The Buffalo Sabres made sweeping changes around the organization on Tuesday, starting at the top of the front office with the firing of general manager Jason Botterill. Also fired along with Botterill included his managerial staff in assistant general managers Randy Sexton and Steve Greeley.
However, instead of conducting a search for the next general manager of the Sabres, owners Terry and Kim Pegula decided to go with an internal hire, promoting Senior Vice President of Business Administration, Kevyn Adams.
Adams has been in and around the Sabres organization since the 2009-10 season when he became a development coach after retiring from a 13-year career of professional hockey. From there, Adams has worked his way up the ranks in the organization, becoming an assistant coach under Lindy Ruff, working with the Buffalo Jr. Sabres program, to eventually becoming the Senior Vice President of Business Administration in September of 2019.
For a guy that grew up just outside of Buffalo in Clarence, New York, a job like general manager of his hometown hockey team is a dream come true for the 45-year-old.
"Many of you know that I grew up in Western New York. I wore No. 11 when I started playing hockey because of watching Gilbert Perreault. This is a very special day for me and my family," Adams said Tuesday afternoon during his introductory Zoom conference call along with the Pegulas and Sabres head coach Ralph Krueger. "I am so excited to start this job, learn from Ralph Krueger and his staff, work side-by-side on a daily basis; and I believe that winning is doing it together. We're going to move forward. We're going to be positive. And I'm really looking forward to what lies ahead."
It may have been an unorthodox way for the Pegulas to make a hire such as Adams, who has not had any front office experience at the NHL level since retiring from hockey. However, the Sabres owners both felt comfortable with the familiarity of his work since joining the organization, and feel that Adams has earned his way to the top and is the right guy for the job.
"He has handled very admirably any job we've given him. [He's] loyal, communicative, and we just feel that it's a better place for us to be with Kevyn as our GM," said Terry Pegula during the team conference call on Tuesday.
"We have known Kevyn for nine years and keep jamming him with responsibilities and he kept rising up the ladder. He's a very knowledgeable and passionate person. He's a great communicator, and this isn't some scattershot decision that we made. That's the way it came down."
It was a very interesting first day on the job for Adams in his new role as general manager of the Sabres. He was hired to his new role in the morning, then the team ended up stripping down and letting go of a number of members from the amateur scouting department, as well as the coaching staff for the Rochester Americans in Chris Taylor, Gord Dineen and Toby Petersen.
While those decisions were made following the conference call, Adams' message going forward, when it comes to how this team will be built structurally, is inclusiveness from top-to-bottom, and having all sorts of ways that the staff can be on the same page.
"Starting internally, looking at our staff, having discussions, making sure that our staff understands the vision that Terry and Kim have put together, understands the relationship that Ralph and I already have from me working [with the Sabres] this past year, and now how we want to move forward together. So, I think that's the priority right now. I'd be lying after a few hours on the job if I didn't tell you that 'the list' [of tasks/goals] is long, and you can only tackle them one at a time. But I'd say I'd start with that."
"We're going to push each other. We're going to be collaborative. We're going to do it together. We're going to hold each other accountable. We're going to be honest. We're going to have great debates and conversations around 'how do we get better?' Our goal is going to be the same," Adams said. "It's not always easy to just come out of a room arm-in-arm; you have to battle through some things. Ultimately though, if you trust each other, you all get to the same place, which is we want to win a Stanley Cup."
With never having worked as part of a front office in the NHL before or building a staff and roster for sustained success in the league, Adams knows that he will have to not only hire the right people for the job in Buffalo, but also trust and utilize the pieces around him to help him become a reliable general manager and understand how the job works in Year 1 on the job.
"You have to be completely open-minded in a leadership role going into these types of situations where you know you have a lot to learn. You have to check any ego at the door and you have to surround yourself with great people," Adams said. "If you don't know the answer to something, you say 'I don't know,' and you surround yourself with people that you ask hard questions and you figure it out together. That's my style; it's always been my style, and we'll continue to do that."
As for the roster going forward in Buffalo, Adams will have quite the laundry list of items to take care of heading into the offseason.
Buffalo only has 10 players currently under contract at the NHL level, according to CapFriendly.com, with a number of players set to become both restricted free agents and unrestricted free agents. Then it will also be up to Adams to dive into some of the current players on the roster and assess whether to stick with them or move on and make trades to potentially upgrade the roster. In addition, The Sabres will have six picks to make, including their top-10 first round pick, at the 2020 NHL Draft whenever the league schedules the draft for after the conclusion of the 2019-20 season.
Those are all a part of what Adams is going to talk about with Krueger and the Pegulas as his offseason now officially begins.
"That's something that Ralph, Terry and Kim, and I are going to dive into right away," Adams said. "We haven't been able to go through the entire roster step-by-step here and discuss the pieces. But, I will say this, I've heard Ralph say it and he said it to me, he feels this is a team of players that 'buys in.' He has great relationships [with the players]. His staff has great relationships with the players. And as a former player myself, when you have a 'buy-in' to the coach, so many great things can happen. Now it's up to us to collaboratively look into it. Where can we improve? How do we play on the road? How can we be better in those areas? Just those types of discussions – and what pieces of the puzzle do you need?
"The National Hockey League is a 'matchup' league. You need to make sure that players are put in positions to succeed, and that's where Ralph and I will be in lockstep as we go through this offseason. As we've talked about a couple times on this call, it's a long offseason. There's time, we can work through those types of questions. And we're going to do that starting right away."
One person who Adams was very much eager to work with on a new level within the organization is Krueger.
Over the course of his first season as head coach, Krueger said he got to know Adams at more of a business level as the year progressed, but that he is very much looking forward to working side-by-side with Adams now as his general manager.
Adams shared some very similar sentiments on Tuesday of Krueger, and said that his influence on the team has started to rub of on many people within the organization.
"Ralph has that infectious personality and energy and positivity about him, and we're going to be in lockstep together. That starts to get me excited," he said. "In terms of relationships, that's any business and any part of life. Building relationships, making sure that you reach out to people – we had a great call with Jack [Eichel] this morning, just to start to talk to him a little bit. And I'm going to be talking to our players, certainly fellow general managers. One of my [tasks] high on the to-do list, cause I know I already covered it, is to call every general manager in the league and just talk to them. A number of them I either played for as a player, when you get traded a lot you play for some different general managers, and that was part of my journey."
You can listen to the entire conference call below:
