The Buffalo Sabres and GM Kevyn Adams have been busy, but there’s one big move we’re still waiting on, one way or another.
There’s a saying in negotiations that you should never let them see you sweat and it’s an adage that Buffalo Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams has taken to heart.
Ever since Adams took over as Sabres GM in 2020, he’s spent a fair amount of that time being painted into various corners by players and agents. From the moment he was hired he had to deal with Jack Eichel wanting out. Shortly after that, he had to face up to the hard eventuality that Sam Reinhart wasn’t going to stick around.
Fast forward to this year, J-J Peterka became the latest player to seek an exit from Buffalo and while Adams played it straight and cool about that despite all the smoke that was out in the open about there possibly being an issue. It would’ve been easy enough to make Peterka out to be the bad guy to the fan base, something he also could’ve done easily with Eichel, but refused to take the low road and opted to get a trade done.
The other part about not letting them see you sweat is it applies to making a trade as well. Any situation where a trade is seemingly imminent the pressure to get it done grows. From the player themselves to the agent to the fans and media alike, the clock is ticking loudly to get it across the line and to make sure you come out of it not looking bad.
That’s what’s made the anticipation of a Bo Byram trade so different.
“I’ve maintained the same position that if there’s a deal out there that make sense for us that makes sense for us that we think improves our roster, we’re open to it,” Adams said. “But if there’s not, we’re not in a situation where we’re looking to move him out or looking to move him for futures and stuff like that.”
The content below was originally paywalled.
As a restricted free agent, the Sabres hold almost all the cards. They own his rights (for two more years) and while there are plenty of teams that would like to add him, they can try to do that by signing him to an offer sheet that could put the Sabres in a bad position. That is if they were up against the salary cap ceiling, but they’re not, quite far from it still.
“The moves we’ve made and the position we’ve put ourselves in from the cap perspective has been strategic,” Adams said. “If you leave just enough room in your cap that where maybe you see a projection on a one-year deal and then someone comes over the top, you’re putting your organization in a really tough spot. So, the moves we’ve made and the decisions we’ve made for weeks now leading up to this point is with that in mind. And so, no, we’ll be matching and have the opportunity to have a player under contract that we think helps us win.”
The money isn’t the point when it comes to Byram, not kneecapping their immediate goal of getting back to the playoffs is. That end game, and it is an end game at this point in the 14-year absence from the postseason, is what’s at stake. It’s why getting Byram’s situation right, most likely via trade, is a massive moment. What the Sabres get in return for him has to help them right now. Most of the major trades Adams pulled off landed players that helped them immediately.
Eichel netted Alex Tuch and Peyton Krebs. Casey Mittelstadt got them Byram. Matt Savoie, Adams’ own ninth overall pick in 2022, brought in Ryan McLeod whom they re-signed to a great four-year, $20 million deal. Dylan Cozens brought in Josh Norris and Peterka got them Michael Kesselring and Josh Doan. The latter two returns remain to be seen how well they work out, but those trades were massive swings to get players to help right now, to better put them in a place to get back to the postseason.
A GM can only have so much time to build the roster the way they want to though and Adams is heading into his sixth season at the helm and executives generally don’t get this kind of time to work on things. It’s what makes the threat of a team using an offer sheet on Byram a fascinating wrinkle in the process.
A move like this shouldn’t be legacy defining, but the lack of success that’s happened, the coaching changes that occurred and the now more regular turnover of the roster changed that perspective. Adams knows he can’t miss and that’s why we’re in a holding pattern to judge the offseason.
The idea of trading Byram to get a forward to replace the goals lost by trading Peterka is the right idea, but whether or not that happens, the Sabres had to keep the offseason plan in motion.
“I like skill, of course, you want that,” Adams said. “But where we decided to focus our attention and spend the dollars in different ways was to be more competitive, harder to play against, better defensively. That was our goal and that’s why we made the decisions we made.”
Adding depth players like Justin Danforth to more or less replace Sam Lafferty who was traded to Chicago for a sixth-round pick makes sense. The hope there is Danforth will commit to his role and execute it better than Lafferty did. It’s tough for Lafferty because he’s a quality guy, but he wasn’t the same player in Buffalo as he had been previously elsewhere. We only saw that player later in the season and if that means he was dealing with injury or something else, that’s unfortunate.
Danforth, like Lafferty, had to earn his way into the NHL and at one point was a member of the Rochester Americans. The past few years, however, he’s been with the Columbus Blue Jackets and a dogged bottom six forward. Veterans who have battled and earned their way to the league help set a good example for everyone, not just the younger guys.
“When you kind of go through the offseason and you categorize players and you put them in different tiers of, ok, these type of players bring this, and these type of players are skill and they bring this,” Adams said. “When we had the Danforth type of players, he was at the top of our list, so as soon as we had the opportunity to go try to recruit him and get him, we did that yesterday,”
This also applies to goalie Alex Lyon. Sabres fans remember him as the guy who outdueled Devon Levi in a 2-1 loss to the Florida Panthers late in the season that essentially decided the second wild card spot in 2023. As spectacular as Lyon was playing in place of Sergei Bobrovsky, Levi matched him save for save. If not for a reviewed offside goal, who knows how it all turns out in the end.
Lyon turned that great run at the end of that season into a contract with the Detroit Red Wings and as well as he played there, he wasn’t able to work the same magic to get them back to the playoffs. Now he’ll try and muster that up as the veteran backup for Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and to duel with Levi in camp.
“He’s a proven goaltender in this league,” Adams said. “I think he’s a really good veteran. He checks the box in terms of veteran presence: high-character guy; he’s proven in the league; he’s played well in his time in the National Hockey League. He’s going to challenge and push. But, no, we just think he’s going to help us win hockey games.”
Lyon was a dynamite goalie in college at Yale but since then, he’s gone back and forth from the AHL and NHL and only recently locked down a place in the NHL for good. At 32 years old, he’s experienced plenty and knows how hard the road is to get to the big leagues and how much harder it is to stay there.
The overall depth of the team was addressed as well, particularly with nods to Rochester. Defenseman Zac Jones was with the New York Rangers all last season, although he was a healthy scratch often. Considering the Sabres kept eight defensemen most of last season, you’d have to imagine it’ll be the same way again this time around with or without Byram.
That means Jones and Jacob Bryson will duke it out to stay with the Sabres if Byram is still here. Ryan Johnson, Jack Rathbone, Zach Metsa and tough guy Mason Geertsen will be in that mix as well. That kind of setup means the Americans’ blue line will be loaded particularly with Nikita Novikov and Vsevolod Komarov already there.
Forward Carson Meyer signed a one-year, two-way deal although he’s coming off an ACL injury that required surgery in March. Riley Fiddler-Schultz, who had an outstanding year with the Americans, signed an entry-level NHL deal with Buffalo. That he and Metsa each earned NHL contracts is further proof to others in the organization that hard work pays off. It may seem trite, but these kinds of examples matter, especially if there are guys in need of a reality check.
While all of these moves are solid, it still feels flat for the fans. If the Sabres were a team regularly in the playoffs and in contention for them closely, these kinds of “tweak” moves would get the kind of appreciation they’re worthy of. But that’s not the reality. If things change in the next few days and a Byram trade lands them a top six forward type of forward of renowned, then the perspective changes.
If/when that happens, the biggest question of the many that will hang over this team when training camp opens in September will be: Where do the goals come from?
Yes, there’s Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch, but without Peterka any of the players that can be the answer to it come with the qualifier of, “if things break right.” That’s too familiar of a response and one that we’ve seen come into play a few times in recent years. Sure, a few guys could break out (Zach Benson, Jiri Kulich, Jack Quinn, etc.), but if they don’t, what happens then? It doesn’t instill confidence when it comes to thinking they can finally make the playoffs.