[Lysowski] Questions et réponses des Sabres : Kevyn Adams sur le contrat de l’UPL, le statut de Zemgus Girgensons et plus

3 Comments

1. Spiritual_Bourbon 3 semaines ago

   https://archive.ph/H4sFk

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   ### Q: Given the Washington Capitals’ purchase of the website, CapFriendly.com, do the Sabres have a similar database with information on contracts across the NHL?

   A: It’s amazing how much attention this has gotten, to be honest with you, but I can see it from a fan or media perspective. CapFriendly is amazing. It’s easy. It’s accurate. It’s user-friendly. In terms of us and how it will impact our day-to-day, zero. We have our own proprietary platform and other databases we look at. Sam Ventura and his analytics group have a way to look at all of the data and the data snapshot I need. For me, when I’m in conversations with, let’s say, another team’s general manager, I can click on a player for a one-page snapshot of the contract information, all of the statistics, our scout ratings, game reports, injury lists and everything else you’d need.

   ### Q: Where does Henri Jokiharju fit in your plans given his status as a restricted free agent and the improvement he made this season?

   A: We met with his agent at the combine. Spent some time with him because Henri has a new agent. He’s with J.P. Barry of CAA now. When you pick up with a new agency, there are a lot of conversations that are left behind, so we wanted to make sure they were up to speed entirely on what we had discussed. When it comes to Henri, I thought he had an excellent second half to the season. Being a right-shot defenseman that can play big minutes, he showed he can play with anybody. He can play with Rasmus Dahlin. He can play with Owen Power. He can play with Bowen Byram. I just think Henri is a guy that’s a good fit with our group right now. Saying all that, we know he’s one year from unrestricted free agency. The way I outlined it to J.P. was, ‘Hey, this is a guy we really like, but we also understand he’s where he is in his career.’ I don’t anticipate it getting overly complicated getting a deal done. They know how we feel, and we’ll let them come back to us on what are the next steps.

   ### Q: How do you view the mix on your defense with Dahlin, Power, Byram and Mattias Samuelsson each being left-handed?

   A: We spent a lot of time on this, obviously, as you can imagine, over the last two years, really trying to find a top-four defenseman that can grow with us, that wasn’t just at the end of his career or something like that. It’s not easy to do, so, when the possibility of acquiring Bo started to come to fruition, I personally spent some time with Rasmus making sure that he was comfortable on his right side. Even from an analytics standpoint, a lot of his numbers look better on the right than the left. Similar with Owen Power. So, Rasmus, Owen, Samuelsson and Bo, because he was playing the right side in Colorado, are all very comfortable on the right side. That was at least a conversation we had before acquiring him. How they all fit together, my goal is to make sure that Lindy has options of how he wants to pair and that could change. I think sometimes people get a little too focused on, ‘Here’s your top pair, your second pair, your third pair.’ Some of it’s situational in games or home-road matchups. Are we up a goal or down a goal? Have we taken three or four penalties, so now Sammy’s minutes are heavier because he’s killing penalties? To me, it’s all fluid, but I really like the way our D corps is shaping up, for sure.

   ### Q: What are a few of your priorities this offseason, whether it be on the trade market or through unrestricted free agency?

   A: Obviously, it’s getting UPL signed. I think depth on D is critical. I really like where our D corps is at but making sure we have really good (depth). You’re going to have different injuries during the year. You’re going to have call-ups, so make sure the depth side of our D is squared away. And when I look at our forward group, I get excited because I think we have a core of guys that are at good ages. Now they’ve got some experience. I believe that the way we want to play next year is going to be fast, get out of our zone, attack, more physicality where we can. So, I think you look at it and you’d say, definitely the bottom six of our lineup would be important to focus on. Having some guys that have a little bit of an identity, veteran, hard-to-play-against type of guys. And that could be our own. That can be (Zemgus) Girgensons or that can be guys on the outside. We’re spending a lot of time looking at (center) when you make a trade. As excited as you are about acquiring Bo, you lose a player like (Casey Mittelstadt), so how do you fill those positions? I really feel good about our group overall, but it’s just fine-tuning it.

   ### Q: Is there any truth to the speculation that Girgensons already has decided that he’d prefer to test the market when unrestricted free agency begins July 1?

   A: He hasn’t made a decision that I know of. I spoke to his agent on Friday to let them know that we have a lot of respect for him and what he’s done in his career. When you talk about guys who compete and bring consistent effort every night and you’re looking to fill that out with physicality in the bottom of your lineup, he checks a lot of boxes. For me, if Zemgus were an unrestricted free agent on another team, he’d be the type of guy you’d want to acquire. I understand where guys are at in their career. Ultimately, it’s his decision, so we’ll see how it shakes out.

   ### Q: It’s an open secret that you’re willing to trade the 11th pick in the draft. Where do you stand with two weeks before everyone is in Las Vegas?

   A: It’s why these meetings up to the draft have been so important because you want to be prepared for every potential scenario. We’ve made it clear to the entire league that we are absolutely open to trading pick 11 if it makes sense or trading prospects to help our team now. But these are valuable assets. You don’t say, « We’re going to trade pick 11 because we can trade pick 11. » It has to make sense. The reality of that is that’s not something that is simple to do. If you’re going to trade pick 11 or a top prospect, very, very valuable assets, it’s going to need to really be someone that comes into your roster to help you win now, and, in a perfect world, can grow with you over time. Someone has to check the box of what you need. But the way I’m looking at it, the way I’ve talked to our staff this offseason, is every single decision we make and every single conversation we have starts with, « How does it make our roster better? » And that’s what we’re doing. But we also always have to balance the long-term and everything else.

2. Roguemutantbrain 3 semaines ago

   I like Adams philosophy of not spending assets like a kid in a candy store, but I hope he doesn’t sit on his hands too much either. At the very least, we need someone who can apply upward pressure on the top 6. Personally, I think we need a top 6 winger.

3. reddishgrape 3 semaines ago

   Adams knows how to say what people want to hear. That’s how he got his job in the first place