The Sabres are set for a make-or-break offseason this summer

With the Buffalo Sabres hiring Jarmo Kekalainen as a senior advisor, a lot of eyes are on the club to see how they handle the offseason in a make-or-break year.

Today on Daily Faceoff Live, Frank Seravalli shines more light on what the Sabres could do this summer.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Today is about the Buffalo Sabres, and Kevyn Adams is staying at the helm. He’s going to have Jarmo Kekalainen on his staff. Now, we actually didn’t touch on that last week. What did you make of the addition to the Sabres front office?

Frank Seravalli: I thought it was really interesting in the way that it was rolled out, that you saw Kevyn Adams providing quotes saying that he was sitting in on these meetings. and I guess it’s always important to be in locked step with the people that you work with, but it just seemed it almost made it sound like the Sabres were presenting it like, hey, this was Kevyn Adams’s idea and we’re adding in this other voice to the front office., why, it’s because you had a lack of success. Five years under Adams, zero playoff words. It’s 14 consecutive years now as an organization. It’s been an incredibly destructive run, and I think this is gonna be a make-or-break season for the Sabres moving forward because they’ve gotta decide which direction they’re going. Are they retooling this a bit and trying to figure it out? 

Frank Seravalli: Are they adding pieces in win-now mode? Are they trading off some guys that may or may not want to be part of it in the future? They’ve done a lot of questions to answer, and I think, in a lot of ways, though, Kekalainen is to be that guy who can be the sounding board. He’s very direct, he’s blunt, you don’t really spend a lot of time wondering what Kekalainen is thinking. So with that, that’s gonna be key in setting an order and a list of priorities, because that’s one thing that, as Kevyn Adams has made calls around the league, even in these last few weeks, the sense that’s emanated from these teams is, hey, we wanna do something. And then the teams respond back and say, okay, but what is something? Who are you looking to move? And it’s like, well, I don’t know, it could be anyone here. And that’s exciting for some teams to think about or consider, but what is the priority list for the Sabres? Where are their voids? What are their holes, who is it that’s not coming back, and how do you find a way to sort of break free from this idea that if I’m Kevyn Adams, I really like some of the players on this roster as an individual player or on paper, but the collection of parts for this team doesn’t work.