Good read on Sabres struggles

15 comments

1. Yep. Terrible, understaffed FO with very little hockey experience doesn’t know how to properly develop a team and prospects. So they don’t build a team to help the prospects grow in a safe environment with leaders to help them along the way.

   Nor do they have a good long term plan for everyone besides….hope they keep improving?

   Edit: the article itself was very good showing how the Sabres FO is doing things differently from the normal, more successful approach.

2. I always appreciate some good hockey minds actually analyzing the problem.

   Bloggers can throw stones at management and ownership. But this is an actually insightful look at things the Sabres are doing differently than other organizations.

   When I complain about the Buffalo sports media as being sub-par compared to other cities, it’s because despite their close access, they would rather fuel outrage than do the homework to help fans better understand the working of an NHL team.

   It sucks that local fans need to wait for the team to suck so bad that they get coverage from Sportsnet to dig beyond platitudes and fan-level assessments.

3. Good stuff.

   I don’t mind trying things differently than the status quo but….

   NHL seems to have a pretty prescriptive road for success mapped out.

4. I can’t give any more headspace to this moribund franchise. trade guys, don’t trade guys, draft high, don’t draft high, soccer coach’ old coach new coach..none of it matters. they fuckin stink

5. Wait…So you’re telling me THE PROBLEM IS MANAGEMENT AND NOT THE PLAYERS!? 🤯🤯

   And yeah… very much /s

   We know the problem. Someone figure out how to get Terry to fix it. Can we hold the yacht hostage?

6. > When I was with the Predators, our GM David Poile preferred all of our prospects to spend time developing in the AHL. He wanted them to learn how to be a pro and understand the commitment it takes to be a good one before they arrived on our NHL roster. Our assistant GM, Paul Fenton, spent a ton of time with our team in Milwaukee. He had a hands-on approach with the coaches and prospects. The lines of communication never blurred and the results were positive.

   Jason Karmanos is the Sabres’ AGM in Buffalo and the GM in Rochester, which is the same structure his model Fenton had with Nashville and Milwaukee so the structure can’t be the problem. Is the problem him not spending enough time in Rochester working with the coaches and prospects?

   That seems to be the implication, though he doesn’t say so. If it is the problem, how much better would the Sabres be now if Karmanos spent more time in Rochester working with Krebs, Quinn, Peterka, Samuelsson, etc? A lot? A little? Those are interesting questions that the author doesn’t bother to answer.

   > THE NEED FOR VETERAN LEADERSHIP
   Players such as Tanner Pearson, Noah Gregor, Zach Aston-Reese and Patrick Maroon, for example, won’t move the needle much on their own, but they are serviceable NHL players who have seen the league and would fit a role. If Buffalo wasn’t their first choice to sign with, make it worth their while by paying a bit more on a one-year contract. The Sabres had more than enough cap room to work with in the off-season — plus five open contract slots — and some of their prospects wouldn’t have been rushed to the NHL with this strategy over the years.

   The Sabres have constantly brought in veteran players who are supposed to be good in the locker room and know how to win to mentor their younger players all throughout this fourteen year odyssey. Should the Sabres have brought in more? Or did they just bring in the wrong veteran players? If they had gotten the right veteran players, who would they have been and how much better would the Sabres be right now? Again the most interesting questions were left unexplored in what I found to be a maddening article.

7. Craig Rivet has been saying they are not developing their young players correctly for years.

8. You would think we’d make the playoffs just by accident over that time

9. Wow don’t let the radio fanbois see this

10. You don’t actually have to read more than the first 5 words to know who is responsible:

    > Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula

11. Notice how *every single one* of the criticisms ultimately comes down to the owner being cheap? Refusal to sign veterans, pushing younger players on cheap contracts onto the roster, refusing to travel, refusal to have people take on increased responsibilities (requiring higher pay), etc…?

12. Thoughtful piece. I thought Zucker really helped Sabres through November before the team went over the Falls. We could use more vets like him.

13. >Defenceman Shea Weber, for example, didn’t arrive full-time in the NHL until four seasons after he was selected.

    * Sigh *

14. Adam’s isn’t a real GM. Cozens and Samuelsson both given contracts WAY out of proportion to their achievements and of course too early. The players who have developed properly were either traded ( Mittsy ) or we couldn’t re-sign due to organizational incompetence ( Reinhart ). Adam’s loves to point out the youngsters have played a lot NHL games but completely forgets that part of the development process is also developing NHL ready bodies in terms of muscle development. The kids on this team are NOWHERE NEAR STRONG ENOUGH PHYSICALLY TO COMPETE. Constantly outmuscled along the walls and in corners which of course leads to turnovers and chances against. Always looks like the Sabres are the JV playing the varsity opponents. There aren’t shortcuts to long term excellence. And now they’ve botched yet another group of 1st’s and the following group is still 3-5 years away from prime time. To
    succeed they’ll need to package some
    prospects to replace Mittsy and Reinhart or…..tear it all down and start over but of course with an actual GM at the helm, not the worst GM in franchise history.

15. I agreed with much of the article. It made me go back and look at how exactly we got here.

    Adams comes in during the COVID era. The league is bleeding money, HRR is way down. One Buffalo is crumbling. Ownership is firing people left and right and wanting to maintain the lifestyle. He brings in Hall and Staal which on paper were interesting ideas. Those are quality vets, to give him credit. The season fails miserably, Eichel gets hurt. Kruger is fired, and there is a fire sale on Eichel, Reinhart, Risto, Montour.

    He knows he cannot do a full rebuild again but the Sabres are now abundant with picks. They tap Granato as the full time head coach, which in theory is an interesting idea. He has extensive experience coaching young players most notably with the USNDP. They tack on Sam Ventura who was well regarded. Things looked on the up and up.

    With FAs and players with NTC fading the team, Adams goes all in on building from within. As much as the current results piss me off, I don’t think this was a terrible idea. This eventually became the 2022-23 team. Tons of “young-ish” players contributing at good clips, Tage, Dahlin, Mittelstadt, and Cozens putting up respectable numbers. Younger players like Quinn and Peterka doing ok given their age. Vets like Tuch and Skinner produced well.

    It’s easy to look in hindsight but I don’t necessarily “blame” Adams for buying into the core. It was a young team who scored a ton of goals and needed to clean up goaltending and some defense. Another year for guys like Cozens, Peterka, Quinn, and Power to mature. If we try to be unbiased there does appear to be a solid core of young players who will continue to get better.

    I think where Adams fails is that he was so focused on making sure that prospects had a path to the NHL that there were essentially no off season moves worth noting going into 2023-24 season.

    Many of these young players were now essentially handed prominent roles with no veteran moves to really have a backup plan

    It’s debatable on what caused the shift into poor play last season (and continuing now). Is it a system change, a confidence thing? We can argue the Sabres had a high shooting percentage but I find it unlikely that everyone just had a career year at the same time offensively.

    The core veteran presence was Okposo, Girgensons, and Clifton/Skinner/Tuch. Skinner was a vet but never played on a high level team. Okposo and Girgensons were fourth line players. When the pressure turned on the young players couldn’t handle it and there wasn’t a good set of veterans who could ease the younger guys.

    Okposo noted after he left the team knew in November the team didn’t have it. They quit when the going got tough, their captain! An inexperienced GM, head coach and roster couldn’t work out of it. Young players couldn’t find their game in more limited roles.

    What we’re seeing now is a group of players that don’t have a strong culture. They lack intensity, defensive awareness, and offensive prowess to get things going.

    Lindy is in a situation where your “top line” guys are <25. Your top 4 is <25. Most of the veterans are not high enough caliber. Lindy can only do so much.

    The entire situation is the organization is the blind leading the blind. From coaching, management, players, and all the leaders inbetween. June / July 2023 was a period for Adams to look at the core, make a couple trades. Get some truly solid mature players and he failed. He relied too much on the young guys continuing to progress. Young players were gifted roles (as noted by Benson making the team T 18).

    I’m not sure how anyone fixes this