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The Buffalo Sabres, who are a mess, have cleaned house

By Ian Oland

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June 16, 2020 5:38 pm

The Buffalo Sabres made a flurry of moves on Tuesday after missing the playoffs for the ninth straight season. The Sabres own the longest active playoff drought in the NHL.

The Sabres fired general manager Jason Botterill in the morning and named senior vice president of business administration, Kevyn Adams, as his replacement. Adams has no GM experience.

Members of the Sabres’ hockey operations staff, including scouts, were canned, as well as the coaches and GM at its AHL affiliate, the Rochester Americans.

Here’s a quick rundown of everything that happened.

Yeah. That’s a loooooot.

According to ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski, there was no GM search and the firings came with virtually no warning.

The mass firings come three weeks after team president and co-owner Kim Pegula pledged that Botterill would return for a fourth season.

“He’s our GM. Our plan is to continue with him,” Pegula said to the AP in a Zoom interview.

“I realize, maybe it’s not popular with the fans, but we have to do the things that we feel are right,” she said. “We have a little bit more information than maybe a fan does, some inner workings that we see some positives in.”

In May, Sabres star Jack Eichel voiced his frustrations in an honest interview.

“Listen, I’m fed up with the losing and I’m fed up and I’m frustrated,” Eichel said in a conference call via ESPN. “You know, it’s definitely not an easy pill to swallow right now. It’s been a tough couple of months. It’s been a tough five years with where things have [gone]. I’m a competitor. I want to win every time I’m on the ice. I want to win a Stanley Cup every time I start a season.”

Eichel was contacted in the morning by Adams, the team’s new GM, and the two had a “great chat.”

The firings continue an embarrassing offseason for the Sabres organization.

Via the Sabres’ website, here is Terry and Kim Pegula’s statement.

“This morning, we informed Jason Botterill he will no longer be the General Manager of the Sabres. This decision was made after many candid discussions with Jason during a full review of our hockey operation. We recognized we have philosophical differences regarding how best to put ourselves in a position to compete for a Stanley Cup. So, we decided to make this change.

“We wish Jason and his family all the best moving forward, and we thank him for his time and energy devoted to our organization and to the City of Buffalo.

“New General Manager Kevyn Adams and Head Coach Ralph Krueger already have a close working relationship and we are excited to see what they can do together as we reconfigure our hockey operations. We have the benefit of this long 2020 pause to take time to reorganize and re-energize our hockey department. We recognize the importance of this offseason with so many player decisions to be made.

“We have had the pleasure of watching Kevyn build his post-playing career over the past nine years under multiple roles throughout our organizations. We are confident Kevyn and Ralph will work together to build a consistent contender. As always, we are here to provide the necessary resources.

“Our fans deserve better, and we are all tasked with the burden to improve and provide them a consistent, contending team for years to come.”

🤔 We’ll see about that.

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