Sitting in his KeyBank Center office on a recent sun-splashed afternoon, Kevyn Adams peered down at the band on his left wrist that tracks his morning runs and sleep.
“It didn’t give me good numbers last night,” the Buffalo Sabres’ general manager quipped during a brief break from his long list of tasks ahead of the NHL draft. “I must have been thinking too much.”
Restless nights are part of the job, especially this time of the year. Adams, amid his third offseason leading the Sabres’ hockey operations, has spoken with other NHL teams about trade possibilities ahead of the draft July 7-8 in Montreal. He’s also preparing for the start of free agency by touching base with agents of his players who are set to hit the open market at noon on July 13.
Adams’ morning routine also has contributed to the recent sleep deprivation. In recent weeks, he’s awoken at approximately 5 a.m. to watch video clips on draft-eligible prospects. Between sips of coffee, he takes detailed notes on each player, from the tantalizing skill that pops with each touch of the puck to the subtle nuances that can be overlooked by the untrained eye.
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Adams then departs for a long run before returning home to watch more video and get ready for a day at the office. These study sessions invigorate Adams. He wants to be sure about a player when the Sabres are on the clock at the draft. They own 11 picks across seven rounds, three in the first beginning at No. 9 overall.
It’s an opportunity Adams wished he had during his first draft in October 2020 when he owned only five selections because of trades made by his predecessor, Jason Botterill. The prospect pipeline was still depleted from Tim Murray’s time as general manager.
Depth isn’t much of an issue now. Adams made 11 picks in the draft last July, beginning with his selection of Owen Power at No 1. The Sabres added dynamic forwards Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka in 2020. The outlook has brightened considerably since Quinn became Adams’ first draft choice. However, he won’t be content, or well-rested, until the picks are made in Montreal’s Bell Centre and his roster is set for training camp.
“I really felt two years ago with the draft that we didn't have enough prospects and then we also didn't have a lot of draft picks, which makes it challenging,” he said. “It was definitely part of our plan and our organizational philosophy that we have to build our pipeline up. … I feel a lot better about where we’re at than two years ago, but at the same time, this is such a critical draft for us. It’s another huge opportunity.”
A playoff-drought spanning 11 years is enough motivation for Adams to remain patient and resolute in a results-based business that can force general managers to scrap well-laid plans to build through the draft.
If Adams needed a reminder, though, a few sources of inspiration can be found hanging above his desk. Printed on letter-sized paper, there’s a black-and-white photo of the Stanley Cup – the coveted trophy Adams won as a worker-bee-like forward with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2006 – and, separately, text from a Theodore Roosevelt speech titled, “The Man in the Arena,” which begins, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood …”
Adams had to remain patient and resolute while stocking the prospect pipeline. His 11-player haul at the 2021 draft came at a steep cost. The Sabres won the right to draft Power, a dynamic 6-foot-6 defenseman, by finishing last in the NHL in 2020-21. The calamitous season included a franchise-record 18-game winless streak that led to the firing of Ralph Krueger and marked the end of an unsuccessful era in Buffalo.
Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart and Rasmus Ristolainen – three high draft choices who were expected to lead the Sabres back to prominence – were traded following that horrible 56-game season for Buffalo hockey fans. Eichel’s move to the Vegas Golden Knights in November 2021 ended a long, public feud with the Sabres over his preference to have an artificial disk replacement in his neck.
The Sabres acquired a first-round pick in each of those deals, the first of which Adams used to select Swedish winger Isak Rosen last July. At the draft this week, Adams owns the Golden Knights’ and Florida Panthers’ first-round selections at No. 16 and 28 overall, in addition to the Sabres’ own pick, ninth overall.
Mock drafts ahead of the event are wide-ranging, even more so this year because the development of most eligible prospects was impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This draft day, I think, is going to be one of the most unpredictable in a long time,” said Dan Marr, director of NHL Central Scouting.
There are a few glaring questions surrounding groups of prospects at this draft, most notably Russians who have yet to play junior hockey in North America. The fallout from the war in Ukraine, and uncertainty surrounding future diplomatic talks with Russia, could cause players to be picked later. Adams hasn’t instructed his staff to avoid selecting those prospects. And the Sabres aren’t going to prioritize a specific position, even though there’s a glaring need for more defensemen below the NHL level.
With each pick, the Sabres are going to take the player they believe will be the best in five or six years. They’re projecting future performance based on in-person viewings of the player, additional video study, interviews at the NHL Scouting Combine and analytics.
“I think it’s a very good draft,” said Jerry Forton, the Sabres’ amateur scouting director. “I think we’re going to get a really good player at nine if we pick at nine. … But I actually think the top six or seven, you can almost check them right off. I do think there’s a group right after that there’s a chance you’re getting just as good a player at nine as you’re getting at four or five. So, we’re really excited about a group of players in that range. If you even get higher in the draft, that’s a great thing to do from my perspective.”
The process of scouting and projecting has fascinated Adams since his playing days. When training camp began each fall, Adams would try to determine on the ice what led to a specific prospect getting drafted. And he saw in the weeks leading up to the 2020 draft how intangibles can be a separator.
Quinn skyrocketed up prospect rankings during his draft-eligible season because of a 40-goal improvement. The Sabres saw more to Quinn than an effective right-handed shot. He wowed them in video interviews with his thoughtful answers and everything about him convinced the Sabres that they were selecting a player who hadn’t come close to reaching his potential.
“There was so much to be excited about by Jack Quinn and just the way he played in that OHL season in Ottawa, but to be honest, what got us more excited was we felt he was just scratching the surface physically,” said Adams. “He was a late bloomer. So, then you start to think, ‘Man, I think there could be a lot more upside,’ and you're balancing that upside with a player kind of peaked.
“Going into my third draft in this role, it does give you confidence to say that the process and the plan that we've put in place, we can get behind and stick with. And it's hard. You’re projecting. … We really work hard to make sure that we're vetting these players out that we call their name, we believe they're gonna have every single opportunity to reach their ceiling, whatever that is.”
The prospect haul for the Sabres has been significant the past two years. Since drafting Quinn at No. 8 in 2020, Buffalo has added Peterka, Matteo Costantini, Albert Lycasen, Jakub Konecny, Power, Rosen, Prokhor Poltapov, Aleksandr Kisakov, Stiven Sardarian, Josh Bloom, Olivier Nadeau, Viljami Marjala, William Von Barnekow, Nikita Novikov and Tyson Kozak.
Quinn and Peterka delivered remarkable rookie seasons with the Rochester Americans, including an AHL Rookie of the Year honor for Quinn. Both are on the cusp of graduating to the NHL roster. Power proved in his eight games in Buffalo this spring that he’s ready to be a difference-maker at left-shot defense for the Sabres. Bloom and Nadeau had breakout seasons in junior hockey with the latter leading his club to the Memorial Cup. Rosen and Kisakov signed entry-level contracts with the Sabres and are expected to be in Rochester next season.
For all the early success stories, Adams has yet to conduct a draft in a normal setting. He and his staff will be on the floor at Montreal’s Bell Centre when the event begins, rather than submitting their picks from Buffalo for a virtual event. The Sabres were finally able to hold meetings with their entire scouting staff, except Russian scout Ruslan Pechonkin, after two years in which the pandemic made that impossible. The hockey operations staff is operating at full strength with at least one scout in every hotbed for talent. The analytics department also has grown over the past 12 months with Sam Ventura, Domenic Galamini Jr. and Matt Barlowe.
The burgeoning prospect pool, paired with the Sabres’ resurgence under coach Don Granato in the final two months of the season, has inspired hope for a fan base that hasn’t witnessed a playoff game in Buffalo since 2011.
The NHL roster is stocked with talented young players like Power, Rasmus Dahlin, Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens, Peyton Krebs, Casey Mittelstadt, Mattias Samuelsson and Henri Jokiharju. And there are proven veterans Kyle Okposo, Jeff Skinner, Alex Tuch, and pending restricted free agent Victor Olofsson.
But Adams is far from satisfied, even with another batch of players set to join the organization at the draft.
“I think we've taken steps,” he said. “The culture of our team is growing, and the players are buying in and believing in what's going on here. And I really feel that that's a positive step for us. But we know we have a long way to go and we need to keep getting better. If we put the people in this organization that you know can connect with the community and can make this town proud and truly, like I've said to you before, truly get up in the morning feeling honored that they're part of this organization, I think we're setting ourselves up for success. I think we're in a better spot, but we have a lot of work to do.”
