Mike Harrington: The decisions of Terry Pegula, and not Kevyn Adams, are Sabres' biggest problem
Terry Pegula need to get his hands off the product. I don't want the owner giving his thoughts on prospect camp or training camp or draft picks or free agents, Harrington says.
Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams holds a news conference at KeyBank Center on Friday. Joed Viera, Buffalo News
Just let me start by taking a layup for a moment: You wonder what went through Terry Pegula’s mind over the weekend when he got to Los Angeles and saw the palm trees.
By the time he left Tinseltown, of course, he had to be wondering about his football team’s run defense and his head coach’s ability to handle pressure at crunch time (again).
One side of the Pegula ledger: The Bills’ hopes of a No. 1 seed are close to gone, with a road game at Detroit in the offing and the Kansas City Chiefs continuing to be the luckiest team in NFL history for a single season.
The other side of Pegulaville: What is the owner going to do with his hockey team now? After blowing a two-goal lead in the final 10 minutes and losing to Detroit in a shootout Monday in KeyBank Center, the Sabres are just one point ahead of Montreal in the battle to stay out of the Eastern Conference cellar. That’s hideous.
Buffalo is 0-4-3 in its last seven games, with five of the losses by one goal and three of them coming past regulation.
Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams, left, and owner Terry Pegula watch development camp at LECOM Harborcenter in July. Harry Scull Jr., Buffalo News
The crisis of confidence rages on the ice and the tirefire is burgeoning off of it as well. General manager Kevyn Adams has become a pinata across North America in the wake of Friday’s news conference in KeyBank Center. Adams spent 23 minutes answering questions in a variety of ways. There was information, explanation, defense and defiance, none of which is bad.
The problem here, as hard as it may be to believe, is really not palm trees or taxes. That’s just the soundbite gaffe the GM made in an otherwise legitimate answer about the Sabres needing to earn their respect to recruit players.
And since social media and TV are only concerned about those kind of clips and not any real depth, what’s missed is the most important takeaway from the news conference: Adams speaks to Pegula every day.
It’s well-known by those of us who cover this team but lots of you probably needed to hear that in the open. There’s your organizational red flag, the siren wailing to signify the real problem here.
Pegula loves hockey and loves the Sabres. Anyone who says he doesn’t care about them because he’s now an NFL owner doesn’t understand what makes him tick. Pegula is a season-ticket holder dating more than 40 years ago. Hockey − and not football − is his first love, even though he might be two months from winning a Super Bowl and doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Orchard Park of winning a Stanley Cup anytime soon.
Of greater note is that Pegula hired a GM with limited credentials and refused to surround him with experienced hockey minds. One personnel-based assistant GM (Jason Karmanos) was the way it was until Jerry Forton was promoted to a spot this year to make it two. Jason Botterill had two all the time he was here. There were cuts in the scouting and development staffs as well as ties cut with key alumni in the wake of the pandemic.
Pegula has long refused the model of having a president of hockey operations because he likes the direct line to the GM. The results say it’s a 14-year mistake he needs to rethink, even if he’s still spooked by whatever version of events you believe happened 11 years ago with Pat LaFontaine. Pegula needs more veteran hockey minds, just like his team needs more veteran players.
Pegula is not a leader. Not close to one. In times of crisis, leaders step forward. For basically the last decade, Pegula has done nothing but hide. A news conference? Forget that. We only hear from him essentially when he’s firing someone. The last time he answered questions about the Sabres was the day in 2020 he and Kim Pegula did an about-face to fire Botterill and install Adams as the GM.
And even then, we had no idea Adams was about to follow orders and embark on the task of turfing nearly two dozen organizational employees after the infamous video call between media and ownership was over. That allowed Pegula to skate unchecked on a bloodletting that rates as one of the most cowardly acts in Buffalo sports history.
I can still hear longtime NHL executive Brian Burke railing on Canadian radio about how Adams was wholly unqualified for the job, and how he should have turned it down anyway when he learned what the owner had in mind for him.
Why are there no big-name former Sabres working in this organization? The front office contains too many people with no NHL experience before they joined the Sabres.
Just look at pro scouting director Jeremiah Crowe, who has been with the club in various roles for 7½ years. He was a development coach at LECOM Harborcenter before moving on to USA Hockey. He was also an assistant coach for three years at Buffalo State. It’s not a recipe for success and Crowe is far from the only one with that kind of resume.
Fans need to stop calling the owner cheap because of whatever is going on with the team’s salary cap. He’s spending more than $83.5 million in cap hits this year, and wouldn’t need to do a whole lot more if Dylan Cozens and Jack Quinn had not gone missing for much of this season.
The crime here is what Pegula isn’t spending on his front office and scouting detail. That’s where the owner is cutting corners. If he wants to win, Pegula needs to rethink his entire organizational structure. It’s done nothing but lose for more than a decade.
My first question for Pegula if he ever speaks to us again: Why do you think you can do the same thing over and over and somehow get new results?