SabresVet

It's ironic you mentioned being saddled with Jason Botterill's roster because Adams has re-signed several of his predecessor's players including Jokiharju, Mittelstadt, and Thompson, while re-signing others like Asplund, Grigensons, and Olofsson. Adams is a clear step up from making Russ Brandon GM of the Bills from 2008-09, but he's the outcome when ownership doesn't know people and wouldn't trust them anyway. Their adventures in hiring executives prove they are clueless, and when someone doesn't work, they blame an NHL advisory council or player for their woes. Early returns do not provide a case for or against keeping Adams, but as @Thorny noted, he's an incomplete after 2 off-seasons on the job. We'll form a better picture mid-way through next season.

Adams is not apathetic about their place in the standings. His position is the epicenter for the organization, existing between ownership, coaching, while maintaining a strategic plan for how they will compete. 3-13-2 over an 18 game stretch isn't a drop in the bucket for an 82 game schedule. They clearly don't have the talent to win regularly, but I'm concerned about effort and being out of place. Those are the things that need immediate improvement and continued losing makes those issues worse. That's another reason elevating the kids from Rochester is not a solution. I wouldn't want them in this environment and unless GM-In-The-Sky Terry intercedes and forces Adams' hand, I don't see it happening to alleviate what's wrong now. It'd be a desperation move.

Amazing how opponents know where a player's "upper-body" injury is and take liberties to inflict pain there.

Not disagreeing with you. It's Adams' and Granato's team now and they're accountable for that performance. One would think having another off-season to re-shape the roster in their image would improve results. Alas, it has not...at least not yet. Teams have adapted to Buffalo's style of play, identified their weaknesses, and capitalized. It's why when homers talked up Granato as this tremendous coach, I needed to see more. How he would adapt, how the players would be put into a better position, and of course the talent they had would respond. So far, the results have been underwhelming.

It's not all on Granato, but they were 9-16-3 under him to close out last season. And 8-14-3 to begin this year.

Buffalo is dead last in home attendance and even Arizona and Ottawa easily surpass Buffalo by more than 3k per game. https://www.espn.com/nhl/attendance There's no in-season acquisition going to move the needle, so I predict one, two or all of Krebs, Peterka, and Quinn will be up at some point this season. And it may not be the GM pushing for that move.

In no world do I believe at the end of the 2019-20 season Krueger wanted to rebuild and he held most of the decision making power in this organization. He probably talked to Adams about acquiring Hall in UFA and maintaining much of the status quo. That would be good for Krueger (who wasn't here to rebuild) and satisfy Eichel. Adams obtained the lone decision maker role (Aside from GM in the Sky Terry) when Krueger was allowed to be fired. At that point, I'm confident ownership could see that the only way left was a rebuild. And here we are. It'd be one thing if this team were in proven GM hands and had made the playoffs within the past 2-3 seasons. The onus now falls on Adams, because this has been his team from the day since Ralph was fired.

I can't see Levi playing as a dependable NHL starter for 3 years. Portillo around the same time frame (beginning with the 2021-22 season). That means you're talking 2-3 seasons (2021-22, 2022-23, and perhaps 2023-24) of temporary options? I can't believe that was the plan, or that they'd put all their eggs in the UPL basket during that time. I guess they assumed Ullmark would be back on a 3 year deal and when that didn't happen...they had nothing but stopgap options.

A currently out of work NHL executive isn't about to take a job where you're set up to fail. Put it this way: what if you're a recently unemployed but successful sales manager being recruited by a company with 5 years of declining sales, an aging product line, and has credit issues. Oh, and the market has major competitors without those issues. You taking that job? You think you can work within those operating parameters? They're going to pay you 100k to start, but upper management has shown little willingness to change and expects you to create miracles.

At this point, who would be willing to work if Adams was fired (which I don't think he will be)? Any prospective GM would accept a limited budget, meddling owners, and poor organizational reputation resulting from those 2 items. Ownership backed themselves up against a wall not conducting a true search and now it's time to let it ride with this decision.

What kind of GM signs a 40 year old goalie and doesn't hedge that bet given the age of the player? Again, as has been illustrated by other posters here, Adams' planning left a lot to be desired. 40 year olds playing pro sports typically aren't dependable options outside of golf.

Thanks for the clarification...should have said the most recent one. 😉

Terry and Kim Antoinette Pegula have only themselves to blame. Going to be a long rebuild.

Others have noted that deconstructing a roster is the easy part of a rebuild. Replacing departed veterans with youth and maintaining/inserting a veteran presence that won't interfere with those prospects playing is the challenging part. This is really year 0 of the rebuild. Some of the players thought of as the future are with the major league team and others remain in the system. They've made moderate commitments to Mittelstadt and a larger one to Dahlin, contract terms speaking. It would be nice, as is evidenced by this thread, if more effort was put into goaltending...but maybe is intentional. Either way, they're on about a 65 point pace which is near where most reasonable fans figured they'd be considering this roster.

The plan for rebuilding is not permanently fixed in place. It's safe to say that in 2 off-seasons he's not handled the goaltending situation well. KA is banking on UPL being their guy, but there's no current backup plan save for journeymen types. I also don't expect to announce the plan at all positions, but need to see some results from a guy who hasn't served in a front office before I start blindly accepting that there is a good plan. Besides, every team has a plan...and to get into the playoffs yours has to be better than your opponents. This is the common Buffalo battered fan syndrome refrain. No one wants to play here, ergo, we shouldn't expect much. Of course, with competent leadership like the Bills have you can expect to improve. Doesn't guarantee a championship, but I'm tired of this being the response when the team isn't playing well.

Team scored 2.79 goals per under Granato when he took over from Ralph in those final 28 games last year. (78 GF in 28 games). That was with Reinhart's 14. This year, they're scoring 2.91 per in the first 23 games minus Sam. I guess that's improvement considering the departure of a top 10 ranked NHL goal scorer. There's a point though where you can't improve morale without winning. Scoring goals is nice for the fans to talk about, but it doesn't help a franchise move forward. Everyone knew this season would test patience. But down the road, a lot of things have to go right to make the playoffs. Decisions on players like a future goaltender have to be right to get there. If UPL doesn't develop I can't see them making playoffs until they get the right guy there.

The time to handle these matters is not during the season and enough people here recognized any combination of Anderson, Dell, and Tokarski were not going to work for an entire 82 game schedule. It's pretty clear now that Adams has his money on UPL as the future, so the 3 in Buffalo were to bridge a gap. Except, that bridge fell apart by the quarter pole of the season forcing them to acquire, albeit at little cost, another goalie. Thing is, UPL has been up and down at Rochester. If he's not NHL caliber, then you're waiting on Portillo or Levi and they won't be here for another 2 seasons at a minimum. What then? They're back to finding other short term options which inhibit their ability to win and probably hurt team morale. Reminds me of years ago when Bills fans would talk about all the injuries they had for why they couldn't win...but never acknowledged that the team was thin entering the season because they kept costs down. It forced them to sign and subsequently give significant PT to undrafted and street free agents. Sabres doing same thing now.

Your point is that leadership is being "re-aligned" to something better. I contend that it doesn't matter if there aren't more W's. And, Okposo has been an assistant captain multiple previous seasons. As for Hamilton, he was calling for Cozens to be the future captain after getting into a fight last season. I'm not ready to take him at face value with determining team leadership yet.

Who are these goalies that fans should get their torches and pitchforks out for? Not wanting to play in Buffalo is becoming a theme to this season.

New does not always mean better. And talent is still more important than replacement level players with strong character. Buffalo is 25th overall with Girgensons and Okposo at the quarter pole, or about the best they did in a season with Reinhart/Ristolainen/Eichel in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2018-19, and 2019-20. Rebuild is still a work in progress and no need to make conclusions until it plays out a couple years.

Problem is, it's a GM's responsibility to fix what's wrong during the offseason and anticipate what will need improving. First thing's easy to diagnose for even the most average fan. The second is a supervisory responsibility which should be revealed through, among other things, diligent personnel evaluation and film study. I think Ullmark was either their only plan or Buffalo feigned in their attempt to re-sign him in a veiled cost-cutting move. Either way, it's malfeasance to believe a 40 year old Anderson or the other two providing a season of replacement-level performance.

Given this franchise, it wouldn't surprise me if Anderson is more than week-to-week. I wish they'd been, provided Friedman is correct, this forward thinking about goalies a little earlier than this week.

This is a development season for the Sabres and their Rochester prospects. No sense in throwing the individual player plans out the window because your 40 year old goaltender will miss some time. At the same time, losing is bad for the development of the young players on the Sabres' roster who may be a part of their future. And bad goaltending contributes to that. It's going to be worse result-wise for the position to remain in the hands of Tokarski and Dell. They'd be best served finding someone for this season who can handle more minutes, but that should have been clear during the off-season. Planning there is proving to be worse than originally thought going into the season.

Appreciate the context needed to put their first sixth of the season into perspective. Now, when/if they improve and draw more starting goalies we can review this at the appropriate juncture.

I wonder if they'll order Adams to call-up the prospects from Rochester before their GM's development timeline. Especially as this season spirals downward and tickets become even harder to sell, albeit with the border closed/limited and testing requirements. It's also going to be interesting in future off-seasons if players leave Buffalo at first opportunity after what happened with Jack (even if per the CBA) and figured that's not an organization to play for.