Will the Buffalo Sabres ever fix what's broken?

[Prairie Habs]

Sabres haven't made the playoffs since 2011. That same summer they drafted finish mario Lemieux (Joel armia), but traded him having only played one single game for the Sabres. Montreal might be willing to trade him back and lift the curse if Buffalo offered up a suitable return...

 

[ponder719]

No team can be bad forever.

I have to keep telling myself that, while we run out the slop the Flyers have been serving up, so I can't be hypocritical about it.

 

[Ace]

Not as long as Terry Pegula owns it.

Period. End of discussion.

 

[Pablo El Perro]

People have memories like humming birds. The Panthers have always been good.

They turned it around with a new owner

 

[Steddy33]

Problem number 1 is Terry Pegula. Until he sells or steps aside allowing competent managers to take over, nothing will change.

Kevyn Adams is his personal bitch and would've been fired awhile ago by any competent team.

 

[Chainshot]

Not while Pegula owns the team, no.

 

[chi777]

Not until the owner lets real hockey people run the team. As of now, Pegula is treating the team as his retirement toy. Some guys take up golf or get into wood working, but Pegula chose being GM of a NHL team.

And he's terrible at it.

 

[LokiDog]

As an outsider who really likes them, it has to be a combination of owner and GM at this point. The owner is brutal. Period. Everyone knows it. Adams seems pretty poor. He has held on to more young, smallish, softish talent than he could ever fit on an active roster, even if he didn’t give any spots to vets or players cut from different moulds, and there simultaneously isn’t enough space for them all to get opportunities (and as they get a year older and a year older, their value begins to diminish) but also aren’t enough quality vets to actually guide and grow the young players they’ve stock piled. Their approach to roster building has been too passive. They haven’t made many “hard” choices. Can you have Cozens and Peterka and Quinn and Benson and Kulich and Rosen all on the roster? Along with Tage and Tuch? I feel like that’s 8 players who are really top-six or bust with Tuch being the only real veteran and very little size or bite or grit. It’s meant to be a rhetorical question. About 4 of them have to go, with two forwards that bring some diversity to the top six coming back and some genuine quality in the bottom six coming in. And they still have Ostlund and Helenius and Wahlberg and probably more I’m forgetting. You can’t have them all in the lineup. They’re all kids. It doesn’t matter how long you’re patient with some of them in the minors. They’re still all young, all mostly smallish, all mostly non-physical… it just isn’t going to ever work… so start identifying building block players and start making some aggressive moves to acquire the types of players you don’t have, who can guide the kids you do choose to keep.

 

[Deep Blue Metallic]

Posting in this legendary thread before I put it on ignore.

 

[CapsJunkie]

they have a really good team, i feel like they are just pieces away from putting it all together

 

[WarriorofTime]

Nobody allocates more cap to defense than Buffalo and yet they are 27th in goals against, they don’t have any real RHD of note and none of their defensemen are top four on the team in scoring.

 

[Frolov 6'3]

I love perennial bottom feeders. Just love it.

 

[BullyHockey]

It's a culture problem, and it starts at the top.

 

[cowboy82nd]

Dunno. Ask the Florida Panthers. One minute they were hot garbage in a perpetual rebuild for 15 years, the next, they made a trade or two, and made the finals and won the cup. Things can change on a dime if the right moves are made. They've always had the foundation, just missing a few things to put it all together.

I think the new ownership in Florida helped a lot. And I think Buffalo needs the same thing (new ownership).

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

It's tough to build a competitive team. You really need that franchise 1C. They got it and it was Eichel and thought it was better to jack him around and then trade him. Dahlin and Power are great but 1C is still a need.

It will tough to get one with where they are at unfortunately. Can't rebuild but can't get the high draft pick.

It's not that tough that it should take you 14 years just to be a playoff team

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

I will say the same thing I have said for AT LEAST a decade.

Until they get a real goaltender, one that is the caliber, NOTHING they do will matter.

And they won't get a real goaltender that is the caliber until they get some credibility in the GM chair.

 

[bringbacktheskate604]

It's tough to build a competitive team. You really need that franchise 1C. They got it and it was Eichel and thought it was better to jack him around and then trade him. Dahlin and Power are great but 1C is still a need.

It will tough to get one with where they are at unfortunately. Can't rebuild but can't get the high draft pick.

As bad as I feel for the sabres, they like a few others only have themselves to blame.

I loathe tanking and in a league with a lottery it's still difficult to snag first overall. Unless a team gets lucky like Vancouver did in 2017-18, and considering true 1c, 1d are not found in every draft I think after two or three drafts max teams should attempt to find them by other avenues otherwise you end up chasing the draft which leads to years of sucking with little improvement.

The sabres could have been done in 2018 if they had kept Jack and Sam and traded their surplus of young prospects to build around them and Dahlin and been aggressive in July.

People can say what they want about Benning but at least he tried to build around Quinn, EP, Demko and Brock via trades and signings and even managed to snag JT but sadly most of his aqasitions failed but he had the right idea.

I would much rather have a GM that sees picks and prospects as currency to be used when an opportunity comes up.
Vegas has always taken that approach and it's served them well. Meanwhile teams like the sabres, Habs and ducks hoard prospects and picks and then when the inevitable happens and when the shine wears off you get nowhere near the return and you got a team full of kids that do nothing but lose
It's true you need a 1c to win but he doesn't have to be young, perhaps if one of those teams were in a better position when an opportunity to aquire an older one comes up a player might be willing to go there.
For example JT miller would have been a massive get for any of those teams

 

[JLewyB]

Honestly. None of our coaches taught our guys how to properly clutch, grab and interfere.

 

[GMR]

At least they still have the Buffalo Bills……….

 

[sabremike]

I really don't think people understand just how batshit crazy making Kevyn Adams was. The guy was a Pegula stooge running a rec rink with zero qualifications for the job, no serious organization would've even given this guy a courtesy interview let alone hired him. This season was the culmination of his idiocy and incompetence in DELIBERATELY building a roster of children and being unable to grasp the concept of roster construction. He gambled on a goalie coming straight out of college and being a legit NHL starter (something that is insanely rare) and predictably lost. But then it must be pointed out that Kevyn isn't the cause of this disaster, he is a symptom. The culprit is Terry Pegula, worst owner in NHL history. Much like Ottawa with U-Gene there is no hope until he is out of the picture.

 

[LPHabsFan]

People have memories like humming birds. The Panthers have always been good.

You're right, they do. Some people aren't able to see what happened prior to Covid. Ya know, the time where they made the playoffs 5 times since their inception, had multiple top picks, always expected to "take the next step", etc.....

I also wasn't trying to take anything away from the Panthers. It's just to show that you can build a good team but what separates the great from the horrible is very often random and out of the teams control. That applies to more than just the Panthers btw. It's everyone.

 

[MoneyManny]

Eventually though it’s getting to a point if it will happen in this life time.

I hope you're really young.

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

Honestly. None of our coaches taught our guys how to properly clutch, grab and interfere.

You're not wrong, importantly the youngest (worst) teams aren't given the latitude to do that either.

 

[bleedgreen]

Wasn't the main reason for the fallout was because a disagreement with the medical treatment and Sabres didn't allow him to get his preferred treatment until the bridge was broken? Reddit has a nice summary of the video:

As a non Sabres fan the Eichel thing had gone wrong years before. Jack had actually asked for a trade prior to the neck thing happening didn’t he? There always seemed to be issues with him. I felt like both sides used the neck thing to finally move on.

 

[MoneyManny]

Nobody allocates more cap to defense than Buffalo and yet they are 27th in goals against, they don’t have any real RHD of note and none of their defensemen are top four on the team in scoring.

That defense also has 2 1st OA picks +Byram, it's kind of insane.