Who stays and who goes if the Sabres are forced to blow it up?

As the famous adage goes, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” It directly applies to how Buffalo Sabres GM Kevyn Adams approached this season. After yet another poor start (1-3-0 as of Thursday morning), the Sabres are once again the center of attention across the NHL for all the wrong reasons.

The Sabres are not identical to last spring, as Adams did make a (forced) trade with the Utah Mammoth by shipping disgruntled forward JJ Peterka out to Salt Lake City in return for forward Josh Doan and right-shot defenseman Michael Kesselring (who has yet to play a game due to injury), but this is otherwise still largely the same group that limped to the finish line of the 2024-25 season. 

Why was Adams expecting a different-looking team from a roster very similar to those of years past that have delivered perpetually disappointing results?

Speaking with a GM who had trade talks with Adams last season, the sense is the Sabres GM is gun shy when making deals. This is probably justified on Adams’ part, as almost every significant trade he has made since taking over the big chair in 2020 has ultimately blown up in his face. Most recently, the Dylan Cozens trade to the Ottawa Senators last season for injury-prone center Josh Norris has been an unmitigated disaster.

Speaking with one league executive whose team had trade talks with Ottawa last season, I was told that Senators GM Steve Staios was relentless in his pursuit to move Norris (with teams other than the Sabres) and ultimately “wore down” Adams into making the move leading up to the NHL Trade Deadline. Norris has not fared any better in Buffalo as far as his availability goes, as Norris is already on the shelf long term to start the season. 

Was it all Adams’ fault? Perhaps not, as a behind the scenes video (which Jeff Marek aired on The Sheet earlier this week) showed Adams getting the blessing from the club’s medical director, Les Bisson, who expressed no concerns in Norris’ injury history before the trade was finalized. 

Speaking with an Eastern Conference executive, Adams has not had the proper insulation in his staff to support him as a first-time GM; in the Sabres’ case, Adams is effectively the president of hockey operations, as well, with no filter between him and Pegula ownership

If you look around the NHL, first-time GMs often have heavy support from seasoned executives around them. Philadelphia Flyers GM Daniel Briere and Calgary Flames GM Craig Conroy are good examples, with the former having Dean Lombardi and Bob Murray as senior advisors to lean on, while the latter works under POH Don Maloney and has Dave Nonis as an assistant GM – all four of which are former GMs. 

None of the Sabres’ three assistant GMs (though Jason Karmanos is listed as “associate” GM) has extensive front-office experience in elevated roles. They have made additions to the front office the last few months, hiring Eric Staal as Adams’ special assistant and former Columbus Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen as senior advisor. In the case of Kekalainen, it is no secret he is the obvious choice as Adams’ successor – even if just in an interim capacity – if the hammer does drop.

Chuck Fletcher, a former GM with the Flyers and Minnesota Wild, serves as senior advisor to New Jersey Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald and was indicated to me as the type of seasoned executive that Adams could’ve used at his side over the last five years. I had wondered about Fletcher as a fit with the Sabres going forward, but conversations I’ve had with those with knowledge of the situation suggest that isn’t (and won’t be) a fit. 

So what comes next in Buffalo? Another fire sale of assets? 

Though I have only heard this through the grapevines, I don’t get the sense that any major move will be made while Adams is still GM. Given his ugly track record on the trade front, I can’t imagine ownership will allow him to make any further moves – especially if Adams is not long for Buffalo. Furthermore, it was well documented last season that Adams was in the market for “hockey trades” (like the Cozens/Norris swap) rather than unloading assets for futures like he did with Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart. 

While not a certainty, a regime change would (presumably) usher in a rebuild of sorts. The Sabres have a lot of talented pieces, but the sum of their parts has proven to not be good enough. As I mentioned earlier, going back to the well repeatedly in hopes of a different outcome has not worked for the Sabres. They have averaged a new head coach every two years going back a decade; it’s now time to address the roster’s nucleus, especially if there are new eyes overseeing things. 

The Sabres’ forwards are talented but lack diversity and are highly redundant. Their lack of depth down the middle since the Cozens trade is glaring, especially with Tage Thompson spending a lot of time on right wing going back to last season. They have talented young wingers, but most are undersized and cut from the same cloth. The Sabres have largely drafted small forwards and now have a group up front that lacks size and physicality. Speaking with a GM who has engaged with Buffalo over the past year in trade talks, Adams is always looking to add size after years of neglecting to address it in the draft. 

With the exception of Thompson and Alex Tuch (a 29 year old, pending UFA), there aren’t many pieces up front that could fetch a major return. They have talented young forwards in Zach Benson, Jiri Kulich and Jack Quinn, but there is a lot of “potential” rather than proven commodities that teams will line up to take runs at acquiring. 

The defense is a completely different story, as the Sabres have three pieces that would garner loads of interest on the trade front: Bowen Byram, captain Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power. All three are 25 years of age or younger with power-play capabilities. Even more so than the forward group, there is a healthy amount of redundancy with all three Sabres rearguards as left shooters whose skill sets should see them deployed similarly. 

I have spoken about Byram recently, specifically relating to the Flyers. As I mentioned on Tuesday, Byram is viewed as a second-pair defenseman with the potential to go higher. His play has dipped since coming over from the Colorado Avalanche, though whose play excels when arriving in Buffalo? If the Sabres are holding out hope in fetching a top-pair type of return for Byram, they won’t have much success.

Byram, unlike Dahlin and Power, does not have a long-term contract; he is signed for just two years at a $6.25-million AAV and will be walked to unrestricted free agency in 2027. It has been said to me that Byram’s camp had overvalued the player on a longer-term contract, which is why a bridge deal was ultimately signed this past summer. If that is still the case, getting him locked in on an extension ahead of him hitting the open market may prove difficult for any team. 

Power, the 2021 first-overall pick, is a fascinating case. Once viewed as a puck-moving, offensive defenseman, has been buried on the Buffalo depth chart while sometimes playing out of position on the right side and being deployed questionably given his skill set. Speaking with two Eastern Conference executives, Power has been described as “very soft” for his size (6’6″, 226 lbs, per Hockey DB) and lacks compete. All that being said, several executives still think the talent is there. 

Speaking with an amateur scout, Power’s biggest quality is and was his ability to join the rush. The lack of plan and structure in Buffalo has been “killing his upside and confidence.” Though this particular scout would take Power on his team “10 out of 10 times,” the Sabres are diminishing the player’s value by continuing to hang onto him, in the scout’s opinion.

Power is cost controlled until 2031 at an AAV of $8.35 million and is in season two of the seven-year extension he signed two years ago. I don’t think any contending team would view Power with No. 1 defenseman upside, but if you think he can be an elite-level second-pair rearguard, it may be a bargain at that dollar value with the salary cap set to skyrocket in the coming years. 

Then we get to Dahlin, who has been described to be as a top-five-to-eight defenseman in the NHL. Dahlin is an elite player across the board; netting an appropriate value for him is close to impossible. But if the Sabres are to embark on any kind of rebuild, retool or reset, are you going to expect the soon to be 26-year-old to hang around for it? 

Dahlin signed a massive contract extension until 2032 with an AAV of $11 million, locked and loaded with a full no-movement clause. Any trade will run directly through the 2018 No. 1 overall pick, and he would have no shortage of teams lining up to throw lucrative packages the Sabres’ way. I can’t see how any new manager would “want” to move off of Dahlin, but can we really expect the player to go down a rebuilding road again? He has already come off heavily disgruntled to start the season; I can’t imagine how his aura will be if the Sabres elect to rebuild or retool yet again. 

As for the return, one can only imagine it would be a king’s ransom. It is tough to find a comparable move, as it isn’t every day that elite-level defensemen become available on the trade front, but one would assume that it would be for a collection of top-tier assets. If Dahlin were to become available, a bidding war of sorts presumably would take place.

There are no imminent trade talks surrounding any of the aforementioned defensemen, but these are questions that need to be asked if the Sabres do in fact go through a death spiral again this season. They have some quality pieces on their roster, but if they are not working as a collective unit for yet another season, a pivot in a new direction will need to be considered. And I can’t imagine Adams will be the one spearheading any kind of monumental shift in the club’s direction barring a drastic turnaround in the coming weeks.

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