Archie Lee

- I think there are very few teams in the NHL, including playoff teams, that have a collection of players perfectly slotted into 1st line, 2nd line, 1st pair D, 2nd pair D, etc. roles. - I think Benson and Kulich could well thrive playing top-6-roles as soon as next year - I think putting Benson and Kulich together on top-6 line next-year would be clear evidence that our GM/HC combo are unable to learn and adapt

Baker/Fairburn didn't think anything would happen before the draft. They also made a good point. Pegula is going to spend several days with Beane/McDermott watching how an elite level NFL executive/coach manage the draft. Then he is going to meet with Adams to hear about how it all went wrong and how Adams is going to fix it in year 6. The contrast should be stark and obvious.

You're doing a good job of selling me on Martin.

Not making changes at GM and HC this off-season is just delaying the inevitable. Adams is now in quite dubious company when it comes to post-expansion GM's who went 5 straight seasons out of the playoffs, from the start of their tenure with a team. If he goes on to have a long successful career as the Sabres's GM, he will be the first GM in league history to have such a poor start with a team, only to then have long-term success with the same team. Ruff is the oldest coach in the league. He has had two winning seasons (better than DeLuca .500) in his last 11 as a head coach. He made the playoffs 3x in that stretch. You have to go back to 2011 to find a season where Ruff coached a team to the playoffs in consecutive years. His teams are consistently near the bottom of the league in goals against. He once missed the playoffs in Dallas with the league's 2nd highest scoring team. Rolling these two men back in their respective roles and expecting success is the opposite of what any major league franchise that has any degree of self-respect, let alone expectation of winning, would do. Could Adams and Ruff find a mix of players that gets into the playoffs in 2026? Sure, it's not an impossible to imagine scenario. But there is zero reason to think these men are going to get it done. It's not personal. Adams seems like a good man and I think he has done as well as a person with his limited experience could probably be expected to do. Ruff is a coaching legend and there is no question there was a time in his career when he was among the league's best. But they are not the future of the franchise. At the very least, replacing Adams with a new GM (even an internal promotion, like Karmanos), positions the team to be flexible when it comes to a coaching change. What if DeBoer or Bednar or Knoblach don't survive first round playoff losses? What if Pittsburgh moves on from Sullivan. Should we be considering Laviolette (who has made the playoffs in 8 of his last 11 seasons). What about Todd Nelson in Hershey, who just wins, and wins, and wins, and seems to coach a repeatable structured system. What about the league's best young assistants who will be looking to move into head coaching roles? With Adams as a lame-duck GM, none of these are even options. If you have had the same GM for 5 years and you are headed into the final year of their contract and you are not prepared to give them an extension, then it is time to move on. I am hoping that Pegula is capable of recognizing the obvious.

I don’t think it’s that mind boggling. Eichel and Reinhart were kids. Kane is a good player and brings a certain element, but he brought as many issues as solutions. Dahlin didn’t arrive until Botterill’s 2nd draft. All three of our post-Regier GMs had issues with roster building.

Adams continues to present as a man without a plan. His answer on the partner for Owen Power was jaw-dropping. He acknowledges that he has not supported Power well enough, but then states that he recently spoke to Power and Power says he’s good with anyone but prefers playing with a puck mover, and then Adams finishes by saying it’s hard to get a right handed all-star D. Adams comes across like he is making decisions based on the last person he talks to. Power says he’s good, so I guess he’s good. Ruff was a bit better, but in my jaded perspective seemed like a veteran coach who can diagnose the problem, but no longer has the solutions. My view is that our roster could make the playoffs with a better coach and Ruff could make the playoffs with a better roster. If we are being serious here though, both need to be improved.

Unless Adams is removed from the GM role, I really think any changes are just scapegoating. If Adams had successfully positioned us as a playoff team over the last two seasons, I could look at changes to assistant coaches or assistant GMs and conclude that Adams isn’t complacent; he’s not satisfied and he wants to be better. With 5 non-playoff years and after regressing this season, despite it following Adams’s most aggressive off-season, any such changes just ring hollow to me. I’m not defending Marty Wilford or Matt Ellis, but my view is they have done at least as well at their jobs as Adams has at his.

I heard a Brind'Amour interview last off-season. He was discussing Necas and spoke about how talented Necas is offensively. He then added that the challenge he had as a coach with Necas, was in getting him to understand that not every shift and not every puck possession is a goal scoring opportunity. I think this is a general issue with the Sabres. Part of it is that so many of our players are offense oriented, part of it is inexperience, part of it is coaching and development. All of it, at this point, is on Adams.

Eichel 23. Reinhart 24.

In the Covid shortened year, we missed the expanded playoffs by one point. In the 8 games before the season was suspended, we went 2-6. During that 8 game stretch, Eichel had 1 goal and 0 assists; Reinhart went pointless. One could look at that and conclude Eichel and Reinhart weren’t cornerstone players. Or, one could look at it and say the Sabres needed better depth so that the team would not completely falter in the stretches when Eichel and Reinhart weren’t producing.

Two recent signings that I think apply to Tuch: 1.) Konecny $8.75 x 8, he will be a UFA at age 36 in 2033 2.) Buchnevich $8.0 x 6, he will be a UFA at age 36 in 2031 Tuch will be 30 next offseason. Offensive #'s for Tuch are very similar to Konecny and Buchnevich. If we wait a year, a new group of wingers likely resets the bar. I imagine it will take $8 - $9 million per year x 6-7 years to get Tuch extended.

To me this speaks more to a very positive view of Tuch that people have, far more than it does to anything negative about Dahlin. Tuch is a basically local guy who has a near year-round presence, and who has an outgoing and joyous personality. Dahlin is much more reserved. I think fans love both players. Tuch is the sort of player who wins these sort of fan voting awards. That's not a knock on either of them. The Sabres have 3 players who are cornerstone pieces for a playoff level team, in Dahlin, Thompson, and Tuch. They have a number of other very good NHL players. There really is no excuse for Adams being unable to build a team around them that is playoff capable.

If the media won’t pursue and reveal this, then what are we doing here? The Sabres, Pegula, Adams, can’t have it both ways. They can’t stress how important this all is, how they need to get it right, how people need to want to be here, and then when they are questioned, after floundering epically, ask “why so angry?”.

“Verbal flogging sessions” can lead to actions. Yes, in the world of journalism pro-sports is the sand-box. Holding Adams accountable for his failings is not as important as, say, holding the federal government accountable for sending a man to his certain death without due process. But Adams’s performance as GM, either matters or it doesn’t. Maybe it isn’t worth the time and effort of the Buffalo sports media to hold Adams’s feet to the fire over what is one of the worst records for an NHL GM in the post-expansion-era of the league. But, if so, then why would the Buffalo Sabres be worth anyone’s time, not to mention anyone’s money and emotional investment?

The off-season is a time for optimism. Once we get to the draft and free agency, I will likely be able to squint hard enough to see a scenario where whatever moves Adams makes could, possibly, if multiple things fall into place, and a couple of teams unexpectedly falter, get the Sabres into a wildcard spot. With Adams as GM and Ruff as HC, I can’t imagine anything unfolding between now and October that would have me believing that they ARE a playoff team, though.

Montreal clinches. They go from Stanley Cup Finalists, through a full rebuild, to playoffs, in 4 seasons. Also, Montreal was in last place in the East on American Thanksgiving. Ottawa, Edmonton, and St. Louis also get in despite being out of a playoff spot on Thanksgiving.

I should just clarify that I think "the players weren't in shape" narrative is bogus. Last year the scapegoat was Granato (I'm not arguing he should have been kept). The players needed accountability and structure and Ruff was the man to bring it. Well, the team was, if anything, less accountable and less structured. It can't be that Ruff was a bad choice, so the blame will now shift to the players not taking the off-season serious enough.

I’m just whistling through the graveyard.

Looking back at some dates, in 2017 the season ended April 9th. Murray had an end of season presser. Then he and Bylsma were fired on April 20th. I guess there is faint hope that evaluations can still happen. There has to be somebody in Pegula’s sphere who will tell him the situation is a disaster. Guelli? One of his kids? Bettman? Or is there no one who dares tell him what he doesn’t want to hear?

The point here, in my view, is that Adams structured his off-season around remaking the fourth line. Think of all the energy that went in to scouting Malenstyn, Lafferty, and Aube-Kubel. The energy that went into determining their value, negotiating the trade, dealing with the agents on July 1 to get contracts worked out. And, he literally could have just re-signed Girgensens, Jost, and Robinson, and it would have made no material difference. It's not that Girgs, Jost, Robinson, were difference makers and we just didn't realize it. It's that our predicament has nothing to do with out 4th line, or our 3rd pairing D, or who the back-up goalie is. Of course those things are relevant, but THE issues are that we are managed by a man who has clearly displayed he is not up to the task, and we we are coached by yesterday's man. And they will both be back. Seeing Girgs, Robinson, Jost, Cozens, Comrie, etc., playing roles on playoff teams while we finish at the bottom of the Conference standings, doesn't mean Adams dropped any balls specific to any player. It just confirms that he really has no plan. To the extend that he had a plan, it has failed.

Yeah. Seeing Adams, Ruff, and UPL, in the same sentence when it came to coming back next year just took me back to being a kid and watching Sesame Street: one of these things does not belong. I get it though.

My prediction: This year's narrative will be that the players were not in shape, that many of them were not mature enough to have good off-seasons when it came to training, and it will be up to the players to take things more seriously in order for the team to get to the next level.

For those who think Pegula is cheap, keeping Adams and Ruff in lame-duck roles for the final year of their contracts will only cement the opinion. Not to mention that it also could negatively impact the prospects for upgrading assistants. The coaching profession being as transient as it is, there will be no shortage of candidates if they do make a change in assistants. But the Sabres won’t be the first choice for the best candidates to begin with. Add in that Adams and Ruff will be lame-ducks, and the Sabres won’t have elite assistants knocking on their door. Of course, maybe Adams and Ruff have earned extensions.

I would not take big issue with the Sabres trading or moving on from UPL. But, in the big picture, how is he catching shrapnel here? 😀

There needs to be the sort of culture change that only occurs with a change at the top. Adams has not made the playoffs in 5 seasons. Ruff has made the playoffs, as a HC, 3 times in 9 seasons since he left Buffalo and never twice in a row; he’s the oldest coach in the league. No other team would hire either man for their current roles. Even if they were to somehow ice a team that grabs a wildcard spot next season, these two men are not the future. Failing to fire them on Friday morning is just to delay the inevitable.