BUFFALO -- Kevyn Adams isn’t panicking over the Buffalo Sabres’ struggles with the team having lost five straight games.
“Look, I’m going to go to war with these guys, and I will not change,” the general manager said Friday. “I will not back down from that. I believe in the people in our room, and I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t know the opportunity we have. …
“Do I believe in this team and do I believe we’re going to be a team that takes a step here? I do.”
The Sabres (11-12-3) are 0-3-2 in their past five, including a 5-4 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday when they led 4-0 after the first period, after winning seven of their previous nine. That stretch included two three-game winning streaks, their longest of the season.
Buffalo hasn’t qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs for an NHL-record 13 straight seasons. It had a disappointing 2023-24 season, going 39-37-6 with 84 points, seven fewer than the previous season, when the Sabres went 42-33-7 and finished one point behind the Florida Panthers for the final wild card from the Eastern Conference.
Still, Adams said Buffalo is not going to overreact and “make a knee-jerk decision or a reactionary trade that sets you back.”
The Sabres are fifth in the Atlantic Division with 25 points, three behind the Tampa Bay Lightning, who are also currently the second wild card from the East. They are tied with the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Islanders for 11th in the conference but only two points ahead of the Montreal Canadiens (10-13-3), who are last.
“Some of the stuff I look at trying to judge our team, there’s some positives there and reasons to believe that we’re going to take some steps, which we need to,” Adams said. “We’re not happy with where we are. We need to get better.”
Adams, who is in his fifth season as GM, has repeatedly talked about his plan of building his young team through development and has signed core young players to long-term contracts as part of that, wanting them to learn how to win together.
He said at the end of last season that though his roster is young in age, many of the younger players have enough NHL experience.
“When you’re going to make a decision to build a franchise for sustainable success year after year, you’re going to have to go young and you’re going to have to give players the opportunity to battle through some of the ups and downs,” Adams said Friday. “I believe our roster is talented. We should be a team that is competing and in the playoffs. I’ve said that since the summer. I truly believe that.
“And, in saying that, when you have a young roster, you’re going to have mistakes. We have a new coach that’s putting in certain types of intricacies into the system. We’re 26 games in. So, that’s why I said in the beginning, I’m not happy with where we’re at, but we’re not going to panic.”
The Sabres made changes in the offseason aimed at taking the next step and ending the playoff drought. They rehired coach Lindy Ruff, the winningest coach in their history, to replace Don Granato. They acquired forwards Ryan McLeod and Beck Malenstyn via trades and signed Jason Zucker, Sam Lafferty and Nicolas Aube-Kubel as free agents to strengthen the bottom six. Buffalo also bought out the final three seasons of forward Jeff Skinner’s contract.
Adams said he tried to bring in top-end players in the offseason either by trade or free agency, but that Buffalo is not “a destination city.”
“You have to earn it,” Adams said. “I mean, look, this is for me, it's really simple. You become a perennial playoff team, you make the playoffs, you have a chance to win the Stanley Cup year after year. You are on less teams’ no-trade list.
“We don't have palm trees. We have taxes in New York. Those are real, and those are things you deal with. But, and trust me, there's I think conversations every day and there's a lot of players in this league that we’re on their (no-trade) list. So we need to earn the respect and it starts with getting over the hump, getting in the playoffs, competing.”
