The lasting impression from the season-ending press conference by Kevyn Adams has to be his repeated manta of wanting players who want to be Buffalo Sabres. That sentiment is fine and dandy, but it really tells nothing definitive regarding the direction of the team. After 10 years wandering the proverbial playoff wilderness, the organization owes its fans a vision to buy into. The most obvious conclusion to draw from Adams’s comments that there are clearly players who do not want to be Buffalo Sabres and that their very presence on the team is a problem to be solved before the team can get back to winning. Is that really a plan, or is that treating the symptoms rather than the disease? And what – really – is the plan for the Sabres this offseason?

If we enter our way-back machine, we can remember a time following the 2011 season when Terry Pegula and Darcy Regier embarked on a cross-country trip to recruit the likes of Robyn Regehr, Christian Ehrhoff and Ville Leino to join the Sabres in a misguided effort to bolster a shaky core. While the results did not match the effort, it was clear that management and ownership were attempting to build the best team they possibily could. Likewise, the infamous words of Darcy Regier in 2013 which signaled the start of the rebuild still echo through the organization:

“It may require some suffering,” Regier prophesized.

He was right, of course, but that is not the point. The point was that he had a point. The same cannot truly be said of the Sabres under Kevyn Adams. The Sabres are in desperate need of a vision for the fan base to grab ahold of here. Is the team about to embark on another purposeful crusade toward continuing to being terrible in the name of more high draft picks? Are they going to try to be good next year? Is their reason for existence still to win the Stanley Cup or are they settling for fixing the broken cupholders at the aging Key Bank Center?

Elsewhere in the league we get quotes from general managers like Jim Benning of the Vancouver Canucks who outlined a succinct and obvious plan. It would be fairly easy for Canucks fans to deduce that the team is explore all avenues to improve in the short term.

“Ownership has given us the resources to do whatever we need to do to get back to where we need to be," Benning said.

Meanwhile, here in Buffalo, we are largely left in the dark regarding the Sabres plans in the short, medium and long-term. This is not a knock on Kevyn Adams or a pre-emptive “I told you so” before his inevitable departure from the Sabres, whenever that may be. It is too easy to take a position that a general manager will ultimately get fired for his perceived or actual ineptitude as there is no general manager who will last forever in his position. It is a fact of life that sports jobs are completely impermanent. The point here is that there is a complete lack of organizational direction from the top-down regarding the direction of the franchise. That lack of vision begins with the Pegulas.

Once-upon-a-time, in a galaxy (that seems) far, far away, Terry Pegula famously proclaimed that the Sabres reason for existence is to win a Stanley Cup. There is no such clear mandate from ownership following 10 years of abject hockey misery. In fact, there is no mandate at all. Neither Terry Pegula nor Sabres Owner/President Kim Pegula spoke via Zoom conference following the conclusion of the 2021 Sabres season to give any sort of indication regarding their expectations of the team moving forward under General Manager Kevyn Adams and a coach who has yet to be named.

It is Kim Pegula’s prerogative as Sabres owner not to speak, but as Sabres President, she does have an obligation to be seen and heard. With that title should comes an obligation to the fan base to provide clarity regarding the direction of the franchise. It's an obligation that she has no problem fulfilling with the Bills (who are actually good). The Pegulas have too-often left the fan base in the dark regarding their decision-making process, as evidenced by Kim Pegula’s infuriating defense of then-general manager Jason Botterill following the 2019-2020 COVID-19 truncated season.

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

The Pegulas fired Botterill three weeks later.

It is exactly this sort of mixed message and incoherent packaging of organizational goals that can drive a fan base to anger – or worse – apathy. That anger-turned-apathy was clearly on display with Rasmus Ristolainen, Sam Reinhart and Jack Eichel during their year-end press conferences. They sound positively dead inside, and they also sound like they have no more understanding of the organization’s goals than the average fan. Can the average fan really blame them if they don’t want to be here anymore? Can Kevyn Adams? Adams seems to be responding to a crisis rather than laying out an actual plan to escape the constant state of crisis in which the organization consistently finds itself embroiled. Adams needs to sell the best players on the roster a future that includes them potentially hoisting hardware in June rather than condemning them for their ambivalence in a passive-aggressive tone. No one – including the players – seems to be privy to the plan here (if there is one). Sell them on a vision.

Sell the fans on a vison. Lay the plan out and let the public see a path to a future that isn’t so bleak. Right now, there are only questions and no answers. What's the plan here?

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