Adams basically has all promising young pieces, in the NHL and in the AHL. He doesn't want to give up on them for a question mark... he's willing to pull the trigger on sure things (but then most teams are).
I think that's understandable tbh. No one wants to give up on Power or Byram or Peterka or Quinn or Kulich... I'd say Cozens or Sammy but that ship might've sailed this season lol... and watch them go on to figure it out and succeed elsewhere, for anything less than a player who is going to be a top 6/top 4 success story here. Other teams might be solid enough to take that risk to try and put themselves over the top, but the Sabres can't seem to stop hitting new lows.
The problem is he's backed himself into a corner where he has nothing but promising young players to trade. He has to give up something big, and he's running out of sure things.
The fallback seems to always be, if the right trade doesn't work then we're happy seeing if these guys can figure it out here.