Sabres thoughts: Senior adviser search, Rochester’s AHL playoff run, more
Plus, Bowen Byram changes agents and the Sabres bring in Brian Galivan as a new strength coach.
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The Buffalo Sabres are moving forward into the offseason with the clarity that Kevyn Adams will be back as general manager. What else happens around him remains to be seen. So far, the Sabres have added Eric Staal as a special assistant to the general manager and made a change at the top of their strength and conditioning staff.
Here are some early thoughts on Buffalo’s offseason, including the Rochester Americans’ continued playoff run.
1. The Sabres are still looking to add a senior adviser to the front office to work with Adams as he enters year six as general manager. If they end up hiring someone for that role, it could say a lot about the state of the franchise. The question any candidate is going to ask is whether they want to attach themselves to a franchise that has the longest playoff drought in NHL history. If the role reports to Adams, who is under more pressure than ever to get the Sabres to the playoffs, any candidate is risking a one-year appointment if the Sabres miss the playoffs again. But these jobs are also not always long-term commitments anyway. That could appeal to a candidate who is hoping to get another general manager job in the not-too-distant future. It’s safe to say the organization’s reputation around the league isn’t strong, so top candidates will have to do their due diligence before committing to this job.
With The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun reporting that the Kings are closing in on Ken Holland as their next general manager, that’s one candidate who won’t fit. Lou Lamoriello seems to be advising the Islanders on their general manager search, so that’s another name that probably doesn’t make sense. Rob Blake and Jarmo Kekäläinen are recently fired general managers who might be willing to take a gamble on the Sabres, depending on what other options they have. Doug MacLean was in the mix the last time the Sabres looked for a senior adviser five years ago. If the Sabres are intent on hiring someone with experience as an NHL general manager, finding and selling the right candidate could prove to be a challenge.
2. The Sabres swapped out their strength staff, firing Ed Gannon, who had been with the organization since 2015 and replacing him with Brian Galivan. Galivan is currently serving as the performance coach for Team USA at the World Championships. He’s spent the last six years with USA Hockey, most recently as the director of sports science for the National Team Development Program. Prior to that, Galivan ran a private sports performance company that trained professional and Olympic athletes. Given some of the injury troubles the Sabres have had in recent years, this move made sense. But the other piece of this is that the Sabres have been among the youngest teams in hockey and are trying to build through developing their own talent. Part of that is making sure players physically develop in a way that maximizes their on-ice potential. Galivan’s experience with top-end young players is a plus.
3. The Sabres haven’t made any other changes to their coaching staff at this point, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the coaching staff is set in stone. With eight teams still playing and six teams still searching for head coaches, the coaching market is still in a holding pattern. The Sabres could still upgrade their coaching staff if the right assistant becomes available. On the topic of assistant coaches, Seth Appert hasn’t taken on a bigger or unofficial role in scouting, according to a team source. Throughout his time as general manager, Adams has leaned on his coaching staff to provide input on players they have familiarity with, and that’s the extent of Appert’s involvement in that area. Appert is someone Adams thinks highly of, and he did provide some input on Josh Norris during those trade negotiations because he had experience coaching him.
4. Bowen Byram changed agents last week and hired Darren Ferris, who also represents Mitch Marner and Sam Bennett, two of the top pending unrestricted free agents this summer. That’s not unusual for a player like Byram, who is a restricted free agent and about to enter the most significant contract negotiation of his career. The added layer to this is that Byram should be trying to get some clarity this summer. Adams said after the season that, “when we traded for him, we didn’t exactly know how he’d fit. We were willing to kind of make that bet and say, ‘Let’s bring in a really, really good hockey player and see how it shakes out.’”
It’s safe to say the Sabres got the better player in the trade that brought Byram to Buffalo. Casey Mittelstadt has already been traded again and hasn’t been able to match his Buffalo production since he left. Byram has, at times, looked like a legitimate top-four defenseman. He’s been a positive addition to the locker room and is one of the few players on the team with experience going deep into the Stanley Cup playoffs.
But the question of the Sabres not knowing exactly how he would fit is still lingering today. Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power, two left-handed defensemen with an offensive tilt to their game, were already signed to big-money, long-term contracts when the Sabres traded for Byram. They gobble up most of the power-play time and are ahead of Byram in the pecking order.
“I think he had a nice season,” Adams said. “Did a lot of good things for us, and we’re going to start to talk about that now as we get into the offseason. What makes the most sense for our season, just the way our roster sits, long-term versus short-term contracts, and obviously salaries. It’s a hard question to answer, but I guess what I would say is he’s a really good player and we’ll be open to anything.”
With the rising salary cap, paying three defensemen on longer-term deals isn’t necessarily a problem. But paying three defensemen with similar skill sets might not be the most efficient use of resources. Clearly, the blue line needs more balance. The Sabres ended the season with five lefties and two righties on the blue line. Connor Clifton is the only defenseman on the depth chart who plays with physicality consistently. Improving defensively is going to be a focus for the Sabres this summer. That isn’t all on the defensemen, but changing the mix on the back end seems necessary at this point. That will put Byram and his situation into the spotlight. And he seems prepared for that now with this agent change.
5. The Rochester Americans start their five-game playoff series against the Laval Rockets on Wednesday night. Goalie Devon Levi has been Rochester’s standout in the postseason so far. He had a .978 save percentage, 0.67 goals-against average and two shutouts during Rochester’s three-game sweep of Syracuse last round. 2024 first-rounder Konsta Helenius also carried his strong end of the season into the playoffs with three points in three games. Defenseman Vsevolod Komarov, who sustained a concussion during a fight in Round 1, has been cleared to return to action for this round.
