The job of a general manager in the NHL is very coveted.
There are only 32, and Jarmo Kekalainen now arguably owns the most challenging one of them all. He’s going to be tasked with ending a 14-year playoff drought and starting out with his Buffalo Sabres sitting tied for last in the Eastern Conference. During this stretch of futility, the Sabres have had five different general managers and eight head coaches, as well as two first-overall picks. So, they’ve tried just about everything and solved nothing.
It’s going to be a daunting task for Kekalainen to undertake, and he has a list of things a mile long to solve for the Sabres, but here are the most important four he has to tackle:
Alex Tuch’s contract situation
Tuch will be an unrestricted free agent this summer, so Kekalainen has to figure this one out right away. The Sabres can’t afford to let Tuch walk for nothing, meaning he could be in play at the trade deadline if the two sides can’t come to terms. That would be a less-than-ideal scenario for Buffalo, as it has watched several key players like Ryan O’Reilly, Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart and Linus Ullmark walk out the door via free agency or trade in recent years. A team almost always loses the trade when it is giving away the best player in the deal, which is likely what the Sabres would be doing in a potential Tuch trade.
Tuch did sound optimistic about where the team is heading this week when he spoke to reporters.
"Jarmo coming in is going to bring a lot of experience and a new perspective. ... I have all the faith in the world that we can make the playoffs. I think that we've been playing some of our best hockey as of late, I'm just really focusing on the present."
You could interpret that in two ways as far as Tuch’s future is concerned. The first one is very positive with Tuch sounding excited about continuing with the Sabres beyond the deadline and pushing for the playoffs in a wide-open conference. That said, the phrase “I’m just focusing on the present” doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence that he’s focused on being with the team long term.
There were also rumblings this week that Tuch is looking for a contract around or just North of Adrian Kempe’s $10.6 million. That’s a massive raise from the $4.7 million he’s making now and probably more than the Sabres want to pay for a winger, but they’d be wise to do whatever it takes to secure him. Tuch can be a point-per-game player, and next summer’s free agent class is starting to look thin, so finding a replacement on the open market will be difficult. Not to mention Buffalo isn’t a top landing spot at the moment.
The Sabres can’t afford the optics of having to move on from a very talented player, even if they do have to make a slight overpay with Tuch. Watching a native Western New Yorker walk out the door would sting that much more for Sabres fans.
Who will coach the team beyond this season?
Lindy Ruff is in the final year of his contract as well, and given how the team has played under his tutelage this time around, it seems very unlikely he’ll be back. Even more so when Kekalainen was non-committal about Ruff’s future this week.
If Kekalainen does want to make a change, this isn’t the worst time to explore one with a handful of solid candidates available. Perhaps the best one is Peter DeBoer, who is 9-0 in Game 7s and has a habit of getting his team to the Conference Final. I’m sure the Sabres would settle for a simple playoff berth with anything beyond that being gravy. DeBoer may be hard to convince to bring in, though, as the main goal at this point in his career is to win a Stanley Cup, and the Sabres don’t seem anywhere close to that.
Then there’s Peter Laviolette, who has a good recent history of getting results quickly but then struggling to sustain them. Again, Buffalo fans would probably gladly sign up for a playoff appearance in the next couple of years, even if it didn’t necessarily come with a solid foundation of long-term success, but Kekalainen shouldn’t aim for short-term gains if he isn’t confident his team is well set up for the long haul. He has to get this franchise on stable ground and set it up for success for the foreseeable future.
Kekalainen also has a history with John Tortorella during their time with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of Tortorella behind an NHL bench, and he could be pried out of the television studio to join the Sabres. The veteran head coach has a history of squeezing every last drop out of his teams, but Tortorella also has a shelf life as well. After a few years, his message can start wearing thin.
There will also no doubt be a number of other solid candidates that emerge after the season that could make a good first-time head coach, whether they are current NHL assistants or coming from the AHL. Whatever way Kekalainen decides to go, he has to get the hire right, as it’s either going to set the Sabres on the right course or keep them in mediocrity.
Sort out the three-goalie situation
I don’t really know anyone who is a fan of a three-goalie rotation, except maybe the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Sabres are employing one right now with Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Alex Lyon and Colten Ellis all in the mix. Luukkonen’s numbers haven’t been great since his breakout season in 2023-24, Lyon is a veteran stopgap that can’t handle a starter’s workload, and Ellis, who the Sabres claimed on waivers earlier this year, appears to have some upside. There’s also Devon Levi, who has looked solid in the AHL and may be the goalie of the future for this team.
However, until they get to a place where they’re comfortable handing things over to Levi, it doesn’t make sense to keep running three goalies. It’s hard to get into a rhythm when all three guys are healthy because starts are so infrequent, so it might mean moving one off the roster to fill another area of need. The Sabres would probably want to keep Ellis and see what he becomes, so that leaves Lyon and Luukkonen as possible trade chips. Could a team like the Los Angeles Kings view Lyon as a short-term fix while Darcy Kuemper is injured and with a tough schedule coming up?
Considering the price Tristan Jarry just fetched, Luukkonen could be an attractive piece to a team, too. He’s on a very reasonable $4.7-million cap hit for three seasons beyond this one, and with the cap going up, that should be very palatable for a team to take on. He’s still only 26 years old, and Luukkonen had a .910 save percentage across 54 games just two years ago. The Montreal Canadiens have really struggled in goal this season, and perhaps they’d be in the market for an improvement if Jacob Fowler can’t solve their woes.
Kekalainen just has to get the two netminders he values most playing more regularly so he can better evaluate what he has in his crease going forward.
Ensure Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin are committed to the franchise long term
What’s amazing about Buffalo’s struggles is that they haven’t had trouble drafting or acquiring high-end talent, they’ve just had to watch them succeed elsewhere. O’Reilly won a Conn Smythe, Eichel and Reinhart captured Cups, and Ullmark secured a Vezina, rubbing salt in the wounds of Sabres fans everywhere.
The last thing Kekalainen wants to see is history repeating itself with Thompson and Dahlin. Neither has given any indication they would want out, but there’s only so much losing you can take, and most players won’t want to spend the prime of their career in a bad environment. Thompson and Dahlin are both locked up long-term, though there’s nothing stopping them from asking for a trade if things don’t eventually get better down the road. We just saw a situation with Quinn Hughes and the Vancouver Canucks, where things in the organization had deteriorated to the point that Hughes didn’t want to sign an extension with the franchise.
Buffalo just dealt with a similar situation with JJ Peterka. He’s not as high-profile as Thompson and Dahlin, but he was a good young talent that the Sabres were forced to deal because he didn’t want to stick around. The jury is still out on who won that trade, as Josh Doan and Michael Kesselring look to be key pieces coming back the other way, but it’s hard to win deals when you’re always giving up the most talented player.
Winning cures all, and the Sabres need to create an environment where players want to stay. Buffalo is a great hockey town and should be a destination and not a layover.
