Kevyn Adams GM thread

[BFLO]

Just stating again for the record. No UFA wants to come here except for a paycheck, and Adams won't overpay for the big contract players. NMC players will not waive to come here, and most have Buffalo on it. The options are severely handicapped to start.

I'd rather we overpay some middle of the lineup players by $1-2mil aav than the bottom of the barrel players that Adams has signed.

Jost, Bryson, Girgs, Okposo, Clifton, EJ, Olofsson. Is $20.183 million down the drain.

He could have instead overpaid a top 4 RHD, a PK/faceoff specialist center, a goalie and still have had money left over.

Overpay 3 solid middle of the lineup veterans by $1-2mil each, rather than overpay 7 scrubs by $1-2mil each.

 

[TageGod]

I'd rather we overpay some middle of the lineup players by $1-2mil aav than the bottom of the barrel players that Adams has signed.

Jost, Bryson, Girgs, Okposo, Clifton, EJ, Olofsson. Is $20.183 million down the drain.

He could have instead overpaid a top 4 RHD, a PK/faceoff specialist center, a goalie and still have had money left over.

Overpay 3 solid middle of the lineup veterans by $1-2mil each, rather than overpay 7 scrubs by $1-2mil each.

Top players want to go to good teams. Clifton has been much better lately. bryson was basically free. We know bringing the 4th line back was bad, but I am sick of the hindsight bashing of moves that were not bad at the time. No one was upset they added depth at D.

If you want to overpay a top 4 D and like 3 veterans thats 6m in overpay alone, plus another maybe 10 million salary. Great. How are we paying Quinn and Peterka with 11m in cap space before Mitts and UPL is resigned?

 

[Ace]

Top players want to go to good teams. Clifton has been much better lately. bryson was basically free. We know bringing the 4th line back was bad, but I am sick of the hindsight bashing of moves that were not bad at the time. No one was upset they added depth at D.

If you want to overpay a top 4 D and like 3 veterans thats 6m in overpay alone, plus another maybe 10 million salary. Great. How are we paying Quinn and Peterka with 11m in cap space before Mitts and UPL is resigned?

I was. I was, and remain, livid at their failure to acquire a top 4 D. I’ve been screaming about an accomplished partner for Power since the day we won the lottery. Adams overpaid AND cheaped out instead. Won’t pay the cost of fixing things…pays too much to keep it shit. Double threat guy. The threats are all against us.

 

[BFLO]

Top players want to go to good teams. Clifton has been much better lately. bryson was basically free. We know bringing the 4th line back was bad, but I am sick of the hindsight bashing of moves that were not bad at the time. No one was upset they added depth at D.

If you want to overpay a top 4 D and like 3 veterans thats 6m in overpay alone, plus another maybe 10 million salary. Great. How are we paying Quinn and Peterka with 11m in cap space before Mitts and UPL is resigned?

I'm saying the approach has been wrong the entire time he's been GM. We needed to be spending to compete while we had all of this talent on their ELCs or cheap 2nd contracts. Instead we sat on the most cap space in the league over the last 3 years and have nothing to show for it.

All of the players that should have been signed/traded for to use up that cap wisely over the last 3 years could be coming off the books by 2025-26 when it's time to pay Quinn and Peterka.

 

[1point21Gigawatts]

The messaging from management has been pretty clear since KA took over - they are looking to build from within the organization. Everyone surprised that they didn't pull a Tim Murray and gut our prospects/picks to trade for players either has a short memory or is too entrenched in their frustrations/anger to remember.

 

[1point21Gigawatts]

I'm saying the approach has been wrong the entire time he's been GM. We needed to be spending to compete while we had all of this talent on their ELCs or cheap 2nd contracts. Instead we sat on the most cap space in the league over the last 3 years and have nothing to show for it.

All of the players that should have been signed/traded for to use up that cap wisely over the last 3 years could be coming off the books by 2025-26 when it's time to pay Quinn and Peterka.

Olofsson, Girgensens, Okposo, Robinson, Erik Johnson and Eric Comrie are all off the books next year for a total of 13,900,000. What huge signings have we made that absolutely killed our cap space? The real killer is the term left on skinner's albatross of a contract.

 

[BFLO]

Olofsson, Girgensens, Okposo, Robinson, Erik Johnson and Eric Comrie are all off the books next year for a total of 13,900,000. What huge signings have we made that absolutely killed our cap space? The real killer is the term left on skinner's albatross of a contract.

My point is that Pegula's money has been grossly misused under Adams.

$14mil for those bums? He could have signed what we needed instead for the same $$$, 2-3x $5-7mil players.

We didn't need $14mil spent on bottom pairing, and 4th line trash, we needed $14mil injected into the middle/top of the line up.

 

[1point21Gigawatts]

I don't think it was as big of a monetary mismanagement as you suggest. KO and Girgs were signed before KA, the last few years. I was okay with the re-signing because it was for significantly less money and i thought their presence would provide consistency. I am going to assume KA thought similarly.

VO was, at the time of his re-signing, one of our more promising forwards. He fell off. Don't think KA saw that coming.

Robinson was acquired because we had too many injuries, so that is a reasonable addition imo.

I don't recall anyone complaining about the EJ signing, this past summer.

Comrie was a gamble that didn't pan out. Possibly one of KA worst, but at the time it was a reasonable risk.

You mention not using players ELC's. Then what were we doing with Quinn, Peterka, Krebbs, Benson, R. Johnson, and Owen? Sure looks like we rode those ELC's pretty hard.

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

The messaging from management has been pretty clear since KA took over - they are looking to build from within the organization. Everyone surprised that they didn't pull a Tim Murray and gut our prospects/picks to trade for players either has a short memory or is too entrenched in their frustrations/anger to remember.

 

[joshjull]

There are some fair points....

1. We don't know. But right now we aren't getting value. And we don't have any additional vet presence becuase the assumption was that we would have value today and not tomorrow. "Our Stanley Cup window opens now" - Kevyn Adams.

You're correct that we‘re not getting value right now. But their contracts have nothing to do with us adding vets or not. Thats you, again, trying attack their deals with things that aren’t relevant.

Whether or not they grow into the players management thinks they can be will determine if their contracts are worth it. Thats why they got those deals in the first place.

3. I am not saying that Rochester should be great based on drafting. I am saying this is what GMKA has sold this city for going on 5 years. Chainshot certainly addressed the fact that we haven't invested much in bringing any vets into the Americans. I don't disagree. But the line sold on this fan base is that we do not need to do that because of the draft.

Adams did no such thing.

Its funny that you're even making this argument when you didn't even know about until @Chainshot brought it up. It’s not a big deal that you don’t know it since the overwhelming majority of Sabre fans don’t care or think about it. They just want to know how our prospects are doing down there And may follow them in the AHL playoffs.

 

[1point21Gigawatts]

Who are "those people" you're referring to with your meme?

 

[TageGod]

I'm saying the approach has been wrong the entire time he's been GM. We needed to be spending to compete while we had all of this talent on their ELCs or cheap 2nd contracts. Instead we sat on the most cap space in the league over the last 3 years and have nothing to show for it.

All of the players that should have been signed/traded for to use up that cap wisely over the last 3 years could be coming off the books by 2025-26 when it's time to pay Quinn and Peterka.

Why would a GM who inherited a situation where all his best players wanted out become buyers? He had to figure out who can even play hockey for his team in 3 years. Last year was not the time to add. Last offseason sure but were so bad it wouldn't help. All those signings you might not even know Quinn and Peterka were good.

 

[joshjull]

2. You can say that we have no cap issues at the moment, that is today. But once we get into what some the market may bare for Mitts/UPL alone we are absolutely going to be staring down the barrel at some difficult decisions. In 4 years I don't think we will have all of Cozens, Power, UPL, Mitts, Peterka, Quinn, and Levi on the roster.

I wanted to address this separately.

NHL teams don’t care about the cap 3 to 4 years down the road when it comes time to pay one of their top players. That should’ve been abundantly clear the last three years or so. When they were under an incredible cap crunch from the flat cap for 5 straight seasons (That includes this one). The worst and longest cap crunch of the cap era.

Yet they still signed their top players and sometimes even brought in more talent. They worried about the cap complications after the talent was under contract. Even if the hit was for the upcoming season. Whether they manipulated LTIR, or even paid teams to take contracts off their hands, they made it work. It’s why we had Cup champs with cap hits 15-20mil above the upper limit.

The upper limit is going to be 92mil in just two seasons. Thats 8.5 mil higher than this season. It will keep growing after that now that the economic impact of the pandemic has worked its way through the system. Teams will have even less reason to worry about extensions in the short to midterm than they did during the flat cap stretch. And they clearly didn’t worry much about it then.

Every team willing to spend money to improve their roster will eventually run into the upper limit. But they’re not gonna handicap themselves years before they get there. They’ll deal with it when they have to. We have years of evidence to show that’s the case.

 

[Irie]

I'd rather we overpay some middle of the lineup players by $1-2mil aav than the bottom of the barrel players that Adams has signed.

Jost, Bryson, Girgs, Okposo, Clifton, EJ, Olofsson. Is $20.183 million down the drain.

He could have instead overpaid a top 4 RHD, a PK/faceoff specialist center, a goalie and still have had money left over.

Overpay 3 solid middle of the lineup veterans by $1-2mil each, rather than overpay 7 scrubs by $1-2mil each.

I think the problem is that the guys worth overpaying already had better dance partners that are also willing to overpay them.

They mostly did what you are suggesting with Clifton and Johnson. They overpaid to bring in depth.

If you look at the UFA tracker from last year, it is easy to see how the options may have been limited.

Evan Rodriguez again at 4x4?

Kerfoot at 4.5?

Graves for 6 years at 5.5?

Computer for 5 years at more than 6M?

We are desperate, so we say, "sure, can't be worse than the retreads", but the retreads are all on one year deals.

The cap flexibility on those stopgap deals is underrated.

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

Who are "those people" you're referring to with your meme?

Those who would prefer to Murray the picks

 

[Doug Prishpreed]

The messaging from management has been pretty clear since KA took over - they are looking to build from within the organization. Everyone surprised that they didn't pull a Tim Murray and gut our prospects/picks to trade for players either has a short memory or is too entrenched in their frustrations/anger to remember.

This is a strategy that is stupid and will fail. What's worse, it will take 5 more years to verify that it was stupid and has failed.

I don't think it was as big of a monetary mismanagement as you suggest. KO and Girgs were signed before KA, the last few years. I was okay with the re-signing because it was for significantly less money and i thought their presence would provide consistency. I am going to assume KA thought similarly.

VO was, at the time of his re-signing, one of our more promising forwards. He fell off. Don't think KA saw that coming.

Robinson was acquired because we had too many injuries, so that is a reasonable addition imo.

I don't recall anyone complaining about the EJ signing, this past summer.

Comrie was a gamble that didn't pan out. Possibly one of KA worst, but at the time it was a reasonable risk.

You mention not using players ELC's. Then what were we doing with Quinn, Peterka, Krebbs, Benson, R. Johnson, and Owen? Sure looks like we rode those ELC's pretty hard.

Have you ever heard of the term "opportunity cost?"

 

[Duddy]

No idea why people still think waiting is a strategy that works in building a winner. This franchise should be in the lets build a winner phase, not wait for more draft picks.

 

[TehDoak]

The whole 'we are going to build internally' isn't a terrible strategy. However, The Ironic thing is, if you look at the most two of the best run organizations, the Lightning and the Avalanche, their first rebuilds didn't work. The lightning drafted Stamkos in 2008. The Avalanche drafted McKinnon in 2013. Tampa bay didn't win the cup until 2020. Colorado didn't win it until 2022. They had rough patches. But they kept their star players happy and then supplemented around them. The lightning had early success in the Stamkos era, but the Colorado struggled for a while, even with enormous talent.

The 'proper' path was to keep Eichel and Reinhart happy and supplement them till you had that elite veteran top line surrounded by young talent and smart management. Unfortunately, they were unable to do that. That is what is frustrating about this whole thing, especially after seeing Eichel in the playoffs last year and now Reinhart on a 50 goal pace.

To see the team simply toss out the franchise players they sacrificed seasons to get in their prime to 'start over', as a fan, is frustrating. There isn't sustainable success here. The management isn't setup for it, the coaching staff isn't setup for it. Yes, we have a ton of young talent, but to be able to use those assets and forge a winning team with them isn't something I have any faith the current front office/coaching staff can do.

 

[Jim Bob]

I think the problem is that the guys worth overpaying already had better dance partners that are also willing to overpay them.

They mostly did what you are suggesting with Clifton and Johnson. They overpaid to bring in depth.

If you look at the UFA tracker from last year, it is easy to see how the options may have been limited.

Evan Rodriguez again at 4x4?

Kerfoot at 4.5?

Graves for 6 years at 5.5?

Computer for 5 years at more than 6M?

We are desperate, so we say, "sure, can't be worse than the retreads", but the retreads are all on one year deals.

The cap flexibility on those stopgap deals is underrated.

Trades are the best option for adding talent, IMO. The challenge is that Adams has not been afraid to pass on deals where he felt the ask was too much.

He seems to be in the Regier mold of trying "win trades" as opposed to other GMs who care more about filling needs on their rosters.



But, in general, big money, long term UFA contracts do tend to be regrettable before they expire. Okposo and Skinner have both been contracts of late that did not age well, for instance.

 

[Doug Prishpreed]

No idea why people still think waiting is a strategy that works in building a winner. This franchise should be in the lets build a winner phase, not wait for more draft picks.

They’re just trying to justify the things that Adams has done so they have a reason for hope.

 

[BFLO]

I don't think it was as big of a monetary mismanagement as you suggest. KO and Girgs were signed before KA, the last few years. I was okay with the re-signing because it was for significantly less money and i thought their presence would provide consistency. I am going to assume KA thought similarly.

VO was, at the time of his re-signing, one of our more promising forwards. He fell off. Don't think KA saw that coming.

Robinson was acquired because we had too many injuries, so that is a reasonable addition imo.

I don't recall anyone complaining about the EJ signing, this past summer.

Comrie was a gamble that didn't pan out. Possibly one of KA worst, but at the time it was a reasonable risk.

You mention not using players ELC's. Then what were we doing with Quinn, Peterka, Krebbs, Benson, R. Johnson, and Owen? Sure looks like we rode those ELC's pretty hard.

Plenty of posters complained about the EJ signing.

Rode our ELCs? We did not gain a competitive advantage by spending to the cap while our young talent were on cheap contracts outperforming their salaries. We wasted that opportunity.

Why would a GM who inherited a situation where all his best players wanted out become buyers? He had to figure out who can even play hockey for his team in 3 years. Last year was not the time to add. Last offseason sure but were so bad it wouldn't help. All those signings you might not even know Quinn and Peterka were good.

He became GM 4 years ago. Good GMs start making moves in year 1. Look at Alvin in Vancouver.

He should have added at least 1 good player each of the last 3 offseasons. Sitting on all that cap space for the last 3 years did damage to the roster then, and it's still doing damage now and will be for the next few years.

 

[KeyserSoze81]

I think theyre going for all the shame, honestly, which includes going an entire season without a 3 game winning streak. It's wild how once the Bills ended their embarrassing playoff-less streak, the Sabres had to take the torch from them. Incredible how bad of a product Buffalo sports have given the fans over the last 3 decades. No wonder the fans are so sensitive about the Bills.

I have habituated to the losing so much that I stress out so much when one of the teams is good. The window is always closing in on us like the boulder on Indiana Jones, and we are not getting out with the prized artifact.

 

[OkimLom]

Why would a GM who inherited a situation where all his best players wanted out become buyers? He had to figure out who can even play hockey for his team in 3 years. Last year was not the time to add. Last offseason sure but were so bad it wouldn't help. All those signings you might not even know Quinn and Peterka were good.

ANY time you can add elements to your team is a good time to add them. There are elements to this team that still lack, IMO, that you were not getting from any prospects currently in the system, that they felt they needed to gift a spot to, I mean, not block. The management, development, coaching, and scouting department are all being paid to determining the quality of the path a player is on. If they can't see where a player is headed without being on the main roster, then they shouldn't be in the organization.

 

[1point21Gigawatts]

Bottom line is Granato and Adams aren't going anywhere, so you all may as well strap yourself in or abandon ship.

 

[Doug Prishpreed]

Bottom line is Granato and Adams aren't going anywhere, so you all may as well strap yourself in or abandon ship.

Not sure if you've noticed but most people have already abandoned ship. If they didn't a long time ago, they have now.

Anecdotally, I used to go to games with huge groups of friends, and watch games with people every weekend. Most of them couldn't name more than 3 players now.