The Buffalo Sabres beat the Vancouver Canucks 3-2 on Tuesday night with a spirited third-period comeback. Jiri Kulich had a goal and two assists while centering the top line, and JJ Peterka played one of his best games of the season. In a different context, Tuesday’s game would have been a major bright spot.
But the Sabres have 41 points, are in last place in the Eastern Conference and have some major organizational question marks to answer in the months to come. As encouraging as the play from Kulich was, the macro concerns are weighing heavily on this franchise.
With that in mind, here’s the first part of our mailbag. Because you all came with so many great questions, we’ll have another part of the mailbag coming soon.
Note: Submitted questions may be edited for clarity and style.
Actual question: why in the name of all that is good and holy do we still watch and follow this team? I need an answer to give my wife and children when they ask me. TIA. — Ronald M.
I had a feeling the mailbag might get existential given the state of things. I don’t blame anyone who has tuned the Sabres out or doesn’t buy tickets. That’s what happens when you miss the playoffs for more than a decade. After the 2022-23 season was filled with so much hope, things have turned bleak quickly over the last two seasons. But I know there are a lot of people like Ronald out there because I see the engagement in our comments section. The people who are still watching care deeply about this team. Why should you watch and follow them? Beyond simple civic pride, the best answer I can think of is down the road in Orchard Park. The Bills are about to play in the AFC Championship Game. You may have noticed people around here are pretty fired up. I can’t help but think a Super Bowl would mean more here than most places because of the 17-year playoff drought and the four-straight Super Bowls in the 1990s. The struggle makes the story and the run more special. Will the Sabres ever get to that point? I don’t know. I just know if they do, most of the hockey world will be pulling for Sabres fans because of the nonsense they’ve put up with over the last 13-plus years.
Do you see Lindy Ruff moving a role upstairs (president of hockey ops)? I feel like this would be a move in the right direction. — Matthew T.
I wouldn’t be shocked to see Terry Pegula go this route provided Ruff has interest in it. The main reason is that Pegula is comfortable with Ruff, and that’s been a prerequisite for his leadership decisions with the Sabres in recent years. We don’t know if Ruff would be good at that job because he’s never done it. But he’s been around the league for a long time, has a ton of relationships with other coaches and executives and would make sense for those reasons. I think he would be good at it. But I also think if he made that move he should be given the freedom to hire his own general manager and coach. Without that, you risk more of the same.
Assuming Buffalo is picking in the top five in next year’s draft, who would you be targeting? What would your draft board look like if you were the Sabres? — Jmchn2023
While I haven’t dug deep into the draft class yet, Porter Martone has caught my eye as the exact type of player the Sabres need. His blend of size, offensive creativity and competitiveness make him a potential game-breaker in the NHL. The fact that he has a different skill set than many of the players on Buffalo’s roster is a plus. Lottery luck could determine whether the Sabres are picking high enough to get Martone, but he’s the player I’d be targeting.
Whatever system Lindy is trying to get these guys to play clearly isn’t taking. At what point is it up to the coaches to call an audible and try to put the guys they have in a position to succeed? — Bob V.
Ruff has made some tweaks to the system to make it simpler for players to understand and cater to what the team does well. But I would agree with you that there’s still work to be done in that department. The question is whether the coaches need to further adjust the system, whether there needs to be new coaches or whether this is a personnel problem. It’s probably a combination of the three, and that’s what makes this an interesting offseason for the Sabres. Does Ruff stick around for another season? Will he get to bring in any new assistant coaches? Will Adams stick around? How much different does the roster look? We’ll get deeper into those questions, particularly the Adams questions, in the second part of the mailbag.
Do you agree with what seems to be the conventional wisdom that the Sabres can’t keep all three of Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power and Bowen Byram? If so, which brings the best return in a trade, Byram before signing a new deal (i.e.: at the upcoming deadline), Byram after signing a new deal, or one of Dahlin or Power, whose price tags are high, but fixed and known? — Brian C.
The answer depends on Byram’s price tag. But with the salary cap going up, I think they can afford to keep all three of them. The question is whether that is the best way to build the defense. All three are lefty and all three are offensively minded. I wouldn’t want to let Byram leave. He’s having a great season, has Stanley Cup experience and has already shown leadership in his brief time with the Sabres. Power would be the one I would consider moving because I think the return would be even higher than for Byram and could help you fix problems elsewhere on the roster.
Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin is in the first season of an eight-year deal. (Timothy T. Ludwig / Imagn Images)
At this point, with ALL the years of losing, would you not agree that nobody is untouchable on this roster? That goes from the fourth-liners and fringe players all the way to Dahlin. What would a Dahlin trade look like? It cannot get any worse so really, who cares?? — Ryan Q.
Dahlin is the only player on the roster I would consider untouchable. The reasoning is I don’t see a realistic path to winning a trade with a player like that. He’s not perfect, but he’s a 24-year-old star talent signed long-term who is also the captain. He cares deeply about winning and wants to be part of the solution in Buffalo. I understand the idea that it cannot get any worse, but if this franchise has taught us anything it’s that it can always get worse. Acquiring players like Dahlin is not easy, and the return when trading them is rarely worth it.
Explain how the same owner can have such a model NFL franchise and a trash heap for an NHL franchise, please? — Michael M.
The two leagues are different in so many ways. Building a winner in the NFL is not necessarily easier, but it is simpler. If you find your quarterback, that’s going to solve a lot of your problems. Free agency can help you flip a team quickly, and drafted players can make an instant impact. The timeline to rebuild an NHL team is longer. But this question is a fair question that comes up quite a bit, and I think there are legitimate explanations beyond the idea that Pegula got lucky in hiring Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane.
There’s a certain amount of luck involved in pro sports, of course. If Pegula picked Vance Joseph instead of McDermott back then, would this have worked out? If Brandon Beane hadn’t managed to trade up for Josh Allen or if he had chosen a different quarterback, how would that change the story of his and McDermott’s tenure?
But I believe Pegula, along with McDermott and Beane, deserves credit for what’s happened with the Bills. McDermott was a strong coaching candidate during that cycle, but it’s not as if he was considered the top prize. Pegula saw something in him and, more importantly, was willing to take his hand off the wheel and let McDermott change the culture of the building. That meant McDermott got control of the roster before the Bills eventually fired Doug Whaley, who had a close personal relationship with Pegula. Pegula then hired Beane, someone with whom McDermott had a prior relationship. Both McDermott and Beane had worked their way through the ranks and earned those jobs. They had conviction in their plan, and the early results helped Pegula trust them to do what needed to be done to fix the Bills. Good process doesn’t guarantee the success the Bills have had, but that was a solid process from top to bottom by Pegula.
What I can’t figure out is why Pegula hasn’t yet learned from that experience in how he’s operating the Sabres. Pegula’s track record hiring coaches and general managers is terrible outside of McDermott and Beane. But I can’t sit here and say it was all luck when the process to arrive at McDermott and Beane was so different from the process to arrive at general manager Kevyn Adams. The Sabres did not run a general manager search before hiring Adams. That wouldn’t even be allowed under the NFL’s Rooney Rule. Pegula hired Adams because, in his words, he was “loyal and communicative.”
“I’m going to label communication as one of the biggest issues with the Sabres,” Pegula said the day he fired Jason Botterill and hired Adams “We felt like we weren’t being heard.”
Adams had been serving as the senior vice president of business administration for less than a year when he was hired. He started working for the Pegulas in 2011 first as a Sabres assistant coach, then as director of the Pegulas’ Academy of Hockey and GM of Harborcenter, the Pegulas’ hotel, retail and practice rink complex during that time. That’s a much different resume than McDermott and Beane had prior to Pegula hiring them. It’s also fair to wonder how exhaustive the Sabres’ most recent coaching search was. It shouldn’t be shocking when you get bad results out of a bad process. But if the goal is for Pegula to be closer to the decision making with the hockey team, the current structure certainly makes that easier.
All of that combined with the fact that the Sabres haven’t spent to the cap since the pandemic are the main reasons things are different with the two teams. Owning an NFL franchise is easier from a business standpoint. The league’s revenue-sharing setup with massive television deals makes NFL teams profit machines. On the field, once you have competent leadership and a franchise quarterback, you’re in good shape to be competitive. When you end up with one of the best quarterbacks of a generation like the Bills have in Allen, you have a chance to win a Super Bowl every year. Owning an NHL team is harder by comparison, but it’s not nearly as difficult as Pegula has made it look.
(Photo of Terry Pegula: Mark Konezny / USA Today)
