The Sabres GM and Front Office Thread, Eric Staal hired as Special Asst. to the GM; Jarmo Kekäläinen hired as Senior Advisor | Page 22 | HFBoards - NHL Message Board and Forum for National Hockey League

The Sabres GM and Front Office Thread, Eric Staal hired as Special Asst. to the GM; Jarmo Kekäläinen hired as Senior Advisor

Who Will Be The Next Sabres GM ?

  • Adams cont...

    Votes: 30 50.8%
  • Jason Karmanos

    Votes: 13 22.0%
  • Jarmo Kekäläinen

    Votes: 9 15.3%
  • Other (Vote and Put in Post)

    Votes: 7 11.9%

  • Total voters
    59
  • Poll closed .
she's the boss. if he stays or goes, it's up to her (per Alex).

Yep, which is why I think he is gone.

I mean, for the most part, the idea of moving is so distressing for most young families (having to change childcare, etc), its nearly a slam dunk to get players to re-up, even at a discounted rate.

Imagine the PR nightmare if the Sabres can't re-sign Tuch.

The key piece of the Eichel trade, a kid who grew up a Sabres fan, playing for the coach of his childhood team, would rather uproot his family and play somewhere else than get paid top of market here.

Yes its a family decision....but boy that would be a bad look for team. But...they are keeping on a failed GM whose plan for success next year is your newly acquired top line center, who has missed 134 games in the last 3 years, to be healthy and productive the whole season.
 
I think there is a lot of hopium fueling the push back against this report from ATW.

People don't want this to be true, so they are grasping for any kind of hope that they can. Even if all the data we have to date points to Adams being back as GM again.
I agree but I think it’s a totally reasonable and understandable reaction. Denial comes before anger, after all.

But seriously, it would seem absolutely wild and unbelievable if we didn’t know the history and precedents
 
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I mean, for the most part, the idea of moving is so distressing for most young families (having to change childcare, etc), its nearly a slam dunk to get players to re-up, even at a discounted rate.

Imagine the PR nightmare if the Sabres can't re-sign Tuch.

The key piece of the Eichel trade, a kid who grew up a Sabres fan, playing for the coach of his childhood team, would rather uproot his family and play somewhere else than get paid top of market here.

Yes its a family decision....but boy that would be a bad look for team. But...they are keeping on a failed GM whose plan for success next year is your newly acquired top line center, who has missed 134 games in the last 3 years, to be healthy and productive the whole season.
On the other hand, who gives a shit about any of it if Adams gets to run the team after failing for so long. The standards are EEE and that’s it.

Get used to only having players with no self respect and no other options. I can’t wait for Friedmann to drop hints about Dahlin wanting out next December.
 
I think there is a lot of hopium fueling the push back against this report from ATW.

People don't want this to be true, so they are grasping for any kind of hope that they can. Even if all the data we have to date points to Adams being back as GM again.
Not to be obtuse, but of course this is hope … Is there anyone here who actually wants the GM to stay the same?

Not to beat a dead horse, but the issue here is that one source has put that out and the only thing they’ve ever reported correctly is the trade of eichel where one of the people involved in the trades Tuch family member lived with one of the hosts (Peters).

In 2025 you have to be careful when a single source says something is a fact without any confirmation for anything… If something is true immediately afterward, most of the time there are multiple confirmatory tweets from different sources locally and nationally that confirm the statement. The fact that has not happened yet besides the radio station, which is horrible, just repeating what the one post said, doesn’t really mean the typical confirmation of a story.

Not trying to be difficult here, but typically, even when Chad post something I wouldn’t trust it until another person confirmed it regarding a trade or else wise. Look what happened with the Norris trade… Multiple people confirmed the initial suspicion after it happened… That just hasn’t happened in this case so it’s sort of raises an eyebrow doesn’t it?

In any case, can you blame someone for hoping that the organization doesn’t just prove once again that they don’t care about winning by not changing anything? I think in this case there is still just a glimmer of hope that no one else has confirmed it.
 
The most important lesson from this season is to never trust a thing Marek or Friedman have to say about the Sabres. They don’t know shit. They said if they missed the playoffs everyone there knew massive changes were coming. They finished worse two and a half weeks ago and Adams’ stupid f***ing face was there to watch the lottery

Anything else to learn should have been clear years ago to anyone but the biggest homer apologist in the world.
 
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I think there is a lot of hopium fueling the push back against this report from ATW.

People don't want this to be true, so they are grasping for any kind of hope that they can. Even if all the data we have to date points to Adams being back as GM again.
Hopium is different than being skeptical of unsubstantiated reporting. ATW isn't what I'd call a reliable news source with a long track record.

I think its pretty damning that the same morning TBN's former Sabres beat reporter posted about someone actually being let go— and yet no one from a real news station had been able to substantiate it yet?

ATW may, and will likely be, right, but it's because they're just guessing the most likely answer at this point. If this was real news based on real data (as of right now, many hours after the tweet), don't you think Harrington would be all over it?

It's 2025— it's not wrong to be skeptical about "news" when it's on Twitter and no one else is covering it.
 
They aren’t the first to report it, and it makes sense so I have no reason to question it. I’m assuming Sammy is in that group too, even if they don’t mention him.
The Byram-Mitts trade was a test and lots of people failed it. Trading a piece who fits in an area of need for a theoretical better piece who any sane person could see was simply not a fit for this roster was not a "win" for Adams. It was the single best example that he has no idea on how to construct a roster.
 
The Byram-Mitts trade was a test and lots of people failed it. Trading a piece who fits in an area of need for a theoretical better piece who any sane person could see was simply not a fit for this roster was not a "win" for Adams. It was the single best example that he has no idea on how to construct a roster.
That’s something you do at the beginning of a rebuild, not the end. Adams acts like it’s a permanent rebuild.
 
If any other team and fanbase traded Mitts for Byram straight up they're laughing their asses off at what a tremendous lopsided win it was for the team acquiring Byram. And I like Mitts, he's just never going to get there. 40pts as a 26yo top six center doesn't get it done. Building a hockey team is a process and you build a hockey team by accumulating the best players you can against the cap. We have forwards and we need defensemen and a goalie.
 
The big knock on Byram at acquisition was that he was an injury risk and possibly his head wasn't all the way in the game. He responded to that by playing all 82 games and being within two points of the top six forward we traded to get him.
 
GMKA is a victim of Pegula, at least in part. Tell me how Terry has opened the vault for signings or contracts laden with July 1 bonus money or front-loaded. I'm sure it's GMKA who refuses to retain salaries at the deadline to pick up more picks. It was GMKA's choice alone to hire Ruff because the Devils were paying half his contract. It was GMKA's choice to not have any new assistants for Ruff.

Sure give Kevyn a whack for standing up at mic and basically lying on behalf of Terry but if it wasn't Adams Pegula hires some other lacky.
 
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If any other team and fanbase traded Mitts for Byram straight up they're laughing their asses off at what a tremendous lopsided win it was for the team acquiring Byram. And I like Mitts, he's just never going to get there. 40pts as a 26yo top six center doesn't get it done. Building a hockey team is a process and you build a hockey team by accumulating the best players you can against the cap. We have forwards and we need defensemen and a goalie.
Grabbing pieces with no thought given to fit is how you end up a catastrophic failure. It's why Adams is one of the worst GM's in the history of pro sports.
 
If any other team and fanbase traded Mitts for Byram straight up they're laughing their asses off at what a tremendous lopsided win it was for the team acquiring Byram. And I like Mitts, he's just never going to get there. 40pts as a 26yo top six center doesn't get it done. Building a hockey team is a process and you build a hockey team by accumulating the best players you can against the cap. We have forwards and we need defensemen and a goalie.
And what has Buffalo done with Bryam? Byram looks awful out there and Adams does nothing to create any sort of cohesive defensive unit.

Adams gets to keep his job. What kind of message does that send to the guys on the ice? LOSING IS ACCEPTABLE.
 
Grabbing pieces with no thought given to fit is how you end up a catastrophic failure. It's why Adams is one of the worst GM's in the history of pro sports.
He grabbed one piece without overreacting about fit. A 22yo Cup winning puck moving defenseman who was still cheap, those kind of players don't get made available often if ever and the price was a roster player who was going to be too expensive to sign anyway, so practically free. You're making it seem like the trade cost us dearly when it cost us practically nothing, to acquire a very valuable cost-controlled asset.

It's not as though we're the only team with 3 left-handed PMD's on the roster. Half the teams in the league do the same thing and don't get taken around the block over it. Dallas has Heiskanen, Lindell and Harley all shooting left. Colorado has Makar, Toews and Girard all shooting left. I think the point you're trying to make is that Mitts should have been dealt for something we needed more, and who's to say that we didn't try to do exactly that and such a deal wasn't made available? If we went ahead with a worse "fit" deal anyway, the knock would be "Mitts got traded for garbage and Bo Byram was available for a song and plays for another team now". We added several players in the offseaon that are fit guys, and Ryan McLeod worked out extremely well in that regard. We'll do it again this offseason...it's a process.
 
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The point I'm making is that even if the player we traded for doesn't fit right now, the roster or the player can be adjusted so that it does down the road (flip someone to right side, trade Byram, trade someone else for someone else, etc). It's not that I don't see that three elite LH PMD on one team isn't ideal. It's that you make the deals that are available to you at the time, and then you work on additional deals as time goes on. There's absolutely no way to build a Cup contender all at once.
 
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The big knock on Byram at acquisition was that he was an injury risk and possibly his head wasn't all the way in the game. He responded to that by playing all 82 games and being within two points of the top six forward we traded to get him.
And Byram didn't add anything that was missing from the D-corps, and he traded away the wrong C in the process. At least he traded Cozens later, but the point is that the C position was nowhere near good enough to be dropping one...let alone the wrong one...let alone for a redundant D-man. It was a case study in "what a GM does when he doesn't know his roster, or what he's doing at all".
 
The point I'm making is that even if the player we traded for doesn't fit right now, the roster or the player can be adjusted so that it does down the road (flip someone to right side, trade Byram, trade someone else for someone else, etc). It's not that I don't see that three elite LH PMD on one team isn't ideal. It's that you make the deals that are available to you at the time, and then you work on additional deals as time goes on. There's absolutely no way to build a Cup contender all at once.
KA isn't playing 3D chess, with well thought out follow-up moves. Not at all. Look at the Cozens trade, KA himself said it was just a shake up move. A flawed C for another flawed C, no great future plan, just hope that one will end up better/healthier and that change for the sake of change might improve something. Hope is a shitty strategy.
 
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