Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) – Buffalo wasn’t able to get a trade done for Jack Eichel during the draft. Kevyn Adams of course was talking to teams, but he said there’s no deadline to get a deal done, “Discussions are going on and we’re having a lot of them on a lot of different players and if people were thinking that something’s going to happen at the draft, we’ve never looked at any sort of timeline or pressure point to say that we have to do something on any player.”
So what if the right deal doesn’t come along? Can Adams live with Jack Eichel on the team this year? He said, of course, “I have no in any way shape or form hard feelings with Jack Eichel and he’s a player on our team, so I would have no problem at all if Jack Eichel is on our team when we start training camp.”
The Sabres were able to complete the Sam Reinhart deal on Saturday afternoon. Word broke of the trade with the Florida Panthers late Friday night, but Adams couldn’t comment on it then. He said, “It was a little bit of the nuance of the CBA in terms of the language that had to be worked out.”
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On Reinhart’s Zoom call with the Florida media he for the first time talked about how it bothered him that he was never offered a long-term contract in Buffalo when others were. He expressed how he had done everything that was asked of him and he was always prepared to sign a long-term deal. He said that is what led to this situation and his trade.
Reinhart felt slighted and wasn’t about to even talk about a long-term deal this time. Adams said, “I’m a big believer in Sam Reinhart as a player, but the fact of the matter is he wasn’t going to be here past this year and he was entering into a UFA situation.”
Adams got excellent value out of the Rasmus Ristolainen trade to Philadelphia, but the Reinhart trade netted less. The reality of the NHL according to Adams is defensemen hold more value, “Defensemen are at a premium, the way teams have been built lately, the Risto type of player, there’s a value to that in the league right now.
“Clearly centermen are at a premium and mostly in Sam’s career he’s been a winger, so that plays into it.”
After drafting Owen Power with the first overall pick, the Sabres went small drafting three little Russian players that possess high skill.
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Over the years the Sabres have almost totally ignored the Russians. Director of Amateur Scouting Jerry Forton said they decided to change things up, “This was not my decision, we decided organizationally to take a look at this, but we did not go into the draft thinking we need to draft five Russians. I think we had a very strong comfort level with a lot of the Russian players on our list. We had great video and the analytic data out of the Russian leagues is very advanced and very accurate
1) Owen Power D
1) Isak Rosen F
2) Prokhor Poltapov F
2) Aleksander Kisakov F
3) Stiven Sardarian F
3) Josh Bloom F
4) Olivier Nadeau F
5) Viljami Marjala F
6) William Von Barnekow-Lofberg F
6) Nikita Novikov F
7) Tyson Kozak C
NHL free agency begins at noon on Wednesday. Adams said he’s still trying to get a deal done with Linus Ullmark, but Jake McCabe is a different story, “We’ve had conversations all along. I’m a big fan of Jake McCabe, but we’re in a spot where he said he’s going to see what’s out there.”