Sabres Have Zero Direction Right Now

It also feels like the Sabres do not have a plan, and there is zero direction with this team. They’re stuck in mediocrity, which is all management’s fault. Sabres’ general manager (GM), Kevyn Adams, has done a lackluster job with building a playoff roster, and that is just a fact.

Sabres Have an Identity Crisis

The Sabres have an identity crisis, and it has nothing to do with their on-ice play. It all has to do with the front office and which direction they’re leading the team. The fact of the matter is that they aren’t supposed to be a rebuilding team sitting in second-to-last place in the league, but they aren’t good enough to make a deep playoff run. They’re just an average team.

In 2021, when the Sabres traded Jack Eichel to the Vegas Golden Knights, it marked a new era in Buffalo and signaled they were entering a rebuild. There were ups and downs with the team, especially at the beginning of the 2021-22 season. The 2022-23 season came, and the team looked promising, missing the playoffs by one point. There was a clear direction at that point in the Adams era.

Since the 2022-23 season, the Sabres have been regressing consistently in terms of their season point total, from a team with many young, up-and-coming players to one that seems to have three stars and the rest as third-line players on most playoff contenders.

The players that broke out during the 2022-23 season were Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens, Jack Quinn, J.J. Peterka, Mattias Samuelsson, and Casey Mittelstadt. Only Thompson, Quinn, and Samuelsson remain with the organization.

The other three players, Cozens, Peterka, and Mittelstadt, were all eventually traded. Mittelstadt was traded to the Colorado Avalanche at the 2024 Trade Deadline for Bowen Byram, one for one. Cozens was traded at the 2025 Trade Deadline to the Ottawa Senators in exchange for Norris. Peterka, who was a restricted free agent this past offseason, was traded to the Utah Mammoth for Josh Doan and Michael Kesselring.

The additions for Norris, Doan, Byram, and Kesselring have been good; however, outside of those players, the Sabres have not made any significant splash additions, especially in free agency, which has led to this point. The most important additions for the Sabres since the 2023 offseason via free agency have been Alex Lyon and Zucker. That’s not sufficient to make the playoffs.

Are the Sabres rebuilding? No. Are they a playoff team? As of right now, no, they are not. There are two directions the Sabres need to go: either tear everything down and try another rebuild, which, if done right, will take another three to four seasons, or go all in. Thompson is a 40-plus goal scorer, Dahlin is in the Norris conversation every season, and Tuch is a 60-plus point scorer and is a great two-way player. There’s no way that the Sabres should not be at least in the playoff conversation with those three players alone.

Where Should the Sabres Go From Here?

In my opinion, the Sabres should go only one way: do everything in their power to make the playoffs. With the players listed above, there’s just too much talent not to be at least a playoff bubble team. Before they even think about rebuilding again, they need to put the finishing touches on the roster to help the team make a push for the playoffs and get better assistant coaches. The assistant coaches in the organization have been with the Sabres since 2020-21.

With still some great talent coming up through the American Hockey League (AHL), the Sabres are not in a bad spot roster-wise, but it’s about putting it together on the ice, which is why new assistant coaches need to be brought in; change is necessary.

I will give the Sabres the benefit of the doubt with their injuries to some key players, plus Dahlin’s leave of absence, but before Benson went down and Dahlin left for Sweden, the Sabres were 5-3-4 and were at least staying competitive in games. We’ll see if they can get healthy and start racking up points again, because we’re in November and the season is beginning to slip away.