BUFFALO, N.Y. — On Wednesday, Buffalo Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams spoke about next week’s NHL Draft as well as the state of his team heading into the summer.
On Tuesday, Adams brought Zemgus Girgensons and Lukas Rousek back into the fold. Rousek has a really good chance of jumping into the NHL with the Sabres this year after leading the Rochester Americans in scoring.
I am 100% convinced that Adams is actively working to trade for a top-four defenseman, but I am really not all that convinced that he’s working to trade for a goalie. On Wednesday, he was asked if he would be confident or willing to go with the same three goalies next year (Devon Levi, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Eric Comrie).
Now, of course, that’s an extremely loaded question because Adams isn’t going to sit up there and say, no, he’s not confident in his goalies. He did say, “Absolutely, I personally believe we’re in a position of strength when it comes to this.
“We feel that we have three NHL goaltenders, which is a great thing to have, so we’re open-minded whether we go into the season with three. It’s not an ideal situation, but we’ll let it play itself out. But at the same point, I’m not doing my job if I’m not in on every conversation around the league, and knowing what’s out there, and what makes sense, and if there’s something we think that will help us now and set us up for sustainable success, then we’ll look at it, but I’m excited about the goaltending position.”
OK, in my mind Levi is the only one to be excited about. Luukkonen is only 24 and still could become a very good NHL goalie, but there needs to be significant improvement, which I believe he can do.
With everything that he said, I still don’t think he’s actively looking for a goalie, and I don’t believe for one second that he’s interested in Connor Hellebuyck. First, he reportedly wants $9.5 million per season and I would not pay a goalie that much. Second, did we learn nothing from the failures of Tim Murray? He gave away pretty much all of the Sabres' young players to get Ryan O’Reilly, Evander Kane, Zach Bogosian, and Robin Lehner.
That was a complete disaster and cost them JT Compher, Nikita Zadorov, Mikhail Grigorenko, Jeremy Roy, Tyler Myers, Drew Stafford, Joel Armia, Brendan Lemiuex, Jack Roslovic, and Ilya Samsonov, which is who the Sabres would’ve picked, not Colin White. If Buffalo were to acquire Hellebuyck, it would cost them more than one of their top young players.
He’s definitely one of the best goalies in the NHL, but he just turned 30 in May. Adams didn’t spend all this time and effort to nurture the 21-year-old Levi this long to just give up on him, which is exactly what you’re doing if you sign Hellebuyck. Levi is their goalie, period.
Adams said no one would stand in his path to the NHL, and he held true to that. If Adams does acquire a goalie, that means he’s giving up on Luukkonen, which I know he doesn’t want to do at age 24. I have heard him say more than once that he’s not really thrilled with carrying three goalies. He really doesn’t have to, you waive Comrie and send him to Rochester.
Adams said he has three NHL goalies, but only Levi played like a NHL goalie last year. Luukkonen did at times, but not enough and Comrie had too many injuries.
I think the point that many are missing is if the Sabres improve their defensive play, the goaltending will improve. I have never seen a team that turns the puck over as much as this one does and if they cut those in half, their goalies will be better. Don Granato says that when you turn the puck over, your defensive structure is gone.
Another area that this team is brutal at is covering the middle of the ice. It’s always open. They should have nightmares about all the open chances that Patrice Bergeron of the Boston Bruins had last year in the slot. I have seen kids teams cover the point men better than some of the Sabres wingers. Buffalo gave up a lot of goals to wide open defensemen coming in from the point uncovered. If they clean that up, the goaltending will be better.
Buffalo had the fifth-worst penalty killing in the NHL and the seventh-worst defense, giving up 3.62 goals per game.
I’ve written this many times and I’ll write it again, the biggest and most important job for Adams this off-season is acquiring a second pair defenseman. I'm a lot more concerned about that than I am about getting a backup goalie for Levi.