Kevyn Adams GM thread

[GellMann]

I just want to add that of those positive xGF% games during the 13 game losing streak only 2 of them weren’t due to score effects. The rest were all 3rd period rallies after the opponent had taken their foot off our necks and had started coasting and going into a defensive shell, just running out the clock, allowing us to fruitlessly rack up xGF while not really making much xGF for themselves.

So Kevyn doesn’t even understand the basic concept of score effects. He just looked at the xGF% of each game and decided that should decide who won and lost.

And I think he doesn't actually even care, he just wants to use it as a prop for how advanced his front office is. "I know calculus guys, see"

 

[Ace]

Adams and Ruff both have 1 year left on their contracts. I don't expect Pegula to waste money anymore.

I can’t think of a bigger waste of money than continuing to allow Kevyn Adams to be the GM. He’s cost him years of playoff revenue and regular season ticket sales by icing his team.

 

[Ace]

Wait until Buffalo makes the playoffs next year in spite of Adams and Adams will claim his 6 years of hard work is success and paid off.

Pegs will give him a 5 year extension

I would rather see this clown fired than have to look at him for 5 more years.

My greatest fear remains having an unsustainable hot start to the season that lands Adams the extension right away

 

[MOGlLNY]

wrong thread

 

[BFLO]

The team isn't using natural stattrick for their xg numbers

So? Do you think the Sabres internal numbers are going to be that much different from NST or Moneypuck?


When you look at the 49.95% xGF you'd think this game would have been a coin flip. But then you look at the period by period numbers and it tells a very different story. Even first period, we got run out of the building in the 2nd period, and then Utah took their foot off our necks in the 3rd as they sat back and ran out the clock.

It took me 2 minutes to do a deeper dive on the 13 game losing streak than Kevyn has yet. He needs to wait for the off-season. Gimme a break. Dude is an unqualified clown.

 

[Chainshot]

This team is a perimeter, rush offense team that is slack in their own zone and in puck battles. They want to win but there aren't enough guys on the team who hate to lose.



Get some more players who win wall battles like their grandmother's next meal depends on it, that their kids staying warm depend on it. Too many cream puffs, not enough gristle.

 

[Ace]

The only question that should be asked at Kevyn Adams’ press conference is “how can you preach accountability when you are retained after regressing two years in a row and five years of failure?”

Then ask it again.

And again.

And again.

Until his time is up.

 

[sabres4ever]

The only question that should be asked at Kevyn Adams’ press conference is “how can you preach accountability when you are retained after regressing two years in a row and five years of failure?”

Then ask it again.

And again.

And again.

Until his time is up.

"How many more years will it take until this team can make the playoffs, and do you believe you'll still be the GM?"

 

[TehDoak]

Sigh. Since it appears we ARE having a presser with Kevyn....



"How is this team better than when you arrived?"

"With the current cap situation, how do you plan to affect meaningful change to this roster?"

"How do you feel about winnipeg signing their two big UFAs going into the playoffs with worse weather, higher taxes, and no palm trees?"

"What are the plans to making meaningful staff changes, specifically to the coaching staff and front office"

"We talk about the lack of veterans on the ice, do you need a mentor in the front office given your lack of experience in the area?"

"Who do you call when you are looking for advice?"

 

[michaelsaas]

Sigh. Since it appears we ARE having a presser with Kevyn....



"How is this team better than when you arrived?"

"With the current cap situation, how do you plan to affect meaningful change to this roster?"

"How do you feel about winnipeg signing their two big UFAs going into the playoffs with worse weather, higher taxes, and no palm trees?"

"What are the plans to making meaningful staff changes, specifically to the coaching staff and front office"

"We talk about the lack of veterans on the ice, do you need a mentor in the front office given your lack of experience in the area?"

"Who do you call when you are looking for advice?"

I would also frame some question around the emphasis on accountability mentioned at this time last year looking forward to this year. What accountability does he take and what should be the answer to that?

 

[Chainshot]

I would also frame some question around the emphasis on accountability mentioned at this time last year looking forward to this year. What accountability does he take and what should be the answer to that?

Not for nothing, but we know that he’s going to claim that he’s accountable for all of it. That won’t actually move the needle with him. He still thinks he knows better than everybody else in the room. I would be much more interested in asking him why the cap space that they allocated for young players was not used and likely is not needed while camp space used on Young players was clearly misspent. He has one value deal in Thompson, one slightly above market deal for Rasmus, and he screwed up with Samuelsson, Cozens, and allocating space for Quinn that he just doesn’t need. Ask him about his ability to actually identify winning hockey players. Ask him why he allowed his veteran third goalie to get plucked up on waivers instead of sending the kid who wasn’t ready back to the minors to work on his game like everybody could see coming down the track. I am so f***ing sick of this guy.

 

[Ehran]

Sigh. Since it appears we ARE having a presser with Kevyn....

Don't worry, their crack media team will have the audio set up perfectly this time so you won't be able to hear the questions.

"What? Allow the plebs to see what we're doing? Never!"
~ Terry Pegula (probably)

 

[sabremike]

It's all been said, and I'm preaching to the choir, but.

I really took issue with Kevyn's interview on Schopp and the Bulldog yesterday. He went into how disappointed they were in the results of this season and how the 13 game streak was his fault very mechanically, just ticking off the things he's "supposed" to say. He became more animated for his deep dive into that streak. He tells us how their expected goals were even or positive in 6 of those 13 games, so maybe they were unlucky and should have won those, and that they really didn't play too terribly during the streak.

First, that is not true at all - they were dreadful for many of those 13 games. The game on long island, maybe 3rd loss in a row? Was absolutely disgusting. It was the worst hockey game I've seen a non-last-place Sabres team play. The Colorado game speaks for itself - it was so bad, the media bullied him into making an appearance to explain himself, and he spent the whole time derisive and combative to any suggestion that it wasn't beneath him to be there in that moment. "the playoffs are not made or missed in December." Oh yeah, Kevyn? Then why is that streak the first thing you bring up every time you open your mouth to analyze the season?

His team promptly lost their next 7, including the infamous game in Montreal where they follow up a rousing visit from the owner (no changes are coming, the answer is in the room) with a 6-1 drubbing. Kevyn, there are some pretty strong signals being sent out there that maybe you should get off your ass and do something.

Second, this expected goals cop-out is extremely cheap. It seems like it exists only to float the idea that the Sabres front office is "advanced" and uses "metrics." I love the expected goal stat - I once tried to develop it myself before discovering it already existed. It is a great tool that, once you collect sufficient data, will tell you more about the next 40 games a team will play than any other stat you have accumulated at that moment. But single game expected goal stats are completely meaningless in isolation, they say nothing more about the results of the next game you'll play than a coinflip. And 6 isn't even half! He is glaringly misusing a stat outside of its proper regime as a cop-out for the team's performance.

And Kevyn, why do you get to flip the results of the games where you out-chance the opponent according to xGF%? Shouldn't you also flip the games where you were out-chanced, but still won? There were 20 of those. Why do you get to flip those games and only those games and judge your season that way, against other teams, who aren't allowed to flip any of their games? You were out-xGF%-ed ~46 times this year and won 20 of those games. Your cumulative xGF% is 27th. Your team finished 26th. That's it. You are where you deserve to be.

But you know what? Fine. Take out those six losses. Better yet, take out all 13! And don't let any other teams take out any of their losses, or games where they were robbed by the deserve-to-win-o-meter. Congrats, you played the rest of them at a 90 point pace! You have STILL missed the playoffs in both conference anyway with that outrageous and fantastical crutch you are employing to make yourself look better.

Thank god they stopped winning when Reimer and the shooters went cold, it would have been beyond insufferable to hear him tout the play of his team against backup goalies and teams that were getting ready for the playoffs, or running for the bus (Boston), long after the pressure of the games mattering for the Sabres had subsided. They still played terribly that whole time.

Kevyn Adams talks about this streak like a guy who aimed at the second wild card spot should everything outside of his control go perfectly. Like his desired outcome wasn't to be great, just to be okay, better than 6 eastern teams but not much more than that. He has a pattern of doing this. Two years ago, Kevyn's team got to 91 points. They did this with 12 skaters hitting a career high in goals, points, or shooting percentage (~8 of those skaters still have career marks in those stats that season). So, a huge statistical outlier got him within a win of the playoffs. Then, his permanent marker 2nd line RW got hurt weeks before the roster shuffling phase of the offseason even began. He did not care about this, and did not address that injury, let alone the potential that guys might not shoot 20% the next season, that career bests are not guaranteed. Predictably, they could not score. But he made a point to tell us more than once how awesome his summer at the lake was, after he added a 6D and 7D and called it a job well done. We all saw this happening in real time, but he didn't. That season was his magnum opus, and we have declined for 730 days since. In each season that followed, Kevyn spoke in couched terms that plainly displayed that his goal was to "compete", not to be great but to hover around 8th/9th/10th in the conference. When you aim this low, and catch an injury or a bad bounce, you are going to miss.

Why can't he start with a 91 point team and shoot for something better? Every team that is not in year 1 or 2 of a rebuild should be functionally capable of becoming a 50 win, ~105 point team. I have seen so many random, boring, unremarkably competent Wild/Blues/Kings/Rangers/Islanders teams over the years put up ~104 points just by being NORMAL and having NORMAL GOALS and working towards them. And when you shoot for a season like this, and fall 5 wins short? You still give yourself a shot. The Sabres should have been gunning for a 2022-23 NJD-like season each of the last two years, they should have been salivating at the thought of having a season like this. Think of how fun that would be, how much more fun than even the 2022-23 season could have been. They should have wanted this so bad it was physically painful. When Alex Tuch or Tage Thompson or Rasmus Dahlin talk to the media, I hear this desire. And frustration that they know deep down that they don't have it. I have never heard anything like this from Kevyn Adams.

What I wouldn't give to hear the media go at him for his flimsy goals. Why are you like this, Kevyn? Why do you tiptoe so cautiously around saying that you need to have your team be very good, even great? Is it because you know that you'll never get this job again, and you need to sell the slooooooooow build as long as you can? Or is it because Terry wants to minimize spending as much as possible? What other explanation can there be for your lack of urgency, for setting a record for available cap space over multiple years? Turns out your plan of filling that up with Quinn/Sammy/Levi contracts got blown up. That was NOT the reason you didn't care to spend. Tell us what it is, you prick. Tell us why you led us along to yank the rug time and time again.

GFY, get your hands away from my hockey team for the love of God. I don't want to hear it. We are DONE. You sicken us, Terry sickens us. You are killing a franchise and we are watching it in real time.

"I should have done more during the losing streak probably"

As Ace has pointed out, YOU own the THREE longest non-tank losing streaks in franchise history. You didn't learn shit. You will do the same thing again next year when your garbage roster flounders and flails. You should not get a 4th chance at fixing a losing streak, or a sixth chance at having a real season. You got hired, you watched Montreal play in a cup final, blow up, finish last, draft a player who isn't impactful yet, draft top 5 two more times, and then steal your spot in the playoffs, which you missed by a mile.

One way or another, after locker room cleanout, I know I will never see or hear this man again.

Local media members online constantly ask fans "What do you want from us?" and my answer is THIS! A thorough calling out/dissection of a lying incompetent bullshit artist, the fact none of the local media is either willing or capable of doing something like this says it all.

 

[littletonhockeycoach]

Local media members online constantly ask fans "What do you want from us?" and my answer is THIS! A thorough calling out/dissection of a lying incompetent bullshit artist, the fact none of the local media is either willing or capable of doing something like this says it all.

Why...... that's down right.......mean! We (the media) can't do that and we won't do that! We have mouths to feed, jobs to keep, friendships to maintain, cocktail parties to go to. Bridges we won't burn down.

We aren't Donald Trump after all......

 

[Ace]

Just let me into the presser.

I’ll break this man to a degree that retaining him is no longer an option. With nothing but facts.

 

[jc17]

At risk of providing false hope, if they are to fire the GM, scheduling a joint presser might make sense

So? Do you think the Sabres internal numbers are going to be that much different from NST or Moneypuck?


When you look at the 49.95% xGF you'd think this game would have been a coin flip. But then you look at the period by period numbers and it tells a very different story. Even first period, we got run out of the building in the 2nd period, and then Utah took their foot off our necks in the 3rd as they sat back and ran out the clock.
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It took me 2 minutes to do a deeper dive on the 13 game losing streak than Kevyn has yet. He needs to wait for the off-season. Gimme a break. Dude is an unqualified clown.

Yes, I think there's more player tracking available for teams which could impact xg info significantly

At one point kevyn mentioned xgf being positive in either a game or stretch when it was negative in the public models. They are certainly using a different model. I can't promise it's good, but I really doubt kevyn is sitting in his office unable to find the score adjustment filter

 

[jc17]

 

[Deevo]

This is insane - just fire the man

 

[toddkaz]

Reminds me of this episode from Seinfeld.

 

[Chainshot]

Same people but with new titles. Sure, that'll be a different result. Sure. Yeah.

 

[DapperCam]

“Promoting” Adams to president of some BS fake department is probably one of the only ways we’ll get rid of him. I highly doubt Pegula will fire him outright.

I’ll also believe it when I see it…

 

[TehDoak]

It would be hilarious to see Adams get promoted after years of just incompetence. I need to find a senile billionaire and try to get one of these jobs where I just run whatever they ask me to run straight into the ground and after 5 years of failure I get promoted to a higher position.

I'm interested to see WHAT they do, though in reality, any plan that doesn't remove Adams from the decision tree for the hockey team isn't a great one. I'd be happy to see an adult with some experience in building a winning team brought in though.

 

[truthbluth]

I know we’ll all make fun of it, but a poho needs primarily to buffer the owner from the day to day and I would rather Kevyn did that than almost any other likely scenario without a poho.

If my choices are:
no changes
Kev to Poho, new GM
No Poho, new GM

My preference is Kev to Poho, as f***ing dumb as it sounds.

 

[toddkaz]

I know we’ll all make fun of it, but a poho needs primarily to buffer the owner from the day to day and I would rather Kevyn did that than almost any other likely scenario without a poho.

If my choices are:
no changes
Kev to Poho, new GM
No Poho, new GM

My preference is Kev to Poho, as f***ing dumb as it sounds.

That means Kevyn is the GM's boss. What changes? Who wants to have the POHO telling you what trades to make?

A 5 time loser gets a promotion to lead the team as president. What could go wrong?

 

[truthbluth]

That means Kevyn is the GM's boss. What changes? Who wants to have the POHO telling you what trades to make?

A 5 time loser gets a promotion to lead the team as president. What could go wrong?

I would hope that’s not what happens.

I should be clear, I think Terry is a bigger problem than Kevyn.