Sabres’ Kevyn Adams can’t say if he’ll stay in GM role

BUFFALO – In the coming days, general manager Kevyn Adams will be sitting down with owner Terry Pegula to review the season and offer insight into the Sabres’ sorry seventh-place finish in the Atlantic Division.

Adams, who was hand-picked by Pegula for the job in 2020, talks to his boss every day. Their relationship is closer than perhaps any GM and owner in the NHL.

But their annual end-of-season meeting to discuss the state of the Sabres – their NHL-record playoff drought just hit 14 seasons – could have a much different feel this time. Pegula will surely ask Adams to explain how a team on the precipice of a playoff berth two years ago has regressed over the past two seasons.

Adams, who reportedly has term on his contract, said on Saturday he hasn’t received any assurances from Pegula he will remain in his current role.

“Those meetings come up, it’ll be very shortly, where we’ll sit down with Terry and talk about that,” Adams said during an end-of-season news conference alongside coach Lindy Ruff in KeyBank Center. “And what I can tell you is I talk to Terry every day. He’s as frustrated as I am with the way the season went and where we are.

“And I’m certainly sure that he’ll be asking me a lot of hard questions and why we are where we are and where do we go from here? But that’s just kind of the normal process that we go through.”

During the 53 minutes he and Ruff spoke, Adams repeatedly put the onus on himself.

Adams said the first thing he plans to tell Pegula when they meet is “it’s not good enough.”

“I believe we should be a playoff team right now and we failed,” he said. “So it’s owning that, taking my responsibility for that, and then moving past that and saying, ‘Here’s how I see us improving and what we can do to fix it.’ …

“I believe that we’re closer than further, but the words are the words. We need to win hockey games, and I understand that.”

The Sabres have made zero changes since their season ended Thursday. Adams said on the radio earlier in the week Ruff will be returning next season.

Moves, of course, will inevitably be made following their 79-point finish. It’s just a matter of how big.

“We want to get better,” Adams said. “We’ll look at everything.”

Adams told players during their exit interviews they must look at themselves in the mirror. He wants everyone, including himself, to ask themselves what they can do better.

“That’s, to me, what really accountability is,” he said. “It’s knowing that I’m doing everything, reflecting and being self-aware. It starts with me first. And I think then that has a way of starting to work its way through the room.”

The Sabres struggled for much of Ruff’s first season back in Buffalo, although they briefly moved into a playoff spot before their 13-game winless skid effectively extinguished their playoff hopes before Christmas.

Still, they finished the season on a 12-7-1 run, playing a more consistent and mature style.

“I think we did a little better job of playing the game the right way for bigger chunks of the game,” Adams said of the that 20-game stretch. “You’re not going to play 60 perfect minutes. No team does in this league. But we did a better job of not beating ourselves. I thought we did a little bit of a better job in the last 20 or 30 games in terms of just situational awareness. …

“We had a better commitment, better understanding and better buy-in to that. Unfortunately, it’s hard to chase points late in the season and we played some good hockey down the stretch, but it was too late.”