Top Five Worst Decisions from Buffalo Sabres in Kevyn Adams Era
Buffalo Sabres fans have been enduring a generation of suffering. The longest playoff drought in the NHL is likely to extend even longer as the team is on pace to finish bottom three in the league’s standings. Kevyn Adams has been the general manager since June 16, 2020, and has endured an immense amount of scrutiny during this season. This article will take a look at the top five worst decisions made since Adams has been the head executive in Buffalo.
Signing Taylor Hall
Adams made a great first impression when it was announced that the Sabres signed marquee free agent Taylor Hall in 2020. Hall won the Hart Trophy just a few seasons prior and was just about to turn 29 years old, making this a huge signing for a scoring offense that already had Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart, Jeff Skinner, and Tage Thompson. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out as planned. Hall took a huge step back in Buffalo, scoring just twice to go along with 17 assists in 37 games. Though Hall’s struggles couldn’t have been reasonably predicted since Hall was a great player before coming to Buffalo, it’s still a big miss. Hall went on to get traded to the Boston Bruins in April and immediately bounced back, producing 15 points in 16 games and was a solid contributor in Boston’s playoff run.
Extending Mattias Samuelsson After 54 Career Games
This was yet another deal that looked amazing on the day that it happened. Adams locked down Rasmus Dahlin’s long-term defensive partner for seven years at an average of $4.3 million. Sign me up! Alas, that hasn’t worked out since Mattias Samuelsson still hasn’t played more than 55 games in a season and has been relegated to a bottom-two pairing with Connor Clifton. His contract has aged badly, but it’s been marred by bad luck. Samuelsson missed the second half of the 23-24 season by undergoing shoulder surgery. Then, he missed a whole month this season with a lower-body injury and has never quite been the same player he was when he came into the league.
Locking Down Dylan Cozens After 68-Point Season
Not many players have been a bigger letdown for the Sabres than Dylan Cozens. Buffalo drafted Cozens seventh overall back in 2019 and he quickly made an impact in the Queen City. He played his first games in Buffalo as a 19-year-old and never stepped out of the lineup after that, peaking in the 2022-23 season with 31 goals and 68 points in 79 games. Adams wanted to lock down the team’s number two center of the future, signing the Whitehorse, Yukon-native to a seven-year contract extension with an average annual value of $7.1 million. Since signing that deal, Cozens has never gotten back to that production, putting up 28 goals and 69 points in the 124 games since that outlier of a season. Cozens is now considered a premier trade target since other teams think they can bring out the elite production that he showed two seasons ago.
Not Making Changes from 2022-23 to 2023-24
This one was arguably the most egregious since it started a major trend in the Adams era: doing nothing and hoping things would change. The aforementioned ‘22-‘23 season was a huge step in the right direction, leading to Buffalo’s best regular season finish since 2010-11. The young core was looking great and the team’s philosophy was to let the inexperienced players continue to develop. That was a huge mistake as a majority of the players haven’t been able to sustain consistent production which was possibly due to a lack of veteran leadership in the locker room. The veteran leadership that the team attempted to address was signing a 35-year-old Erik Johnson who was far past his prime. When the team inevitably struggled with a 10-14-2 record at the start of the season, Adams addressed this by trading for none other than Eric Robinson, a fourth-line forward who was in and out of the lineup. The team didn’t trade for a player again until March 6th, when they were 13th overall in the Eastern Conference standings.
Trading Jack Eichel
The most infamous Adams trade wasn’t his fault, but there’s no question it had to be on this list. After being told by Sabres ownership that he couldn’t get an artificial disk replacement surgery, Eichel wasn’t going to return to Buffalo, leading to the team also stripping him of his captaincy before trading him. The Sabres found a suitor in the Vegas Golden Knights, a team that made it to the Stanley Cup Finals the same year that the Sabres drafted Dahlin after winning the draft lottery. Adams sent Eichel and a 2023 third-round pick to Vegas for Alex Tuch, Peyton Krebs, a 2022 first-round pick, and a 2023 second-round pick. Including the results of those draft picks, Buffalo acquired Tuch, Krebs, Noah Ostlund, and Jordan Greenway—who was traded from Minnesota for Vegas’ 2023 second-round pick—in the Eichel trade. Tuch is a very good two-way forward, but he’s no Eichel. The other skaters involved in this deal are either bottom-six forwards or, in Ostlund’s case, too early to judge. Meanwhile, Eichel is leading the Golden Knights to the second-best record in the Western Conference while looking to win his second Stanley Cup in three seasons.
