Can Sabres owner Terry Pegula finally get it right with Jarmo Kekalainen hiring?

Good luck in “hockey heaven,” Jarmo Kekalainen.

You’re probably going to need it.

Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula’s latest attempt to turn around his flailing NHL franchise came Monday when he fired general manager Kevyn Adams after 5 1/2 years of bad hockey and installed Kekalainen in the role, months after the former Columbus Blue Jackets GM was brought aboard as a senior adviser.

Pegula said at his initial press conference when he bought the team in 2011 that his goal was to make Buffalo hockey heaven. Needless to say, that has not happened.

Meanwhile, the NFL’s Bills have become a perennial contender and have an MVP quarterback in Josh Allen under Pegula’s ownership — though long-time head coach Sean McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane might want to find a way to make it to a Super Bowl soon to avoid wasting a generational talent while a multi-billion-dollar stadium gets set to open next year.

At least the Bills, bought by Pegula in 2014, can say they have Super Bowl hopes with honest conviction — whereas the Sabres would be laughed at today if they started talking about their chances of winning the Stanley Cup this season.

The Western New York-raised Adams, promoted to GM in 2020 from a business role despite little hockey management experience after a 540-game NHL playing career, becomes the fourth GM to be dismissed by Pegula, following Darcy Regier, Tim Murray and Jason Botterill.

Current head coach Lindy Ruff actually was the bench boss when Pegula bought the team. He was brought back for a second go-around before last season. Ron Rolston, Ted Nolan, Dan Bylsma, Phil Housley, Ralph Krueger and Don Granato have come and gone as Sabres coaches since Ruff was first sent out in 2013.

During the Pegula era, the team has had two first-overall picks (Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power) — yet hasn’t made the playoffs since the owner’s first year in 2011, a seven-game series loss to the Philadelphia Flyers. That, of course, marks the longest playoff drought in the NHL.

The Sabres, you might recall, seemed to be doing everything in their power to get another first-overall pick in 2015, only to have the lottery balls come up in favour of Edmonton. The Oilers took a guy named Connor McDavid, who played junior hockey a couple of hours away in Erie, Pa., and grew up another couple of hours away in Newmarket, Ont. The Oilers have won the past two Western Conference titles.

Buffalo selected Jack Eichel second overall in McDavid’s draft year. That ended in a mess with Eichel wanting a certain neck surgery that the Sabres didn’t support. A trade to Vegas eventually followed, with Eichel now one of the best players in the league and also a Stanley Cup winner in 2023.

Alex Tuch, who grew up a couple of hours away near Syracuse, N.Y., was one of the big pieces shipped to the Sabres in the Eichel deal. He’s a very good player, but is eligible for free agency after this season as the two sides have not been able to come to terms on an extension.

Having said all this, Kekalainen does have some things to build on. Adams did respectable work last summer when he got Josh Doan and Michael Kesselring from the Utah Mammoth for a player who had no interest in staying with Buffalo long-term — JJ Peterka. And Adams actually exits with his team on a three-game win streak to salvage a 3-3 road trip, putting Buffalo in a tie (!!) for last in the East with the Ottawa Senators and Blue Jackets entering play Monday.

Smartly (which is not a word that can be used to describe much of what the Sabres have done for the past 15 years), the team didn’t let a little win streak erase mounting evidence indicating a shakeup was necessary.

Since Adams infamously suggested at a press conference last year that Buffalo’s lack of palm trees and high taxes made it tougher for the Sabres to recruit players, fan unrest has only increased.

Signs of a disconnect between Ruff and Adams began to emerge this season, with the coach wondering aloud about having three goalies on the roster and noting it was a shame that they had to send promising prospect Noah Ostlund back to the AHL at one point because of a numbers crunch.

Ruff, it should be noted, also is very open to criticism. While he was a fan favourite in Buffalo as a player and as coach during his first long run, the team isn’t any better under Ruff than under his predecessor, Granato. Ruff, 65, is in the final year of his two-year contract, giving Kekalainen plenty of freedom to bring in his own man.

Kekalainen, the GM of the Blue Jackets from 2013-24, by no means has a flawless resume — but at least he has experience as a GM, unlike the three most recent men in that position for Buffalo. He also has experience taking another small-market team to the Stanley Cup Playoffs five times.

Pegula, meanwhile, has his own experience breaking painful droughts. After he hired McDermott and Beane in 2017, the Bills broke an NFL-high, 17-year playoff-less run. The Bills have been to two AFC Championship games since then, falling just short of a Super Bowl appearance last season in a narrow loss against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Perhaps Kekalainen’s hiring is the start of something better for Buffalo’s other major-league team.

But Sabres fans have every right to hold off on applauding too loudly just yet. There’s a long, hard road ahead for Kekalainen to try to restore trust in an organization that has zero playoff series wins under current ownership.