From The.... Didn't See THAT Coming Department....

[HipKat]

Sabres fire general manager Kevyn Adams, replace him with Jarmo Kekalainen​

Sabres fire GM Kevyn Adams, replace him with Jarmo Kekalainen

Kevyn Adams' 5½-year run as general manager of the Buffalo Sabres was filled with franchise-altering trades, and the continuation of an NHL-record playoff drought. The Sabres fired Adams as GM on Monday.

buffalonews.com

Kevyn Adams' 5½-year run as general manager of the Buffalo Sabres was filled with franchise-altering trades, as well as a good deal of indecision.

Through it all, Adams' teams didn't win enough to break the franchise's NHL-record playoff drought, and ownership finally decided a change atop the Sabres' hockey department was necessary.

The Sabres fired Adams as GM on Monday, even as the team pushed its longest winning streak of the season to three games with Sunday's 3-1 win in Seattle. That earned the club a split of a six-game road trip and improved its record to 9-6 over the last 15 games.

Senior adviser Jarmo Kekalainen, the former general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets, was named as Adams' replacement.


Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams: “We have to be team that, at the end of the night, when we’re home, teams will say:
‘That’s a tough building to come into. That was a tough night.’ I think we’ve been too easy to play against, and I’ll take responsibility for that." Derek Gee, Buffalo News

"We are not where we need to be as an organization and we are moving forward with new leadership within our hockey operations department," owner Terry Pegula said in a team statement. "We are dedicated to building an organization that is competitive year after year and we have fallen short of that expectation."

Kekalainen joined the Sabres in May as a senior advisor, a position created in the spring that reported directly to Adams. Kekalainen guided the Blue Jackets to five playoff berths, including a first-round upset of the heavily favored Tampa Bay Lightning in 2019.

"Jarmo has distinguished himself over the last eight months and his experience, professionalism, and drive speaks for itself," Pegula said. "I am looking forward to him leading our organization to the next level."

"It is a great honor to be named general manager of the Buffalo Sabres," Kekalainen said in the same statement. "I would like to extend my thanks to Terry and Kim Pegula for this opportunity. I am humbled to be the steward of this team and look forward to experiencing the passion that Sabres fans bring to every game."

The Sabres are 14-14-4. They are tied with Ottawa for last place in the Atlantic Division and 14th place in the Eastern Conference, and tied with the Senators and Chicago for 23rd place overall in the NHL.

Adams has not spoken with the media since training camp in September. During the Sabres' six-game road trip from Dec. 3-14, the team declined an interview request by The Buffalo News to speak with Adams.

The move to fire Adams capped a tenure that began with promises of a streamlined, efficient front office that would rely more on analytics and a core of young, homegrown players to break the Sabres' postseason drought, which, at the time, was in its 10th season.

Instead, Adams' reign was marked by an inability to retain its best players; a high-profile feud with one star over his medical treatment; an awkward explanation about why the Sabres couldn't bring fresh blood to Western New York; and Adams' willingness to stand pat with a roster that suffered through a 13-game winless streak last season.

After a disappointing 79-point output again left the Sabres out of the playoffs in 2024-25, Adams had a busy offseason reshaping his roster.

He engineered a trade that sent JJ Peterka, one of the Sabres' top young scoring threats, to Utah in June for physical defenseman Michael Kesselring. But Adams smartly held out on making the deal until he also acquired left wing Josh Doan, a young winger with a nose for finding the net.

Adams re-signed defenseman Bowen Byram to a two-year deal and added goaltender Alex Lyon on a two-year free-agent contract, providing depth in net. Lyon became the Sabres’ No. 1 goalie in the first six weeks of the season after two separate lower-body injuries to Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who began the season on injured reserve.

The Sabres added Colten Ellis to the goaltending mix Oct. 6, claiming him off waivers from St. Louis with Luukkonen's status in question. The team then chose to retain three goalies rather than using a tandem – a rarity in the NHL. None of the three found a rhythm in goal through the first 10 weeks.

The team ultimately found itself with a Luukkonen-Lyon tandem once Ellis went on injured reserve Dec. 11 after being removed by a concussion spotter in the first period of a 4-3 overtime win at Edmonton.

The Sabres also entered the season without a new contract for right wing and alternate captain Alex Tuch, who is set to become a free agent. Tuch and his agent, Brian Bartlett, have publicly maintained that contract talks are on the backburner during the season. As the season progressed, locking Tuch into a long-term contract in Buffalo has appeared to diminish as a priority.

Tuch's status and the goaltending issue were just two problems as the Sabres tumbled over the first two months.

In the season opener, center Josh Norris, acquired in a March trade with Ottawa and the Sabres’ projected top-line pivot, suffered an upper-body injury that landed him on injured reserve and out of the lineup for 24 games.

Then came a string of overtime losses in late October and early November, which coincided with injuries to wingers Zach Benson and Jason Zucker. Center Jiri Kulich missed time in early November because of blood clot issues that have knocked him out of the lineup for months, and captain Rasmus Dahlin had to take a three-game leave of absence to be with his fiancée, Carolina Matovac, who underwent a heart transplant over the summer.

From Oct. 25-Nov. 13, the Sabres fell into a 1-4-4 slump.

Early-season slumps were a pattern in Adams’ term as general manager. The Sabres lost eight in a row in November 2022, and two years later, the team endured a winless stretch of 13 games in November and December 2024.

In Adams' term as general manager, which began in June 2020, the Sabres narrowly missed the playoffs in 2022-23 with 91 points, but regressed to 84 points in 2023-24 and 79 points in Lindy Ruff's return as coach last season.

Adams, a Clarence native, had no experience in a high-ranking hockey operations role before he was promoted to general manager. His playing career as a center spanned 607 games (67 in the playoffs) across 10 seasons with Toronto, Florida, Columbus, Carolina, Phoenix and Chicago.

Adams was an alternate captain for the Hurricanes when they beat the Sabres in the 2006 Eastern Conference final and won the Stanley Cup. He retired in 2008.

The Sabres hired Adams as a development coach in 2009, and he became an assistant coach under Ruff in 2011. The coaching staff was fired in 2013, but he quickly received another job offer from the Pegulas. They wanted him to run hockey programming at LECOM Harborcenter, the $175 million mixed-use facility across the street from KeyBank Center that opened in 2014.

Adams was promoted to general manager of the complex in January 2019, and he joined the Sabres one year later as vice president of business administration. He was also named their alternate governor, which allowed him to attend league meetings, and his influenced expanded quickly.

The Pegulas tasked Adams with evaluating the spending and efficiency of the hockey operations department, which had been led by general manager Jason Botterill since May 2017. No one on Botterill’s staff thought anything of Adams’ new role until he joined the team on a Western road trip from Feb. 26-March 3, 2020. He dined with then-coach Ralph Krueger and, though Adams said later those conversations revolved around business, it seemed to lay the foundation for a new management team, which Terry Pegula later said would be the “answer” to snapping the playoff drought.

The Covid-19 pandemic forced the NHL to suspended the season indefinitely on March 12, and two months later, Kim Pegula gave Botterill a vote of confidence during an interview with the Associated Press.

Then the Sabres fired Botterill the morning of June 18, 2020 – the first of 22 staff members let go that day by the Sabres, including 21 that Adams fired in his first act as general manager.

Following Pegula's directive to become a more “effective, efficient and economic” department, the Sabres relied on analytics and video to scout for a 2021 draft in which they owned 11 picks. Adams traded Sam Reinhart and Rasmus Ristolainen, then began a months-long dispute with Jack Eichel over his preference to have artificial disk replacement. The debate ended in November 2021 with Eichel's trade to the Vegas Golden Knights.

Tuch’s arrival gave the Sabres another building block, and the top prospect acquired in the trade, Peyton Krebs, spent only 16 games in Rochester before he joined the NHL roster. That began the organization’s trend of rushing players to the NHL, rather than allowing them to develop in the AHL, away from the rebuild.

Adams fired Krueger amid a franchise-record winless streak that stretched to 18 games during the 2021 shortened season and replaced him with Don Granato on an interim basis. Granato was named the full-time coach in June 2021, and stayed in the role until he was fired following the 2023-24 season and replaced by Ruff.

Adams’ vision for the Rochester Americans transformed the Sabres’ AHL affiliate into an effective development ground for their top prospects, and Rochester’s coach, Seth Appert, led the club to the playoffs in three consecutive seasons before he was promoted to the NHL staff. The Amerks reached the Eastern Conference final in 2023, and first-year coach Michael Leone led them to Game 5 of the North Division final in 2025.

The organization's high draft picks flourished in Rochester, including the departed Peterka, as well as current Sabres Jack Quinn, Jiri Kulich, Isak Rosen and Noah Ostlund.

But the Sabres didn’t have the same success in pro scouting, and Adams' moves at the trade deadline have often been underwhelming.

He also suffered a handful of public relations gaffes.

In December 2024, discussing why he thought Buffalo is not a desirable trade destination for NHL players, Adams uttered this infamous line: "We don’t have palm trees. We have taxes in New York."

Adams' comment is now part of an underachieving, unproductive legacy.

 

[sukie]

He looks like Sean Delevan sitting there

 

[HipKat]

5 things to know about Buffalo Sabres general manager Jarmo Kekalainen​

https://buffalonews.com/sports/professional/nhl/sabres/article_c9f1427c-ea78-4154-922b-70c92aa10b14.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

Jarmo Kekalainen joined the Buffalo Sabres in May as the senior adviser to general manager Kevyn Adams.

A little more than six months later, the former Columbus Blue Jackets general manager is now in charge of a turnaround for the Buffalo Sabres, who haven't made the playoffs since 2011 and have opened the season 14-14-4. The Sabres named Kekalainen as general manager after firing Adams on Monday after more than five seasons as general manager.


Sabres senior advisor Jarmo Kekäläinen looks on during their development camp at LECOM Harborcenter on June 30.
Joed Viera/Buffalo News

The Sabres host the Philadelphia Flyers at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at KeyBank Center, which will be Kekalainen's first game in his new role with the Sabres.

Here are five things to know about Kekalainen:

1. Leveling up​

Through it all, Adams' teams didn't win enough to break the franchise's NHL-record playoff drought, and ownership finally decided a change atop the Sabres' hockey department was necessary.

The Sabres fired Adams as GM on Monday.

Kekalainen has seen every level of the professional game as an administrator, whether it’s as a scout, a player personnel director or as a general manager.

He first served as director of player personnel with the Ottawa Senators, then as an NHL scouting director with the St. Louis Blues. He later became general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets from 2013-24, becoming the NHL's first European-born general manager. The Sabres originally hired Kekalainen on May 30 as a senior adviser to Adams.

2. From Finland to Potsdam​

Kekalainen is a native of Kuopio, Finland, and played two seasons of college hockey at Clarkson University in Potsdam from 1987-89. He was a left wing who scored 26 goals with 36 assists at Clarkson, then played in the NHL and AHL from 1989-94, including stints with the Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators (55 games, five goals, eight assists). Kekalainen earned a bachelor of science in business administration and management from Clarkson, and holds a master’s degree in marketing from the University of Tampere.

3. The big fish​

Kekalainen was general manager of the Blue Jackets for nearly 11 seasons, and his biggest splash – or, as some would argue, a coup – came when Kekalainen and the Blue Jackets signed the late Johnny Gaudreau as a free agent in July 2022. Many expected the then-Calgary Flames star, who is from New Jersey, to go to an East Coast team.

4. Playing the cards right​

Kekalainen made the biggest gamble in his tenure with the Blue Jackets in 2019, when he wheeled and dealed at the trade deadline, with a singular goal: Put the Blue Jackets in position to make a playoff run. Columbus kept goalie Sergei Bobrovsky and winger Artemi Panarin, who were set to become free agents that summer. He traded for center Matt Duchene, left wing Ryan Dzingel, defenseman Adam McQuaid and goaltender Keith Kinkaid for seven draft picks, including four first- or second-rounders. The Blue Jackets swept the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the 2019 playoffs, but lost to the Boston Bruins 4-2 in the second round; St. Louis defeated the Bruins to win the Stanley Cup that year.

5. The next big project​

Kekalainen’s first task with the Sabres is to stabilize, in the short-term, an organization that has floundered and hasn’t made the playoffs since 2011. He also has to instill a culture in the organization, from its front office to its operations, and a set of standards for a team that is currently at .500, tied for seventh in the Atlantic Division with Ottawa, each at 32 points, tied with Ottawa and Columbus for 14th in the Eastern Conference and tied with Ottawa, Chicago and Columbus for 23rd in the NHL, as of Monday afternoon.

The Sabres are 5-9-2 on the road, and are coming off a six-game road trip in which they went 3-3, and have struggled to create offensive chances and fight to win faceoffs.

 

[HipKat]

In replacing Kevyn Adams as Sabres GM, Jarmo Kekäläinen has a heavy lift ahead​

In replacing Kevyn Adams as Sabres GM, Jarmo Kekäläinen has a heavy lift ahead

Kekäläinen’s to-do list will be lengthy as he takes over for Adams as Buffalo's general manager.

www.nytimes.com

The Sabres named Jarmo Kekäläinen as GM on Monday after firing Kevyn Adams. Bruce Bennett / Getty Images

The Buffalo Sabres made an overdue move at general manager on Monday, firing Kevyn Adams and replacing him with Jarmo Kekäläinen.

Adams’ continued employment was becoming a weight on the organization, both in the locker room and on the business side. In particular, the manner in which Adams got the job made it tough for him to win over a skeptical fan base amid the Sabres’ general lack of success over the last five and a half years.

This wasn’t about a single whiffed trade or even last year’s infamous “palm trees and taxes” news conference. This was a general manager who became increasingly closed off, inside and outside the building, as the team began to face heightened pressure to compete. He failed to act proactively in the face of obvious issues with the roster in recent seasons, and the Sabres’ playoff drought extended to an NHL-record 14 seasons under his watch.

In the news release announcing the general manager change, Sabres owner Terry Pegula said, “We are dedicated to building an organization that is competitive year after year, and we have fallen short of that expectation.”

That’s a much lower bar than the one Pegula set when he first bought the team, stating the team’s sole reason for existence would be to win the Stanley Cup. But the Sabres have to start somewhere, and respectability is a reasonable goal.

Enter Kekäläinen.

Given Pegula’s track record with hockey decisions, there will be some skepticism about the Sabres not conducting an exhaustive search before naming Kekäläinen the general manager. But this is different than when Adams was hired without any significant experience in hockey operations. Kekäläinen spent 11-plus years as general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets and before that held high-ranking positions with the Ottawa Senators and St. Louis Blues. His track record as Blue Jackets general manager wasn’t perfect, but his resume is lengthy, his reputation around the league is strong and he’s made an impression on the organization in the seven months since the Sabres hired him as a senior adviser.

That search for a senior adviser was a legitimate one. Of course, the pool of candidates willing to take a senior adviser job is smaller than the one the Sabres would have had if they chose to fire Adams and do a general manager search in the spring. That said, the pool is typically filled with people who have held a general manager job in the past. That seemed important to Pegula in his next general manager, especially considering he’s never hired a general manager with previous experience in the role.

Now we’ll see if that experience helps Kekäläinen do what’s necessary to get the Sabres back to the playoffs. During his tenure as general manager in Columbus, Kekäläinen developed a reputation as a bold decision-maker who was willing to make aggressive trades to reshape his team’s roster. The Sabres don’t have time for Kekäläinen to stray from that reputation as he takes the keys to Buffalo’s hockey operations department. Part of why this move makes sense now is because roster building in the NHL is a year-round endeavor. Decisions Kekäläinen makes in the weeks and months to come could affect the Sabres for years. And this roster isn’t far off from being playoff-ready with the right moves.

But Kekäläinen’s to-do list will be lengthy.

1. He needs to figure out the Alex Tuch situation. A lot of what the Sabres do next depends on Tuch’s willingness to stick around and sign an extension. Tuch’s contract likely would have been cheaper in the summer, but the market has gone up in the months since the season started. If he’s not willing to stay, it’s on Kekalainen to find the best possible trade package for Tuch. Given his popularity in the community, his leadership in the locker room and his effectiveness on the ice, the preference should be to get him under contract at the most reasonable deal possible. But he’s too strong an asset to let him walk away for nothing.


Sabres forward Alex Tuch is a pending unrestricted free agent.David Kirouac / Imagn Images

2. Downstream from the Tuch decision is Kekäläinen’s ability to convince the team’s best players, particularly Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin, that he’s going to be able to turn things around. I don’t have reason to believe Thompson and Dahlin will be a tough sell in that regard. But those two won’t have much tolerance for another rebuild. Once Kekäläinen wins over the players in the room, he can focus on selling the rest of the league on this situation.

3. Kekäläinen also needs to handle Buffalo’s restricted free agents. Tuch isn’t the only one who needs a new contract. Zach Benson, Josh Doan, Michael Kesselring, Peyton Krebs and Isak Rosen are all restricted free agents after the season. Beck Malenstyn is an unrestricted free agent. Kesselring has been injured, so waiting on his deal makes sense. But Benson and Doan look like key pieces to Buffalo’s on-ice future. Doan has enjoyed a breakout season in his first year with the Sabres, and his price tag could be going up with each game played. The same could be said for Benson, especially now that he’s worked his way through some early-season injury trouble. When it comes to figuring out the cap picture for next season and beyond, those two deals will be a big piece of the puzzle.

3. Adams got the Sabres into a three-goalie pickle early this season and never found a resolution to the situation. With Colten Ellis on injured reserve, the Sabres have a temporary break from the ordeal, but that’s not a permanent solution. It’s on Kekäläinen to loosen that logjam. It’s not just that having three goalies is taking away a roster spot; the Sabres also have four goalies under contract for next season when you factor in Devon Levi. At some point, the team needs to make a decision on who the two goalies will be next season and move forward. Kekäläinen doesn’t have the same ties to these players that Adams did, so that should help him assess the situation with a clearer head.

4. The top three items on this to-do list are more immediate in nature, but Kekäläinen should also put his stamp on the organization in the weeks and months to come. Will the Sabres end up with a new coach behind the bench and some other new faces in the front office? Which players fit Kekäläinen’s vision and which need to be swapped out for other pieces?

A big piece of what has ailed the Sabres in recent seasons is that the sum has never been greater than the talented parts on the roster. One way to fix that is by identifying the underperforming players and finding a way to make strong hockey trades to change the mix in the locker room. Another is to make sure the right leadership is in place at all levels of the organization to get players consistently developing and performing to their potential. Adams’ long and close relationship with Pegula made it hard to envision him effectively managing up and pushing Pegula to do what was necessary. Kekäläinen’s outside perspective and firm demeanor should make him better at that part of the job.

Ultimately, the rest of this doesn’t matter without that last piece of the equation. Firing Adams was the easiest and most obvious change Pegula could make. But pretending that the last five and a half years were simply an Adams problem would be a mistake. The playoff drought has lasted the entirety of Pegula’s ownership and pre-dated Adams by nine seasons.

Kekäläinen seems equipped for the role. But he needs to be ready for a heavy lift.

 

[HipKat]

Isn't this what they ALL say? How about the goal to become consistent? The goal is to get to the playoffs?

New Sabres GM Jarmo Kekalainen: ‘The plan is going to be to win the Stanley Cup’​

New Sabres GM Jarmo Kekalainen: ‘The plan is going to be to win the Stanley Cup’

New Buffalo Sabres general manager Jarmo Kekalainen outlines his plan on the first day on the job.

buffalonews.com

Jarmo Kekalainen watches Sabres development camp on June 30 at LECOM Harborcenter. The Sabres' first game with Kekalainen as their new general manager
is Thursday night at KeyBank Center against the Flyers. Joed Viera, Buffalo News

Jarmo Kekalainen wasted no time outlining his vision and his expectations for the Buffalo Sabres one day into his new job as general manager.

“We’re not just here to make the playoffs,” Kekalainen said Tuesday morning at KeyBank Center. “We’re here to try to build a championship team.”
A day after the Sabres announced Kekalainen as the franchise’s 10th general manager, he set the bar high. Extremely high, given that the Sabres haven’t made the NHL playoffs since the spring of 2011.


Jarmo Kekalainen is introduced as the new general manager of the Buffalo Sabres during a press conference at KeyBank Center on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025.
Derek Gee/Buffalo News

Kekalainen disregarded the past. He immediately focused on the goal of crafting a winner in Buffalo. He’s done it before as an NHL general manager for the Columbus Blue Jackets from 2013 to 2024. He wants to do it again with the Sabres.

Kekalainen has been with the Sabres since the end of May as a senior advisor to former general manager Kevyn Adams, whom the Sabres fired Monday after 5½ years.

The Blue Jackets were 410-362-97 (.528) in the regular season with Kekalainen as general manager. He guided the Blue Jackets to five playoff berths, including a first-round upset of the heavily favored Tampa Bay Lightning in 2019. Kekalainen also has worked in pro and amateur scouting and in front offices with Ottawa and St. Louis.

Kekalainen put forth his plan on Tuesday to make the Sabres into a winner. Here’s a look at what he will emphasize as general manager:

Playoffs?​

Yes, Kekalainen wants the Sabres to make the playoffs, and not just settle for making the playoffs. This won’t be an easy task for the Sabres, who entered Tuesday at 14-14-4, eighth in the eight-team Atlantic Division with 32 points, tied for 15th in the Eastern Conference with Columbus, and in a four-way tie for 24th in the NHL with Columbus, Chicago and Winnipeg.

First, the attitude has to change.

What he said: “I told the players to forget about the last 14 years, kind of hanging like a cloud, a black cloud around the team, and I’m going to do the same thing. I’m going to do the same thing. We’re not going to sacrifice the ultimate goal for the sake of making the playoffs, and then not having any sustainability for our goal as a team, to take the next step and having the opportunity and chance to compete for the Stanley Cup.

“And we’re going to have a plan. The plan is going to be to win the Stanley Cup, and we’re not going to take any shortcuts trying to make the playoffs and to end the drought.”

Emphasis on character​

Kekalainen discussed the value of character among the ranks, character as a component of talent, and the need for a core leadership group among the team. He didn’t name names when discussing the leadership nucleus, but said he met with the team’s leaders, which presumably includes captain Rasmus Dahlin and alternates Alex Tuch, Tage Thompson and Mattias Samuelsson.

What he said: “There’s a lot of core players, and I’m not going to start naming them. They know who they are. Those are the guys that I met first, before I met with the team. They’re leaders for a reason. They’ve earned that, whether it’s a letter or just the position in that leadership group, and they’re there for a reason, but they’re the important guys that we have to show the example of, as a standard of, for the rest of the guys.”

Everything will be evaluated​

Kekalainen is known for being a precise decision-maker, for digging deep and analyzing, not just to satisfy his own professional curiosity but to see how that corresponds to what’s best for an organization, and for the goal of winning.

When asked if there would be changes in the coaching staff – head coach Lindy Ruff is in the second year of his second stint with the Sabres – Kekalainen offered a blanket statement but no specifics: Everything and everybody is under evaluation at this point, whether it’s the scouting staff, management or coaches.

What he said: “I have a pretty good head start, being here for several months and being very close with the team, basically the whole fall. I have some things in mind that might happen sooner rather than later, and then there's going to be some things that we need to evaluate a little bit longer, and we're going to take all the time we need to make those decisions.”

Coffee and doing deals​

Among some of Kekalainen’s biggest trades in his days with Columbus were ones he made at the trade deadline in March 2019 with the goal of making a playoff run.

Columbus kept goalie Sergei Bobrovsky and winger Artemi Panarin, who were set to become free agents that summer. He acquired center Matt Duchene, left wing Ryan Dzingel, defenseman Adam McQuaid and goaltender Keith Kinkaid for seven draft picks, including four first- or second-rounders. The Blue Jackets swept the Lightning in the first round of the 2019 playoffs but lost to Boston, 4-2, in the second round; St. Louis defeated the Bruins to win the Stanley Cup that year.

Kekalainen operates on the premise of making his team better but he knows that it takes two to tango – there has to be a trade partner with similar or opposite needs, and that a trade needs to fit their plan for the future.

What he said: “I'm always looking for a fair deal where both teams can benefit from it, but it's something that we do here, every day. We're going to think about things. How can we make our team better? What can we do today to make our team better? That's the attitude I expect in the locker room from the individuals. That's the attitude I expect from the staff. We come to the office every day, we have our coffee, and we start thinking about, what can we do today to make our team better?”

The bottom line​

Kekalainen wants to turn the Sabres back into a winner. Here’s how high he has set the bar for the team: Don't just make the playoffs, but make the organization into a sustainable winner that competes for a Stanley Cup.

The Sabres host the Philadelphia Flyers at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Kekalainen’s first game as general manager, and the first thing the Sabres need to do is pull themselves out of the basement of the eight-team Atlantic Division, where they began Tuesday a point behind seventh-place Toronto (33) and two points in back of sixth-place Ottawa (34). Seven points separate the Sabres from Tampa Bay and Detroit, tied atop the Atlantic (39 points).

What he said: “The competitiveness, the relentless work ethic that you have, whether it's on the ice for practices or in the gym, that's the talent that we need to focus on. There's been games this year where we looked like it was going to be easy, and we lost because we got out worked. That's unacceptable, and that's going to be something that we're going to focus on every day here, each and every day, because the talent, the skill alone, is not going to get you the wins.

"Every team's too good, so you’ve got to work, you’ve got to compete, you’ve got to be relentless. And that's what I want the identity of the Buffalo Sabres to be.”