Inside the NHL: It's time to say farewell to Kevyn Adams and put Jarmo Kekalainen in charge of Sabres
"With a ready-made replacement in house like Jarmo Kekalainen, you can't possibly give Kevyn Adams any more time past this season. Six years of this is two too many," writes Mike Harrington.
It's time. In fact, we all know it's long past time. Everybody seems to know except Terry Pegula.
But if the Buffalo Sabres' absentee owner gives a single damn anymore about his hockey team, he has a simple task ahead to prove it to his tormented fans.
Once the Bills' game at New England is over, Pegula needs to come back to Buffalo and take care of the business that is so overdue, folks around the NHL are simply wondering when it's going to happen.
Sunday night's game in Seattle should be Kevyn Adams' finale as the Sabres' general manager. No later than Tuesday, senior adviser Jarmo Kekalainen should take over as GM. At least on an interim basis for the rest of the season, and perhaps just full-bore heading into Thursday's home game against Philadelphia.
Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams, left, talks with senior adviser Jarmo Kekalainen on Sept. 10 as prospects practice at LECOM Harborcenter.
Harry Scull Jr., Buffalo News
This corner has been on record since last December that Pegula should show Adams the door. I would have done it after that horrible loss in Montreal a week before Christmas last season, the night after Pegula's keep-the-faith speech to the troops in the Bell Centre locker room.
It had to happen when the GM sat by idly and made no moves during last season's 13-game winless streak but it didn't. It had to happen in April after yet another playoff miss, but it didn't.
It has to happen now, with Adams believed to be in the final year of his contract. Pegula can't possibly ponder any more runway for this GM − right, Terry? – so what is he waiting for?
With a ready-made replacement in house like Kekalainen, you can't possibly give Adams any more time past this season. Six years of this is two too many. You can't possibly let Adams run the trade deadline in March. You can't trust him to figure out Alex Tuch's contract situation or to make what would rate as a franchise-altering trade of the most popular player of the last 20 years, non-Ryan Miller division.
So given all that, what are you doing keeping Adams on board any longer?
Forget the team's abominable record this season. I'd fire Adams for the three-goalie fiasco alone. As GM, your whole job is to make decisions, and you can't make one here?
Lindy Ruff is clearly tired of talking about the issue and clearly annoyed by it because he knows it doesn't work. The only way the Sabres "figured it out" was for poor Colten Ellis to suffer a concussion in Edmonton and go on injured reserve.
Did you read between the lines of Ruff's comments about the demotion of Noah Ostlund to Rochester? No negatives at all. Just a numbers game. As in, we have to stash a serviceable player in the minors because we're foolishly carrying three goalies.
The wrench in this whole thing is the question a lot of you are probably asking: What if the Sabres beat the Kraken on Sunday and finish their six-game road trip 3-3? Why fire Adams after the team showed resilience to bounce back from the disastrous 0-3 start to the trip?
First off, I'm not expecting it. The Sabres are 1-7 all-time vs. the Kraken and, combined with their 0-4 record against Utah, are a combined 1-11 against the NHL's two newest teams. That's a huge negative mark on Adams' tenure.
It's just a case there is simply no belief in Adams anymore. The fan base has none, and the leatherlungs in KeyBank Center chant "Fi-re Ke-vyn" at any opportunity. Tage Thompson unleashed a clear warning shot in September when he talked about dressing room morale as a factor in getting Tuch's extension done. It's mid-December now, and we've heard crickets about the extension. The room isn't a happy place.
Tuch isn't having a great shake of a season either, with no deal looming and his status as potential trade bait clearly proving to be a distraction to his play.
So one mid-December win in Seattle shouldn't change the big picture one iota.
Still, let there be no doubt about Adams' desire to be the front-office solution in Buffalo. He's a Clarence kid who grew up watching games in the Aud and then had his ultimate moment as an NHL player by beating the Sabres en route to a Stanley Cup with Carolina 20 years ago.
One of the ironic parts about the Sabres' struggles this season is that they have come in the wake of what might rate as Adams' best offseason in the job. Go down the list of acquisitions and it's pretty simple to see.
Josh Doan has been a terrific pickup, and he needs to get a solid extension. Alex Lyon has had plenty of good moments in goal. Conor Timmins is a big upgrade over Connor Clifton on defense. Michael Kesselring's season is a wash to date because of injuries, but he was still the right guy to add to the defense. Ostlund, Isak Rosen and Josh Dunne have been developed well in Rochester.
And look at the previous couple seasons. Adams signed Jason Zucker in free agency and then re-signed him. Ryan McLeod for Matt Savoie? Thumbs up. Beck Malenstyn is a major bottom-six asset, and a second-round pick to get him was steep, but when was that pick going to play in the NHL, much less lead a team in hits and blocked shots all over? Adams didn't have three or four years to wait.
Ultimately, Adams didn't do enough at the trade deadline in 2023 to get the Sabres over the top and into the playoffs, and he stayed put far too much into 2023-24, thinking his team had arrived when it had not.
The Bills needed their Andy Dalton moment to snap their playoff drought and end their organizational malaise. Adams needed to get this drought talk ended, and he couldn't do it.
Pegula can't spin the wheels here anymore. Barring a win streak in the range of 8-10 games − by a team that's yet to win three in a row this year − the drought is going to hit 15 years.
It's time to let Kekalainen get a head start on things right now. As in this week. Adams' time has long passed.
Who's not sleepy vs. Seattle?
Given the Sabres' record vs. Seattle, it's noteworthy to look at the record of several other Eastern teams against the Kraken, who have been a pretty mediocre expansion team to date.Tampa Bay is 7-0-1, New Jersey is 6-0-2, the New York Rangers and Toronto are both 7-1-1, Detroit is 6-2-2, Washington is 6-2-1 and Ottawa is 6-3-0. No excuse for the Sabres to not have some kind of similar mark.
Buffalo has given up 40 goals in eight games against Seattle, an average of five per game. I call it the Curse of Jack Eichel. You may remember it was the morning of the Sabres' first visit to Climate Pledge Arena in 2021 that the captain was traded to Vegas and the Sabres lost that night, 5-2, while yielding a hat trick to Jordan Eberle that was the first in Kraken history. Seattle hasn't stopped scoring against Buffalo since.
Hand passes are silly
What-is-goalie-interference talk dominated the first two months of the NHL season but last week turned decidedly into what is a hand pass? There were four instances of plays in a short span, including the wiped out Tuch-to-Thompson goal in Edmonton, that roiled coaches around the league.First off, it's hard to know why hand passes are a big deal except for the fact they've always been nixed by the rule book. GMs should talk about this in March and start the process of changing the rules. If guys don't close their hand on the puck and simply deflect it, there should be no problem. Tuch was swinging his stick at a puck in the air, not using his hand on it.
"There are two hands on his stick. I don’t even think he sees the puck," Ruff said. "There’s no hand off the stick. I don’t know how they come up with hand pass. It boggles me."
Ruff also was furious at a Florida goal allowed in the Panthers' 7-6 overtime win over Columbus three days before the Tuch-Thompson play. Brad Marchand tried to catch a floating puck behind the net and instead deflected it off his glove to teammate Seth Jones, eventually leading to a Panthers goal. It was not wiped out by replay.
"This whole game was a joke," was the reaction of Jackets coach Dean Evason.
Five days before the Sabres, Tampa Bay got completely hosed on a Nikita Kucherov tying goal as Brandon Hagel was called for a hand pass when he simply put his hand to his face to protect himself. Lightning coach Jon Cooper correctly called it "laughable".
"If I threw this microphone at you right now, would you put your hand up to stop it? Hell yeah, you would,” Cooper said. “And he didn’t direct any pucks. That was a bang-bang play."
The only one the league got right with the current rules was an overturn of a Chicago goal after a hand deflection by Colton Dach, who was sitting on the ice behind the Rangers' net. Correct by the rules but silly. It shouldn't matter.
Even if you wanted to keep part of the rule, it should simply be a direct pass to a teammate. The only one of these four that would be was Dach's. We should be doing everything we can to keep goals in the game and not parsing plays through replay to take goals away.
Around the boards
- If it feels like the Sabres never get early momentum in their season and are always chasing teams, you're right. In the last three Octobers, Buffalo is 12-14-4. In the last three Novembers, its record is 19-19-4. The Sabres were 6-7-1 in November this season, a one-game flip from last year's 7-6-1.
- Anaheim's solid start has coach Joel Quenneville back in the market for his 1,000th career victory. The Ducks' 19-11-1 record − which featured back-to-back seven-goal games for the first time in franchise history − has Quenneville up to 988 wins, second only to Scotty Bowman's 1,244. Ruff is fifth all-time at 913 and third on the active list behind Quenneville and Florida's Paul Maurice (931).
- Buffalo native Dylan Blujus, an NHL rookie linesman, was on the call for the Sabres-Flyers game in Philadelphia that opened this road trip. Blujus, 31, was a second-round pick of Tampa Bay in 2012 and played 362 AHL games from 2014-2023 before becoming an AHL linesman. He played for the Buffalo Regals before spending four years with Brampton in the Ontario Hockey League.
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