Archie Lee

Assuming the Sabres stay where they are, there are two names I want to hear get called before then: O'Brien and McQueen. That will mean Martone, Hagens, or Martin have fallen (I don't think there is any chance Frondell or Desnoyers fall to #9).

I admire your conviction on Frondell. I have not seen the kid play, so my opinions are based solely on the opinions of others (including yours). There seems to be a real possibility that he goes #2 to SJ. You have him ranked quite a bit lower than anyone I have seen, but you're not alone in thinking he is not a top 5 pick. This is why I love the draft. I would look forward to tonight, even if the Sabres had no 1st rounder. I find it fascinating to watch how individual teams sort out the details on these kids.

To the bolded, I will need to see what happens with Byram and how close the Sabres come to the cap before I can draw the conclusion that you have. I think it is possible that a factor in Peterka wanting out is that we were offering a two year bridge at $6.5. That he immediately signed with Utah might be a sign that the Sabres did not offer what Peterka wanted in a contract, and Utah did.

I've heard more than one of the insiders say that this year may be different and that all of the activity that you typically see get done by July 3rd, may take into August to be done this year.

There were two interview clips I heard yesterday on the trade and Peterka. They sort of align. Mike Peca was the first. Peca loves Peterka and thinks Utah got a 40 goal scorer. More significantly perhaps, is he said that in the 2nd half of their season together in Rochester, Peterka figured out how being defensively responsible and committing to puck retrievals on the D side, would benefit his offence. It made me think there is a better two-way player in there somewhere. The 2nd interview was with Ray Ferraro. He thought the Sabres did well and that once Sabre fans get to watch Kesselring/Doan they will see that they got two good players, in particular Kesselring. He also told an anecdote about a Sabre game he covered last year where after every shift Peterka would come and sit on the end of the bench and do a 45 degree turn away from his teammates and coaches. He said that all signs were that Peterka had emotionally checked-out on the Sabres. The link between the stories is that Peterka has more in him to give. We will find out if he is a player who will eventually find something he doesn’t like in any situation and let it negatively impact his game, or if he just had another case of the Sabre-Blues. I would bet on the latter. Also, Ferraro’s comments gave me hope that we didn’t lose this trade. Lastly, I’m all over a 3rd line of Kulich centring two veterans in Zucker and Rust. Give Kulich what we never gave Cozens: two seasons between two vets who can teach him how to be a pro. Turn the trio loose; their purpose is to outscore the other team’s 3rd line.

Agreed fully. I would even give him PP time with Dahlin. Ras is the best passer on the team and has vastly improved his shot. I think it would open up our PP if we put Dahlin on the right wing wall where he would give us a 2nd way to get the puck to Thompson (the cross ice pass).

I would be fine if they extended him and just stapled him to Dahlin. After yesterday, we would have our top-4 potentially nailed down for several years.

I don’t like the trade, but I would not say I hate it. I am a Sabre fan and by default I am finding things to like about Kesselring and Doan. Legit things to like. I don’t like the trade because I fear it portends what the next moves will be. There has been much speculation on an internal cap. A similar return for Byram and we pretty much have our confirmation. If Adams can move Byram and Quinn and extras for a veteran right shot D and a veteran middle-6 winger, both with playoff bonafides, and find a way to add a veteran goalie who can play 35-40 games as UPL’s partner, I may yet come around on our roster.

My recollection is that the story was Ehlers was willing to accept a trade to Buffalo but declined to extend. He wants to go to UFA and see what he can get.

I fully acknowledge I have no idea how any of this will turn out. I have said from the start of the off-season that I think we can move Peterka and Byram for lesser players who are better fits in a team structure, and we can be a better team for it. I was, though (like you, I think), expecting that the players we bring in, if lesser in talent than Peterka and Byram, would at least be more experienced and have a longer track record of helping teams win. There is still lots of off-season left, but it is difficult for me to overlook that we made a 2 for 1 trade and the 2 we added will combined make about 1/3 of the salary that we traded. Given the post-pandemic track record of Pegula/Adams, I think it is reasonable to be concerned that there were considerations here that go beyond making us a better team. Specific to the bolded, I agree that in Peterka's short-career and at his young age, he has yet to display characteristics of leadership. He has not had a plethora of great role models though, and nor should we be expecting that as a trait that every player has in spades. It all does seem a little eerily familiar, thinking back to other young players who we jettisoned to improve the culture. At some point, the root cause of why player's don't want to be here and why the culture is bad, needs to be addressed.

Fair enough. I just think that the person primarily responsible for us having 79 points, finishing 7th last, being bad in many ways year after year, is Adams (and Pegula). I’m not saying he hasn’t made any good moves. But the sum of his moves has equaled futility. Doan and Kesserling combined have played fewer NHL games than Peterka. All of their career has been on a team that is coached the way we were told Ruff coaches a team. Structure and accountability. If it makes people feel good that Kesserling and Doan have good underlying numbers when in their short careers they have been on a team where basically every player has good underlying numbers, then that’s fine. It’s something to have some optimism about, I guess. I certainly have no issues with either player. Big picture though? Surely at this point you can forgive a Sabre fan for being skeptical?

I’m sure that analytics will be the narrative here (from the Sabres). Peterka’s underlying numbers raise questions and fears of regression, while Kesserling’s and Doan’s suggest untapped promise and/or value that does not show up on the stat sheet. My concern is that we are trying to import a culture change by bringing in young players from what is clearly a culture of accountability and structure. These players just played a short time for Tourigny who, to me, is the anti-Ruff. It reminds me a bit of how Malenstyn and Aubé-Kubel were going to be 4th line demons because they did ok playing in a tough match-up role with Washington. Lindy Ruff is not Spencer Carberry or Andre Tourigny. Culture, commitment, accountability, and structure, don’t start with your 25 year old 2nd pairing D or your 23 year old 3rd line winger. Just my view, but we are swapping out people at the wrong end of the culture issue. And yet, 79 points.

Peterka is going to a team that, per MoneyPuck, finished 5th in the NHL at expected goals, 6th in Corsi, and 6th in Fenwick, all 5v5. Kesserling and Doan are coming to a team that finished 6th last in expected goals, 16th in Corsi, and 15th in Fenwick. Kesserling and Doan both had excellent Corsi and Fenwick %'s last year, but they played on a team where nearly every player did. They are coming to a team, where more than 1/2 the roster were below 50% in these metrics. Logic suggests there are factors in these metrics that go well beyond the capabilities of individual players.

It was never going to be the case that the Sabres were going to trade Peterka and get the better player in the deal. Teams interested in Peterka were going to be teams trying to get better who were offering pieces that, to them, were expendable and redundant. I'm not saying Kesserling and Doan are bad players, but they aren't what we need to take the step towards being a playoff team this year. Kesserling, who I assume is seen as the long sought after partner for Owen Power, is 25 years old and has played 156 NHL regular season games and no playoff games. Bernard-Docker is the only d-man on our current NHL roster, who has played fewer NHL games. I expect a similar trade with Byram in the next 48 hours. And when that is done, the Sabres will, in the blink of an eye, have gone from being a team that looked like it might be up against the cap after signing their RFAs, to being a team that can easily come in around $88 million, give or take a million.

I would have to look back too. But, I thought he was just giving his opinion on what they might or should do.

I don't understand the desire to add Dobson. After a Byram trade the Sabres will still have Dahlin and Power making a combine $19.35 million. I don't think they need to add a $10 million right shot D and spend an even greater % of the cap on puck-moving d-men? No winning team in the NHL is built that way. Looking at Utah's roster and trying to be realistic, I'm hoping for Peterka and an add (hopefully not # 9), for #4 and a R-shot-D.

Fair to say Peterka has asked for a trade. I mean, if he hadn’t asked for a trade then the easiest thing in the world would have been for Adams to say “no, he hasn’t”. I imagine if Adams had been asked if Dahlin has asked for a trade, that he would not have given a word-salad reply, but would have shot it down with at least the level of conviction that he shot down the notion of a Samuelsson buyout. So this is where we are at. Year 5 of the Adams rebuild, which is based on the cultural concept of players wanting to be here, and at the top of the pre-draft trade board is a 23 year old Sabre, largely viewed in league circles as a future star, who has asked to be moved.

Over time, a leader’s predominant personality traits will come to be seen in the light of their level of success. Adams has had no success. None. So, his patient approach (“Teams are calling and it’s my job to listen. We are open to anything, but we are only going to make a move if it makes us better”), just comes across as passive and weak. I mean, does he ever make a call? Or do teams just call him? Does he ever aggressively pursue a player to improve the team? Or does he just wait for teams to call him about his players and see if they offer something that makes sense? At one point in the presser, when speaking of adding Eric Staal, Adams said (I’m paraphrasing) that he has ALWAYS thought it was important to have someone on staff who was recently in the game. He has ALWAYS thought this. So, logically he added such a person in year 6. I don’t doubt that Adams makes calls to other teams. But, he presents as a man who feels no sense of urgency and who has no clear and specific plan to make the team dramatically better. The last two seasons, you could actually see how that general sense of complacency (We will get there when we get there), has seeped into the personality of the roster. It’s simply bizarre that a man of Pegula’s wealth and stature continues to entrust the Sabres’s fortunes to Adams.

At one point the Sabres had Turgeon, Andreychuk, Housley, and Barrasso on the same team. Oldest Housley at 24. Barrasso was traded and Mogilny joined the next year. All are Hall of Famers. I’m not taking anything away from the accomplishments of these men. Great hockey players all. At least 4 cup rings in there. A part of me thinks more patience was needed. But I honestly don’t think they would have sniffed a cup together in Buffalo.

I think you are right and it is unlikely we get "the best player in the deal". I mean, Byram and Peterka are near the top of pretty much any published "trade board". There is one player whose name has frequently come up as possibly available, who I would say is better than Peterka or Byram, and that's Jason Robertson. Some people would put Dobson in there, and I wouldn't strenuously argue against it, but I'm not fully convinced on that one. How can we get the better player in a deal, when we are the team that is apparently trading two potential star players, aged 24 and 23, that 1/2 of the league covets? Peterka and Byram are almost certainly going to be "the better player in the deal". I recognize that some folks may be sick of rants about how bad of a GM Kevyn Adams is. But, it really is impossible to overstate how ridiculous of a situation the Sabres are in. 14 years out of the playoffs and 4.5 years into a rebuild being run by a 1st time GM. Back to back years of regression during this rebuild with mountains of unused cap space. The GM's stated primary reasons for not using the cap space is that he did not want to pay the high draft/prospect cost of acquisition, and he did not want to create a scenario where he could not extend his up and coming players due to not having sufficient future cap space. And, here we are, with a 24 year old and a 23 year old who much of the rest of the league wants, and who may want out of Buffalo, and whose projected salaries at the higher end would put us right at or possibly over the cap, and we never had the benefit of winning before we had to make tough roster/cap decisions. It's incredible...in the worst way.

It really does seem like there is a top 8 of Schaefer, Misa, Frondell, Desnoyers, Martone, Hagens, O’Brien, and Martin. As usual, I have not seen much of these guys and most of what I know is just from reading scouting reports and watching some highlight videos. McKenzie’s final rankings really do align with what the building consensus seems to be for the top 8. O’Brien is perhaps the most likely to be available at 9. Re: Roger McQueen at 9; I’m not thrilled that the line between “too risky to take” and “too talented to pass on” seems to be forming right where we pick. If we do end up with McQueen, I will quickly find reason to focus on all the things I like about him. I generally root hard for Sabre players and prospects. I just would prefer we not use a top 10 on someone who might have chronic health issues. The kid who is not considered a top 10 who I’ve become enamoured with, is Cole Reschny. He has a lot of what have come to be considered, a bit unfairly, classic Sabre forward prospect traits (specifically, he isn’t big). But if we somehow end up with Vancouver’s pick at #15, or #18 via Calgary, I would be thrilled to get Reschny.

Evan Rodriguez had 32 points in 82 games. He played most of the year in Florida’s top 6. Edmonton’s 5th and 6th highest scoring forwards had 30 points. Carolina’s 5 and 6th highest scoring forwards had 39 and 36 points respectively. I wouldn’t want Benson/Kulich/Quinn as line 2, but Benson with Norris/Thompson or McLeod/Tuch, could be very effective lines.

My big issue with acquiring Dobson is that he is going to get paid around $10 million per year based on having a 70 point season where he played a role he won’t play here. Dahlin is going to play PP1. I can maybe squint hard enough for it to make sense if we traded both Byram and Power. I don’t really see the point of acquiring a R-shot version of Power if we are keeping Power.

The Wild, unfortunately, would not.

Yep. If anyone wants to torture themselves, here is the press conference to announce the Granato firing. At around the 11:00 minute mark Adams is asked, by Yerdon I think, if he could have done more to give Granato a better roster to work with. Adams points out that he does not have a crystal ball and did not know Jack Quinn would get a 2nd injury. I mean, what can the guy do without the benefit of a supernatural tool to help him plan for the season?