Kevyn Adams was only a symptom of the Buffalo Sabres problem

The Buffalo Sabres made a general manager change. They need bigger change than this.

The Buffalo Sabres fired general manager Kevyn Adams on Monday, replacing him with former Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen, and it was a move that probably needed to happen. It wasn’t working, Adams didn’t really do anything that moved the needle for the roster, and the franchise’s playoff drought is now closing in on 15 consecutive seasons with no real end in sight.

At some point you have to do something, and the general manager is one of the first obvious fall guys in a losing situation like this.

That is fine. Whatever. Teams change general managers all the time. Like head coaches, they are hired to eventually be fired. You will not get much pushback from Sabres fans or anybody else closely watching this team on Adams’ departure.

The problem is that Adams is exactly that — a fall guy. The latest fall guy in a seemingly never-ending series of fall guys that all take the blame for the one person that has overseen all of this mess and is almost certainly the root cause of it all.

That would be owner Terry Pegula.

“Sell the team” chants have become a popular rallying cry from fans of bad teams, but it is usually just venting and literally screaming into the void when your team is not as good as you think it should be. There are some instances, however, where it is a valid complaint.

Pirates fans have a valid complaint with Bob Nutting.

Oakland A’s fans had a valid complaint with John Fisher, because fuck that guy.

New York Jets fans have a valid complaint with Woody Johnson.

Sabres fans have a valid complaint here. I do not think they are actually screaming it yet. But they should be. They should be shouting it from the rafters at every home game. It should be on billboards throughout Western New York. There should be banners. Fans should be revolting.

When Pegula purchased the Sabres in February, 2011, they were a playoff team and a mostly successful organization. Even when they did not make the playoffs they were still within striking distance and close. They were pretty much always competitive.

The post-lockout teams in 2005-06 and 2006-07 are still two of the most exciting teams I have watched in the past 20-25 years. They were like rocket fuel every single night and played a wildly entertaining brand of hockey that not only won a lot of games, but was also something that brought you out of your seat and made you want to watch them.

Some winning teams are not fun to watch as an unbiased third-party observer. Winning is not always pretty. Sometimes it is boring. They were not one of those teams. It honestly sucks they did not win a championship because it might have inspired more teams to play like them instead of sending the league back into a renewed dead-puck era in the early 2010s.

That shit was awful to watch.

Thomas Vanek and Maxim Afinogenov. You guys were the chosen ones. You should have been, anyway.

The Sabres finished the 2010-11 season (the year Pegula purchased the team) in the playoffs and ultimately lost in the first round.

They have not been back.

Pegula came with a promise of spending money, building a winner and creating a “hockey heaven” in Buffalo.

They are now a decade-and-a-half into his ownership and the Sabres have instead been sent into the pits of hockey hell, and it is hard to put the blame on anybody other than him.

Frankly, it is impossible to blame anybody other than him.

He is the blame. He is the cause. He is the problem.

I keep going back to this image from a month ago as it is one of the most eye-opening visuals I have seen in sports recently. See that cliff on the right side of the screen? It started with Pegula’s purchase of the Sabres.

That is what failure looks like, friends.

The only playoff appearance under his watch came in a season where he had ownership of the team for three months. It had already established itself as a playoff team that he had no hand in building.

In the full seasons of his ownership:

• The Sabres have played in zero playoff games. Every other team in the NHL, including the Seattle Kraken, who did not even exist until five years ago, have played in at least 14 playoff games during that time.

• Every team other than Seattle (which, again, did not exist until five years ago) has appeared in at least 25 playoff games during that time.

• Every team other than Seattle (which, again, did not exist until five years ago) and Arizona/Utah has played in at least 36 playoff games during that time.

• The Sabres are now on their fifth different general manager of his ownership in 15 years. That is one every three years.

• The Sabres are now on the eighth different head coach of his ownership, and you can bet that will become a ninth coach at some point in the very near future. That is one just about every two years. The list of names on this list is also truly staggering, and even worse than the constant overturn suggests. We will get into that below.

Sports fans are not entitled to or deserve championships. They deserve an entertaining product, a competitive product and some effort. The sports fans of Buffalo are not getting that. They deserve better than this.

Let’s talk about all of this in more detail, because it is like a stinking, rotting onion, where every layer you pull back produces even more stink.