Kevyn Adams Strikes a Hockey Deal for the Second-Straight Season

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Kevyn Adams had a productive deadline, pulling one of the more significant trades of the window for the second year in a row. Friday’s fireworks means that Buffalo’s swap won’t grab as many headlines as last year’s Casey Mittelstadt for Bowen Byram trade, but swapping Dylan Cozens, Dennis Gilbert and a second round pick for Josh Norris and Jacob Bernard-Docker is a significant shake up of the team’s core. 

Similar to 2024, Adams struck for a hockey trade to help reshape his roster. Cozens was a notable piece of Buffalo’s core, locked up long term and wore an A this season. Trading him is a significant decision that almost certainly is meant to strike a chord in the room in a massively disappointing season. On the ice, Norris will step right into Cozen’s role as the team’s second center. He’s a quality contributor on the power play and should be a big upgrade over Cozens with the man advantage. Norris’ 12 power play points outpace Cozens’ 4 points of power play production this year. For their careers, Norris has 60 points (33+27) with the man advantage compared to 42 (12+30) for Cozens. For a team that struggles on the power play, that’s a helpful addition. 

Norris’ injury history is the concern here. He has missed significant time with shoulder issues the last few years, though he is on pace for the highest games played total of his career this season. If the Sabres can keep him on the ice, they’ll be in good shape.

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The Instigator Podcast 13.24 – 2025 Sabres Trade Deadline Preview

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With the trade deadline just a few days away, we run down the players on Buffalo’s roster who may be on the move by Friday. We touch on Jordan Greenway, Henri Jokiharju and Jason Zucker while also devoting some time to Alex Tuch as trade rumors around Buffalo’s assistant captain won’t seem to go away.

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Over Thought: A Quiet Deadline Ahead?

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So far, the reporting on Buffalo’s trade deadline outlook has painted the picture of a team that won’t do much by Friday. The league’s biggest insiders are all saying the same thing – the Sabres aren’t looking for futures and they aren’t getting offers that meet their asking price on any of the players they’ve made available. 

If it’s true that the Sabres won’t be especially active on Friday, it will be hard for anyone associated with the team to sell the idea that they’re serious about breaking their playoff drought. The deadline isn’t an ideal venue for the sort of deals the Sabres would need to make in order to bring about any sort of meaningful change, but the indications that Kevyn Adams will stand pat (after a season of inaction) will certainly set off additional frustration within the fanbase. At least however many fans are left to pay attention to such things. I wouldn’t blame anyone for that added frustration. Just follow some Buffalo Sabres live scores and you’ll see just how incomplete this group is. 

I would argue that this doesn’t need to be a week to completely overhaul the roster, or even have a really active deadline. The Sabres only have a few pending UFAs and I think they’d like to keep at least one of them. Any potential for a hockey trade has had cold water thrown on it, but those things can change quickly. Either way, I think you’re talking about one move of that magnitude by the end of the week. And if that happened, I think that would exceed most expectations too. 

Adams’ real work needs to come in the summer. He could and should have done more when the season was younger, but he failed at that task. The summer will be the time when he needs to push the right buttons and jettison passengers. Whether or not he’s capable of it, or has the financial flexibility from ownership remains to be seen. 

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The Instigator Podcast 13.23 – Deadline Names to Watch & Listener Questions

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Just a week remains until the trade deadline and the Sabres have won six of seven games. This episode shares a few Buffalo Sabres players I’m keeping an eye on ahead of the deadline before diving in to a few listener questions that touch on the potential downtown soccer stadium, Alex Ovechkin’s record pursuit, Devon Levi and Buffalo’s blueline.

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4 Nations Notes

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There’s bound to be some whiplash switching from the 4 Nations Face Off back to regular season NHL action. The in-season tournament exceeded any and all expectations fans, media and probably even the players had for it, and there is a newfound level of interest in hockey as a result. 

Big television viewership and a pair of thrilling games between the US and Canada made the event appointment viewing and served as an ideal reset for NHL participation in international play. There were a few additional thoughts I wanted to share looking back at the event that didn’t fit into the recap of the tournament that already ran on the blog. 

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Reflecting on the Wild Success of the 4 Nations Face Off

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I’m not sure if you gave Gary Bettman a genie and some wishes he could have come up with a better outcome for the 4 Nations Face Off. The midseason tournament was a smash hit for the NHL, thrusting the sport’s stars into the spotlight and bringing a level of attention to the league that hasn’t been seen in years. 

A week and a half of thrilling hockey was headlined by a pair of excellent matchups between the U.S. and Canada. It was an ideal result for the NHL as their brightest star scored the tournament clinching goal less than a week after a raucous, fight-filled affair on Saturday night in Montreal. The preliminary match drew a big TV audience in the States and Thursday’s championship nearly hit 10 million U.S. viewers, unheard of numbers for the NHL. Every player has commented about how special it was to play for their country in this format. At every turn, the 4 Nations Face Off was a win.

This isn’t the first time the NHL has enjoyed a bit of extra attention from an international event. Team USA’s run to the gold medal game in 2010 was a captivating story and you couldn’t turn on a daytime talk show without seeing TJ Oshie in 2014. The NHL wasn’t able to keep the positive momentum from those Olympic appearances rolling once games resumed, leaving a questionable track record when contrasted with the post 4 Nations glow. 

The big difference this time is that the league owned the tournament. The games were broadcast by the league’s broadcast partners (like NBC in ‘10 and ‘14) and the NHL organized and oversaw every aspect of the event. Social media is also a much different animal today than it was during either of those two events and the league’s star power has never been more impressive. There are certainly more factors playing to the NHL’s favor this time than at any point in the last three best-on-best tournaments NHL players have participated in. 

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The Instigator Podcast 13.22 – 4 Aces for the 4 Nations

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The 4 Nations Face Off has been a massive success for the NHL, headlined by an excellent USA vs. Canada matchup on Saturday night. We run through the preliminary round results, not just breaking down the fight-filled game between the US and Canada but the results for the Finns and Swedes as well. In addition to our discussion on the hugely positive reaction to the preliminary games, we also offer up a preview for Thursday’s rematch between the US and Canada for the 4 Nations championship. 

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Sabres Showdown Episode 2: 2005-06 vs. 2006-07

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The second episode of Sabres Showdown is here. Once again the Straight Up Sabres team joins us for the conversation over two of the most memorable teams in Sabres history. This time we break down the 2005-06 and 2006-07 Sabres teams, attempting to determine which of the two deserve the honor of moving on in our bracket to face the 1998-99 Cup Finalists. We also give some love to the 2000-01 Sabres team as one of the most notable honorable mentions to miss out on the larger conversation of the best Sabres teams of all time. 

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The Instigator Podcast 13.21 – 4 Nations Face Off Preview & Predictions

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The 4 Nations Face Off has arrived and we devote this episode to a breakdown of the four teams and how they may fare in the tournament. We offer up thoughts on how each team has looked in their early practices and how we expect the tournament to go once it gets rolling on Wednesday. 

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Over Thought: Rumors Galore Ahead of 4 Nations

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Over Thought is a semi-regular series that takes a look at some of the more interesting and notable tidbits shared by Elliotte Friedman in his weekly 32 Thoughts column. Each edition will feature some unique thoughts on the state of the Sabres or league as a whole before digging in on some of the notes from Freidman’s weekly column.

The Sabres will probably welcome this 4 Nations break with open arms after spending the weeks in the crosshairs of the NHL’s water cooler. The fallout from the Tage Thompson hit will probably linger beyond the 4 Nations Face Off as well, but I doubt it will be quite as focused as it was for the last few days. 

Buffalo wasn’t part of the trade flurry ahead of the 4 Nations Face Off, not that they had to be, but there has been an awful lot of chatter about who is and isn’t available lately, setting the table for a very interesting week leading up to the March 7 trade deadline. 

What sort of long term effect this saga has on the Sabres will be fascinating to follow. Darcy Regier allowed the Milan Lucic hit completely reshape how he was building his roster. Buffalo put an onus on getting tougher after that incident and two years later they were in a tear down rebuild. This iteration of the Sabres doesn’t have any recent success to look back on, so any sort of retooling wouldn’t have quite the same impact as it did in 2011. Additionally, Kevyn Adams was very outspoken about his desire to shift Buffalo’s identity and bring in players who would make them harder to play against last summer. The result was a remade fourth line and the addition of Dennis Gilbert on the blueline. On Sunday, only one of the three newcomers to the fourth line was in uniform (one was in Rochester) and Gilbert didn’t see the ice in the third period. 

The Sabres have plenty of items on their to-do list to get back to the playoffs, and I’d worry if toughness suddenly trumped some of the other, more pressing matters. I maintain that the solution to these issues is only going to be found if the group comes around to the realization of how they have to play. You can add tough guys left and right, but if there isn’t a desire in the room to have the fortitude and accountability to stand up in these situations, almost any acquisition will fall flat. In addition, any player the Sabres do pursue in the name of toughness needs to be able to play. Sam Bennett, for example, is the sort of guy who embodies the attitude the Sabres need to carry. He’s also a capable forward in this league. Compare him to Sam Lafferty, who is watching the Sabres from the press box. That’s the sort of calculus that will be needed if the Sabres once again try and address their toughness and identity this offseason. 

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