'Jack's a Sabre' | Why the Sabres selected Quinn with the 8th pick

Kevyn Adams made it a priority upon taking over as general manager in June to re-visit the NHL Draft in its entirety. He tasked director of scouting Jeremiah Crowe and director of analytics Jason Nightingale with re-evaluating prospects through a new lens combining analytical data and video scouting.
The primary objective for Crowe, Nightingale, and the rest of the Buffalo Sabres scouting staff was simple: identify the best assets who project to be NHL players. They aimed to do that through a detailed, multiphase assessment in which scouts conducted viewings before and after being presented with data.
Within that objective existed a guideline for what a Buffalo Sabre will look like moving forward. Jack Quinn checked all the boxes.

"Jack's a Sabre," Adams said Tuesday, hours after selecting the Canadian winger with the eighth overall pick. "I mean, I just felt like the work that our staff did in preparing was really important to understand his game.
"… You see the ability for him to keep getting better. His athleticism is high. Just a lot of the metrics that we look at when we're scouting, he met and some. This was just a player that, the more work we did, the more excited we got."

It does not take a hockey savant to see the surface-level numbers that made Quinn ascend to his status as one of the world's best prospects. He became just the fourth OHL player in the last decade to reach the 50-goal mark in his draft year, finishing second in the league with 52 in 62 games for the Ottawa 67s.
What the Sabres strived to do in their evaluation process was discover the "why" and "how" behind the data. The metrics revealed that Quinn was a player who drove possession and had the puck on his stick often in the OHL. They liked that he scored in different ways, with 37 goals at even strength and 15 on the power play. Adams said Quinn even had "center tendencies" playing on the wing.
They also saw an elite finisher and competitor in Quinn, who combined those traits during his breakout campaign. Quinn said it was his competitiveness that fueled his desire to get to the net more last season, which in turn led to goals. He also cited his competitiveness as the fuel for his two-way game.
Those impressions were compounded by virtual interviews with Quinn that revealed the fire behind his unique career arc, one that saw him go from being cut by AAA teams to being selected in the top 10 of the NHL Draft. Quinn, unlike many prospects, did not focus entirely on hockey growing up. He had no personal trainer, nor did he spend time working out. Instead, he spent time playing multiple high school sports.
That changed as his career progressed, particularly as he made the jump from AA to AAA and then, finally, to the OHL. Discussions about that journey revealed one of the qualities Adams and his staff are looking for in players: a desire to reach their potential.
"He has what I would say is a really good self-awareness of who he is as a player and he also has a determination that I see him getting better and better," Adams said. "He has that growth mindset kind of mentality where you could just see it, he wants to get better.
"He was upset when he was younger that he didn't feel that he was where he wanted to be as a hockey player and then he started doing things to help him improve. To me, you see that trajectory and arc and we're going to be excited to have our player development guys now jump in and start doing work with them. But he's got a big ceiling."

Adams said throughout the process that he was considering all options with the eighth pick, including trading it for immediate help on the NHL roster. The goal was to make the decision that he and his staff felt would best help the organization.
In the end, they agreed Quinn was the choice.
"I can tell you this: We are really, really excited that Jack Quinn was there for us to be able to take," Adams said. "When I was able to get the microphone and call that name, we were pretty excited about that."