Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) – This is the first year other than COVID-19 pandemic that the NHL Draft will not be held at a central location. The players will be in Los Angeles, but teams and their scouts are staying home. The NHL went out with a bang last year holding the Draft in Las Vegas at Sphere.
With larger facilities available, the Buffalo Sabres will set up their headquarters in Orchard Park in the Buffalo Bills facilities.
The Bills have a state-of-the-art draft room and they offered it to Kevyn Adams and the Sabres to set up shop for the Draft on June 27 and 28.
In a statement Bills and Sabres COO Pete Guelli said,
“There’s a strong relationship between both staffs which has made the process seamless and we are grateful to be able to take advantage of an environment that’s been tested and proven on a large scale. Utilizing the Bills' draft room will also allow us to see what works best and what we can implement to enhance our capabilities even more for future drafts.”
The Sabres say they’ll have around 40 people in the Draft Room at One Bills Drive including Adams and his front office staff, the NHL and AHL coaching staffs as well as the analytics, scouting and development staffs.
In the same statement Adams said,
“The Bills have years of experience with this style of draft and once Brandon offered for us to use their facility, it was a no-brainer to utilize their space and existing infrastructure.
“The Bills have optimized and refined their space for years and their setup offers everything we need – from expansive room for our hockey operations staff to the technology that will allow for streamlined communication.”
So what’s in this room that makes it attractive for the Sabres to come use it? It has four 85-inch monitors and four 75-inch monitors that they’ll use to help everyone see certain information. Each department can get information out to the group using these monitors.
The room also has a whiteboard that takes up one wall. The team will have every prospect on magnets making up the Sabres draft board.
“This room gives us a lot bigger visuals to see all the tools and the resources that we use, from our scouting systems to our analytics systems,” said Kyle Kiebzak, Sabres manager of hockey technologies and team operations.”
Many general managers of the NHL didn’t like having to pack all their information and staff and move it to whatever city the Draft was in. Owners like Terry Pegula are also ecstatic with the change because they save quite a bit in travel costs.