Kevyn Adams and the awkwardness of selling the situation
Trying to sell the Buffalo Sabres when they're deep in a playoff drought and trying to find an identity is tough, but the GM has to be the most convincing of all to do it.
The Buffalo Sabres are in the middle of their worst run of games since November 2022 and any time the team’s misfortunes pile up, it turns into an analysis of how the team got there, why the team has missed the playoffs for 13 straight seasons, and how their fortunes haven’t altered in a positive way at all in that time.
Following the Sabres’ horrific defeat against the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday and a hard luck overtime loss to the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday, general manager Kevyn Adams took questions for a kind of quarter-season check-in that just happened to coincide with a five-game winless streak.
It’s a season where many Sabres players are fighting it and struggling or dealing with various injuries, yet the team very much could wind up in the playoffs when the season ends in April because of how messy things are in the Eastern Conference outside of its top teams. Yet there are very good reasons to be concerned about where the team is at now and where it could be headed the rest of this season and in seasons to come. Those worries apply to both the players as well as to how Adams has built the team and the rest of the organization underneath him.
On Friday, Adams was ready for the knives to be out given the current state with the Sabres. They’re tied for 11th in the East and three points out of the second wild card spot. There are a lot of games to go, but it’s clear there are areas that can be addressed now and, arguably, could’ve been addressed over the summer or even last summer via trades or free agency.
If the Sabres were a winning team, those negotiations are a lot easier to win players over to sign in Buffalo or waive a no-trade clause to join the team. That’s a time when the GM has to be a salesman and in the big picture of reality, selling the Buffalo Sabres as things have gone and continue to go is really hard to do.
“With trades, you look to see if there’s ways to help your roster, supplement your roster,” Adams said. “I think you look at our roster right now with (Bo) Byram, (Jordan) Greenway, (Alex) Tuch, (Peyton) Krebs, (Beck) Malenstyn – who else, there’s probably one or two I’m forgetting. (Ryan) McLeod. Those are all guys that we traded for that come in and play roles on your team. So, you’re trying to add to that group.
“Honestly… this is not a time—we’re not a destination city right now where you’re going to be able to go out and get UFAs that are the key guys. And I just don’t think that’s the way to build a sustainable winner. So, evaluate your core, look for trades that you can have players that can grow with you and add to your team. If there’s UFAs that you can add that make sense that work, of course you’re going to be open to doing that. So, that’s what we’re in the process of.”
Hearing the GM say that caused a double-take. Everything Adams described he’s doing to try and help improve the roster and the players he has acquired and signed to help turn the Sabres into a playoff team requires a level of buy-in for the players and for the GM and the staff and coaches to all believe it and defend it with all they have. And Adams does believe what he’s saying, but the reality of the situation weighs so heavily that it’s impossible to ignore.
That makes the sales pitch part of the job that much more important, but even that has pitfalls, apparently.
“For me, it's really simple,” Adams explained. “You become a perennial playoff team, you make playoffs, you have a chance to win the Stanley Cup year after year. You are on (fewer) teams’ no-trade list. We don't have palm trees. We have taxes in New York. Those are real, and those are things you deal with. But—and trust me—there's, I think, conversations every day, and there's a lot of players in this league that we’re on their list. So, we need to earn the respect, and it starts with getting over the hump, getting in the playoffs, competing.
“And once you do that, I mean, look at look at the Bills. I mean, that would be a perfect example. I would assume that this wasn't a destination or a place that a lot of people were signing up to when they were in a 17-year playoff drought, and they've done a phenomenal job over there. You get Josh Allen, and people are lining up because they have a chance to win the Super Bowl every year. And I think that's what we're working to building.”
Cutting through the easy-to-snark-about noise of saying playing hockey for the Sabres in Buffalo right now makes it not a destination city and invoking the Bills who have been able to land great talent by virtue of being one of a handful of legitimate Super Bowl contenders in the NFL highlights what the problem really is for helping get the Sabres the players they want to be able to compete:
Winning. It’s all about winning. That’s it.
If a team makes the playoffs and keeps improving after doing that and goes deeper and deeper into the postseason while carrying a boatload of talented players, the easiest sell job in the world is convincing a great player to join up and try to win a title (or another one or two if they’ve already done it). The location doesn’t always matter, although if a team that’s doing really well also happens to be somewhere with low taxes and great weather, then yeah that’s a great call.
But winning situations, or at least a situation where wins happen enough to get to the postseason, can cover up a lot of warts for the actual physical locations. After all, people, especially pro athletes, can find fun anywhere they want, it’s just that some places make it a lot easier and with more plentiful options.
The Sabres are in the middle of such a tight and crowded race for the playoffs that fixing up one or two question marks with the lineup or the depth—and we’re not even talking about making a blockbuster trade here—can be enough of a difference-maker in the East.
Adams doesn’t have to find a superstar partner for Owen Power or a Marian Hossa-like forward for the top six, he just has to find the right guys to complement the key players he has already. Little improvements like that can make a monster difference with the margins being so thin between everyone in the wild card race.
And Adams knows this very well.
But he also has to know that if/when his tenure running the Sabres comes to an end, that if the actions and results don’t improve and he’s another name on the list of GMs that were unable to get the Sabres back to the playoffs, a lot of what he said on Friday will live on for years to come in infamy.
There was more discussion about the lack of spending to the cap and whether or not ownership is allowing him to spend that money to improve the situation, but Adams was again adamant that he’s been given all the resources to put together a winning hockey team, both on and off the ice. But those statements aren’t all that new, it’s just a matter of proving it.
Talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words… but words can live on for a long time if the actions don’t support them.