puckpedia, Rosen and Ryan Johnson are both still waivers exempt.

I’m not sure. Could be real. Montreal has taken similar steps to what the Sabres did in Adams’s 1st two full seasons post-Krueger (I acknowledge that the Habs made the playoffs last year, while the Sabres missed by a point in 22-23). I think Montreal has another step or two to take before it can be said that their GM is all that.

I also want to add, in all my decades following major league sports in North America, I can’t recall another example where a coach who got more wins out of a team than his successor, was blamed for the failures of his successor. It is, frankly, a bizarro theory.

New Jersey was worse that the Sabres in 23-24, had a new coach last year and had the same short camp and travel issues.

To the bolded. It might be true, to a degree. But I largely reject the notion. I mean, is anybody seriously arguing that Benson would have dominated junior hockey as an 18 year old more than McDavid dominated the NHL as a 24-25 year old? And, is anybody seriously arguing that McDavid stopped learning once he started dominating the NHL? The list of players who dominated lesser competition for a year or two in junior, post-draft, and who then went on to have great NHL careers is very long. Very long. Benson, in my view, is the sort of player who would have found many things in his game to improve on whether he was in junior, college, the AHL, or the NHL. He's not the sort of kid who would have pouted, or got lazy, or forgot about the defensive side of the game.

Some GMs don’t spend much time worrying about how happy a player is.

As a qualifier, every player gets one path to the NHL (some more winding than others, but a single path nonetheless). The reality is that if a player fails to reach their potential, there is no way to know with certainty whether that failure relates to a poor development process or to the player simply not being good enough. So, I really don't think it is possible to say that Benson's offensive game has been, will be, or won't be stunted by being in the NHL; that is, unless he develops into an offensive star, in which case it can be said that being in the NHL from day-one, didn't hurt his offensive game. Benson never went back to junior and we will never know how going back to junior might have impacted his game. That said, I don't think there is any way to say that Benson being in the NHL for D1 and D2 means there is a better chance, let alone a "far better chance", of a breakout this year. There is, relatively speaking, a long list of forwards drafted between 11th and 15th overall (Benson was 13th), who did not fully make it to the NHL until D3, and who had rookie seasons that would qualify as a "breakout year" for Benson. Respectfully to my fellow Benson admirers, there is a tendency to see Benson as a different sort of Cat who was/is uniquely able to adapt to the pro-game as an 18 year old right out of junior, while also thinking that he somehow doesn't have traits that would have allowed him to develop in junior ("He's too good for junior and going back would have stunted his development"). Benson is a unique Cat. He would have developed fine either way and would, in my view, be a legit rookie of the year candidate if he was coming into the NHL this season.

I think it remains that the Sabres are collectively (not individually) too young and inexperienced. Their three best players, are not though. Dahlin, Thompson, and Tuch, are keys. I don't think they all need to have career years, but they need to be the elite players that they are. I think it is possible those three are talented enough to drag a team into the playoffs.

And the great thing about Benson is that even if these underlying offensive numbers never translate to him being a big point producer, he has so many other positive traits that he is going to be an effective player for a long-time. Someday, it will be a lot of fun to watch him in the playoffs.

I agree with this. I suppose there is an argument for not firing an assistant until you are certain you can hire a better replacement. But, the proper way to do it (my view) is to start by firing the assistant you want to replace. This accomplishes a couple of things: 1). It creates an urgency or necessity to find someone better; and 2). It serves to cast a wider net than you would by merely calling a few coaches you hope might be interested. In other words, interested coaches will contact you. I’m ambivalent on Wilford. Better is better. I imagine though that we would all swap Ruff for Brind’Amour before we would swap Wilford for Tim Gleason.

Let’s assume the following: - a team’s goal is to win now; and - salaries aren’t an issue . Given those parameters, if you polled every NHL GM and HC in the NHL and told them they could have only one of Quinn, Kulich, or Mittelstadt, I believe the vast majority would take Mittelstadt.

I don't disagree with this in theory. As you say though, it is reasonable to have a "show me" approach. Olofsson, Skinner, and Mittlelstadt, weren't Sabres last year. Malenstyn, Lafferty, and Aube-Kubel were. I'm not convinced that Doan and Danforth get 12-14 minutes per game. Our 4th line upgrades last year, came to us having received 12-14 minutes of ice time per game on their prior teams, only to have that cut to 9.5-10.5 minutes per game here.

I’m no expert on NHL coaching. My understanding though, is that generally the system or structure that a team uses is the preferred structure of the head coach and that the implementation is a shared responsibility with the assistants. Last year when Ruff spoke out about Cozens and Thompson struggling, he didn’t say that they are struggling with Wilford’s system, he said they are struggling with what he asks centres to do in his system.

I’m not sure about “60 game starter”, but I think it is abundantly clear that Adams was certain Levi would be his starting goalie by now. When asked prior to 23-24 about whether Levi needed AHL time he was rather dismissive and referred to Levi as “special”. They then gave Levi four straight, mostly ineffective, starts to begin that season; there is no question in my mind that he believed Levi was his starting goalie two years ago. I think this ties in to my point. Adams hasn’t been able to address multiple loose ends at one time. He, largely, focuses on one element and seems caught off guard when another issue inevitably rises.

I think it is clearly intentional. I think it does matter, but it can be hard to follow the logic. Adams seems to become focused on a certain area or trait related to asset acquisition, rather than focus on acquiring a collection of traits that will equate to a successful team. He started with acquiring picks, then the focus was on skilled forwards, an insistence on building out the pipeline, then it became tall defensemen, then upgrading the 4th line, then being tougher to play against, and now tall AND right-handed defensemen. Perhaps this is the year where he has finally put together the needed combination of skill, toughness, and experience that equates to a playoff level team. It seems there are more conventional ways to do this.

I’m not going to pound the table for Wilford. I don’t think he is responsible, though, for the team’s overall defensive structure.

This is a good point. It’s been a long time since I thought about Bylsma’s system. My very amateur evaluation is that Bylsma struggles to communicate that playing defensively responsible hockey does not mean playing passively. I think this is something we struggled with last year. Teams that play good defensively, defend with vigour, strength, aggression. It’s not a task for the meek. A less than sound structure, implemented by a coach who does not possess the best modern communication skills, on a youthful, inexperienced, and not yet physically developed team, is a bad combination.

I hope the link below works. It is to a recent Instigators podcast (Sabre fan podcast). The guest is Kevin Woodley of InGoal magazine and NHL.com. He breaks down the goalie situation in Buffalo. Woodley gets his advanced stats from Clear Sight Analytics. I believe the host is Chris Ostrander, who I think does a fine job. https://t.co/Rc1b9zrLa7 I highly recommend listening to anyone interested in understanding the impact of environment on goaltenders. To summarize, Woodley explains why the environment in Buffalo has been terrible for goalies. Last season the Sabres finished in the bottom 1/3 in pretty much all defensive areas that impact scoring chances. Further, they were 30th in the NHL in the critical area of preventing cross-ice scoring chances. Woodley references what he believes is the cumulative impact on a goaltender that comes from playing in that environment. A goalie who is being leaned on to start at a 65 game pace (UPL last year), playing in such an environment is likely to have it negatively impact his performance. A goalie can't trust what is happening in front of him and starts to cheat on cross-ice passes, which leads to disaster. Woodley has some good anecdotes on Lehner and Comrie that illustrate how the environment has been an issue in Buffalo for many years. He also explains why it has little to do with how talented your defensemen are, and everything to do with system and structure, starting with the forwards. As well, Woodley provides interesting stuff on Dustin Wolf's game and how Levi might (or might not) benefit from implementing some changes that Wolf made. And there is a brief discussion on how the Sabres might manage Ratzaff and Leinonen this season; playing in the ECHL can be a very chaotic environment for young goalies who are often sent there without the necessary coaching support (and he is clear that he thinks highly of Sabre development coach Seamus Kotyk and that he is certain Kotyk has a plan to address this). Again, a good listen for the dog days of the off-season.

Perhaps this is not a meaningful thing, but the thread being revived a bit today got me back to thinking about the salary cap and the position that Adams had put the franchise in. I did an exercise on PuckPedia of recreating last year's roster with this year's salaries (reverse the Peterka and Clifton trades; bring back Lafferty for Danforth, Reimer for Lyon). If you recreate last year's end of season roster using the current salaries of those players, the Sabre cap hit would be just over $97 million. That would be the 4th highest cap hit in the NHL. The only 3 teams with a current higher projected cap hit are Vegas, Montreal, and Florida, and unlike the Sabres they all have an obvious high-salaried LTIR candidate for the start of the season. Obviously, this didn't happen and Adams should not be criticized for something he didn't ultimately do. But, what he did do last season was ice the youngest roster in the league, that produced a 79 point season (7th worst in the NHL), and that if kept together would have had the highest LTIR-excluded cap-hit in the NHL this season. Again, perhaps not meaningful. Or perhaps, evidence of gross incompetence (as it relates to his job duties).