BUFFALO, N.Y. — Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams developed his plan on how to give the organization sustainable success and he has stayed the course.
Adams believes in good drafting, developing your own players, figuring out your core, and paying those players.
In developing his core, he traded away players like Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart, and Rasmus Ristolainen. Ryan O’Reilly had already been traded by Jason Botterill and those trades provided the pieces to move forward.
O’Reilly brought in Tage Thompson and Ryan Johnson.
Eichel has netted Buffalo Alex Tuch, Peyton Krebs, Noah Ostlund, and Jordan Greenway.
The Reinhart trade gave the Sabres Devon Levi and Jiri Kulich.
The Ristolainen swap brought in Isak Rosen and Anton Wahlberg.
If you look at the Sabre core, Adams has used the trade market to bring in just one major player and that’s Tuch.
The question I have is how dangerous is this strategy? I remember back to Darcy Regier who absolutely fell in love with his own players to a fault. I don’t think Regier built even close to the core that Adams has, so maybe Adams has a reason to fall in love with his own players.
Where this can be awfully risky, is this is the year that the Sabres must take the next step in this plan and make the playoffs. Adams has been fairly quiet in the off-season. He didn’t get a top-four defenseman and he didn’t acquire a goalie. He did make the defense better by signing Erik Johnson and Connor Clifton and with Don Granato having coached Clifton before, it’s possible he could get his play elevated to be a top-four D.
Adams also wasn’t trying to acquire a goalie as he feels without a doubt that Levi can handle being a No. 1 goalie this season in the NHL after just seven professional games and that Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen can improve his game enough to be a good backup.
The other thing Adams is not only banking on but 100% believes in is that the young players will all improve and take the next step. I don’t think he’s wrong here. I think Thompson can be a 50-goal scorer year after year, I think Tuch can get you 35 to 40 goals every season. I expect Dylan Cozens will be even better than 31 goals and 68 points. I also think Cozens will improve his two-way game too. I think both Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka can be consistent 25 to 30-goal scorers in the NHL. What about Casey Mittelstadt? He went from career highs of 12 goals and 13 assists for 25 points to 15 goals and 44 assists for 59 points. How much more can the Sabres expect from this 24-year-old?
On defense, I think Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, and Mattias Samuelsson are just scratching the surface of how good they’ll be.
So, how realistic is it that Levi, Luukkonen, Thompson, Tuch, Cozens, Quinn, Peterka, Peyton Krebs, Dahlin, Power, and Samuelsson will all take the next step? Erik Johnson is going to be a fantastic resource for the young defensemen. If one of these players doesn’t improve, they’ll be fine, but what happens if half of them regress?
I’m just throwing this all out there wondering if this is a dangerous high-wire act. I certainly understand if you think it is, but I think the plan is sound.
I agree with Adams that with the makeup of how Levi thinks and works, he’ll be fine. As he said last season, just put him in the net, he’ll figure it out. He is arguably the best college goaltender ever being the only player to win the Mike Richter award as best college goalie twice. Levi only played for two years at Northeastern.
Luukkonen is a hard worker. When he got red hot and went 12-3-1 he put up great numbers and was making the big saves at the big times to win hockey games that all went away after Feb. 1 and he needs to find that consistency. In 12 games after Feb. 1, Luukkonen was 4-5-2 with a 4.23 goals against and a .876 save percentage. Without that improvement, the Sabres will be in trouble in the net.
I look at those forward and I think to myself, which one of them isn’t going to improve? I think they all will and I don’t think Jeff Skinner is done either. The question is can he put together 47 assists again to go with 35 goals?
So, there are no guarantees in life or professional sports. This could all go terribly wrong and then the Sabres will again be looking for a new GM and coach, but in my opinion, I think the plan is solid.