The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: Matthew Barnaby Gives an Instant Reaction to the Kevyn Adams News

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

Matthew Barnaby joins Jeff Marek to give an instant reaction to the news out of Buffalo that Kevyn Adams has been relieved of his duties as the General Manager and Jarmo Kekäläinen will be taking overSHOUTOUT TO OUR SPONSORS!!👍🏼 Fan Duel: https://www.fanduel.com/👍🏼Bauer: https://www.bauer.com/👍🏼Uber Eats: https://www.ubereats.com/caReach out to [e-mail] to connect with our Sales Team and discuss opportunities to partner with us!If you liked this, check out:🚨 OTT - Coming in Hot Sens | https://www.youtube.com/c/thewallyandmethotshow🚨 TOR - LeafsNation | https://www.youtube.com/@theleafsnation401🚨 EDM - OilersNation | https://www.youtube.com/@Oilersnationdotcom🚨 VAN - CanucksArmy | https://www.youtube.com/@Canucks_Army🚨 CGY - FlamesNation | https://www.youtube.com/@FNBarnBurner🚨 Daily Faceoff Fantasy & Betting | www.youtube.com/@DFOFantasyandBetting____________________________________________________________________________________________Connect with us on ⬇️Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/daily_faceoff💻 Website: https://www.dailyfaceoff.com🐦 Follow on twitter: https://x.com/DailyFaceoff💻 Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dailyfaceoffDaily Faceoff Merch:https://nationgear.ca/collections/daily-faceoff Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Buffalo Sabres have made a decision as we talked to Matthew Fairburn about for about, I don't know, 25 minutes. Shortly after we hung up with Matthew and brought John aboard, the Buffalo Sabres made it official. Kevin Adams is out, Yarmou Keckelan is in. And with that, we'll go to a former Buffalo Saber, now one of the top analysts in this country or anywhere for that matter. Matthew Barnaby, former Buffalo Saber joins me now here on the program. First of all, Matthew, thanks for popping on here at late notice. But Barney, this doesn't surprise you, does it? I don't think it surprises anybody at this point.

No, if you're surprised by this, I got some oceanfront property that I want to sell you in Scottsdale. So, yeah, absolutely not. This has been a long time coming. And listen, you never like to see someone get fired in any business. And this is a very coveted job. but in the end the NHL is about results and the results have not been there and there's been some trades that haven't worked out

and areas of need that haven't been addressed. So they're not going to be a playoff team again this year. And when Yarmour was hired, if you didn't see the writing on the wall, well, you're the naive one. We're either going to do it this way, we're going to make the playoffs or they're going to take over. Yeah, that's what I wondered about too.

Hey, Barney. Like I've heard about situate, and I don't know if this is true of Buffalo. I've just heard this in other situations where, you know, the coach is on thin ice, but the deal is every quarter there's a review with the owner. And if the team's not in a playoff position, that could mean that the general manager finds his way out of the organization. I don't know if that is true or not.

In this case, it might feel that way, but this little mini three-game winning streak is essentially meaningless. I would make the argument that, you know, even before they won these last three games, The decision had already been made that when they come back from Seattle, there was going to be a GM change. Yeah, it happens in every organization, Jeff. You nailed it. These guys review every year. And listen, he's, Terry Pugula is more out of it now than he used to be.

I mean, he was in the forefront before. I'm talking trades. I'm talking everything. But in the end, I agree with you. The decision was made before, and this is how they were going to handle it. and we can't think in any which way that Kevin Adams was actually the guy that hired General Kiliman.

I know if you're a guy that hasn't made the playoffs in five or six years, you're not going to go hire a guy that can probably take your job if you're not going to make the playoffs again. So I think that was an organizational decision, not a Kevin Adams decision. And again, it's not a surprise. This team has a lot of faults, and even with this three-game winning streak,

it's not going to be a playoff seat. So what are the, because this is a unique situation to your point, you know, Yarmou Kekalainen has already been around this team. He's had a look under the hood. He knows, you know, what's working, what's not working, which relationship is good, which relationship is bad, who belongs, who doesn't, whether it's the coaching staff, whether it's player personnel.

Like, what do you think the first decisions here that Yarmo makes? Because I don't think he takes the root of a lot of new, General managers who come in and say, I'm going to buy myself a year and say, well, I need to get acquainted with the organization. I need to really get in here and roll up my, like, he's done all that already. I think it's a situation where he hits the ground running. What do you think the first decision is? Absolutely.

Well, the first decision better be to try to get Alex Tuck to resign. We can have, you know, Buffalo can't have an Alex Tuck leaving, even though he hasn't a great year this year, but it's convincing him not to, not to want to leave. then I think they're going to look at listen this team was like one in seven at the start of the year and lion save percentage was like 924 like that's ridiculous they couldn't score goals then goaltending wasn't so good and they did score goals but it's you know there's so many areas of need the back end listen owen power is a is a good offensive player but for what they're paying them and they already have a number one

quarterback on the power play in Dahlene. Dahlene is going nowhere. What do you do with an old power? Like, there's a lot of parts of this game I don't like. So are you going to address that bottom six? The bottom six is small. Like they're not a heavy. Like you watch

the Florida Paine. You watch these teams that are good. And those bottom six are pretty heavy. It's just a small team on that bottom six. So there's a lot of areas that this team needs and that's why they aren't in playoff contention and why they haven't been.

And of these knees were ever made. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, too. You think about how you go about constructing this team. And there are more players that they've acquired through trades or signings or waivers than there are that are homegrown. Like,

they're the obvious ones. You mentioned Owen Power and Rasmus Delene. But like the lion's share of these players aren't the homegrown kids as much as they've had plenty of draft. And, like, look, I think that Noah Ossalon's a really good player. I think that Isaac Roseanne is going to be a really nice player for this organization. But, you know, a lot of this has kind of been built not from the traditional way to do things, drafting in development. It's trying to grab players from wherever you can.

The only way to really win in a salary cap era is to build from within and have draft choices. because, yes, the salary cap's going up and up, but the only way you're going to get a Buffalo, someone to come to Buffalo and be a Buffalo Sabre is to overpay him. So now the guy that's worth $6 million is now getting $7.5 million. The guy that's getting $10 million is going to be, he wants $12 million. And the thing that, you know, upsets a lot of the fans is you trade Ryan O'Reilly. Yes, you've got Tage Thompson back.

That's a great trade in the long term. But Ryan O'Reilly goes and wins a Stanley Cup. up in St. Louis. You trade Jack Eichael. He's a problem. He's a cancer. He's a bad. What an ass this guy is. We'll be better without him. Okay. How has that worked out? So one of the best players in the league. He's a Stanley Cup champion. Sam Reinhard. Let's go through all these guys that are elite hockey players that wanted out of Buffalo. That's the hardest thing. And that's, that's an organizational thing. And that's guys want to win. They're going to get their money. But now they want to win. think that's the hardest part about being

a buffsavers fan right now. That's, you know what? That's a really interesting point, too. And that winks back at what you said about Alex Tuck. Like, will Alex Tuck become, like, I do want, the two teams that I wonder about with Tuck, one is Edmondson, and everybody's

wondering about that. But the other one is Dallas. And now that, you know, Minnesota's made their move, you know, Jim Nill is not going to sit on his hands. Tyler Sagan is seeing someone tomorrow about his injury. There'll be a decision at some point made

on surgery, and if he's gone for the entire season, there's a lot of cap space there for Jim Nill. I would wonder about Alex Tuck with Dallas. But to your previous point, like at a certain point, you have to stop sending players to teams to go win Stanley Cups. Then you just feel like the Montreal Expos of the National Hockey League, right? Because that's essentially to the point that you're making, like all these guys are, they're a problem in Buffalo,

but then they go and they win Stanley Cups and get huge contracts elsewhere and are like model citizens and our darlings of their organization. So somewhere along the way, it does have to stop. The other area that I wonder about here, and you can speak with a lot of authority on this one. I wonder about Lindy Ruff. I wonder about the decision on coaching, and that's going to be a lot of,

I would imagine conversations with players and how they feel about Lindy Ruff and obviously how Yarmu feels about Lindy Ruff. And if they do decide to make a change, the obvious name out there is former Buffalo Sabre, assistant coach, John Tortorella. Could you see that? Oh, wow.

That's a really hard one. Because you could do the culture change and we've got to get these boys back in the shape. You've seen it, Barney. You've seen it a million times. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, I know this is that.

John Tortarillo is a very, very good coach he's a good guy he's an ass at the rank but that's that's that's that's his stick that's how he he handles things but here's what here's what i know yeah you are going to play a certain way if john is your coach yes because you won't be there you won't be there you will not be in the lineup uh could i see it yeah yeah i i mean i i i could see it i'd also love i'd love for jama key to get he's not going to get they are not hiring a first time coach in Jay McKee with where they are. But I would love to see him because, first of all, he's one of my best friends.

Second of all, he works tirelessly, and he's a very, very smart hockey guy. And his teams do very well whether they're really talented or if they're in a rebuild. And that's from the OHL in his years there. And he has a wagon of a team right now in Granford. So, you know, yes, I can see torts. I mean, but I'm not like, Torts and Lindy are a little bit of the same. They're a little bit of the same in the way that they coached. I think Lindy might have softened up over the years, but he's not an easy person to play for.

He's tough and he has hard on guys. He just looks in his interviews now that he is just so dejected, just so dejected. So, you know, when you miss the playoffs for 15 straight years, it's not the coaches. I'm a New York Jets fan. we've talked about this before. We didn't have 15 years, we didn't have 15 years of bad coaches. We had 15 years of bad players and injuries. And that starts with ownership.

And then it filters down to the GM, which obviously then filters down to the players. Speaking of players, two that I wonder about specifically, we've just had the Alex talk conversation, two that I do wonder about. And again, you never want to be the, you never want to be the manager that, again, like sends a young player somewhere. and next thing, they sprout. Yeah. But Owen Power, who you already mentioned as well, that's one of them. And I do wonder about Jack Quinn.

Those are the two that I wonder about right out of the gate here with Keckleinen. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah. And again, I think power is just a little bit overrated from what I see and defensively. And I know we have a stigma because he's big. He should be tough. I get it.

He doesn't play. physical enough for me. You know what I mean? So I think if the guy that is going to go for the biggest return you're going to get would be an own power. I don't think Alex Tuck signs with Buffalo. We're talking, having a chance to go compete for a Stanley Cup, he's going to get the money anywhere he goes. And if Dallas is a place, no state tax for anyone

that thinks that no state tax isn't a big thing, it's a big thing. It's huge. So Jack Quinn, listen, I've watched that kids since he's been 15 years old. He grew up in Ottawa, and he's talented. He can skate. He's battling to find consistency, but he is one of those guys that could go somewhere else and be a 30-gold guy because the guy can snap the puck around. He can skate. But he is a guy that you could make a big mistake on if you don't get the right package in return. The goaltending situation. We were sort of running down the laundry list. here. And I'm going to ask you sort of an overall assessment of Kevin Adams as general

manager. But I mentioned off the top of the show today. There are exactly zero goaltenders in the history of the NHL who enjoy being part of the three-headed monster. They may say all the right things publicly. Yeah, we're all mature. We're all athletes. We're all professionals. We can hire it. They may even tell their general manager that, but nobody believes it. Most of all the goaltenders themselves. Like that, that has to get sorted. Asap. One million percent. First of all, you're not even getting the reps in practice. You're cast off to the side and then you're back in the net and then this guy's in the net. You think if you have one bad game that you're going to be that third guy that doesn't even dress

and you're just splitting duties. I know what he was trying to do. He's just trying to find lightning in a bottle and someone to be unbelievable for, you know, a short period of time. And then if he falters, hopefully the other guy does. But no one, it's the worst decision you can make is having three goalies. And I've been on teams that there's three guys there for a short period of time. And yeah, they say it publicly that, oh, we're fine, we're fine. But no, God, no. No, no, no.

No, that's, that's one of you. You know, there's another goal. goaltender here, too. Like, again, players can come out of college, like forwards and defensemen, can come out of college and step on to an NHL roster. Okay, it's rare. You have to be a really, really special kind of player to do it, but it happens, okay? It happens.

It's possible. Can't do that when you're a goaltender. And one of the areas of failure that I see here with Adam was, and it's not just him, but it's also people around, the decision that Devin Levi, could slash should go from college to the red carpet to the Buffalo Sabres was one that was fraught with disaster. And now we're at the point where we're wondering about Devin Levi and his future with the Buffalo Sabres at all.

Or his future in the NHL at all. Like you talk about hurting a guy by rushing him. Exhibit A is Devin Levi. We can name a thousand players that has been rushing. into the NHL out of necessity or trying to sell it to a fan base. We've seen it so many times. It's hard to be a winger,

but probably the easiest to step into the NHL because of your responsibilities defensively. The difference between its pace, its size, but it's the defensive awareness. When you're in junior and you're a score or a winner, whatever it may be, you're allowed to do pretty well whatever you want because you're the big man on campus.

campus. McDavid. McDavid's not going to get yelled at if he misses a man, his man. They're going to let him away with it. Well, I scored 111 points in junior. I was allowed to get away with anything I wanted in junior. So it's easier to become a winger, and then it's probably easier to be a center after that, and then a defenseman, and a goalie is almost, almost impossible

because of the speed of the shot, the creativity of guys. these guys have never seen this kind of talent coming at them. And I think a perfect example, and this almost cost him this guy's career, Spencer Knight. Spencer Knight rushed in, didn't play very well, doubted himself a lot, and then now we got some seasoning in the H.L, and he looks terrific.

So I hope Levi can find his game. Hopefully he is the long-term solution for them. But can I unequivocally say, oh, he's the man? No, he could be done in a year. We don't know that. Yeah. Okay, last one for you.

Give me a hot 60 on. When do you look back at the Kevin Adams era? What will come to mind right away? Like, what's the one thing that you will look at Barney and say that defines Kevin Adams era? For me, it's inexperience and rushing players to the NHL without doing the adequate enough development time in the American League. But how do you look at the Adams era?

I said it when he took over and this is no I think when you say like no disrespect, you're going to disrespect him. So, experience is the biggest thing. Experience is the biggest thing. He didn't put in his time on that side of it to know how all the knowledge and all the tools to be successful. And that's on ownership.

That's on ownership. For me, it's going to go down as Jack Eichel. That was just a debacle. You have a great player. And because of the surgery and the lack of production from the organization, Jack Eichael didn't want to be there anymore. And him to go right away and win a Stanley Cup in Las Vegas, I think, you know, I'm always going to connect to Kevin Adams.

And I would be like, oh, yeah, he traded Jack Eichel away. Yeah. You know what I wonder about Barney still to this day? and like they're not going to share, I don't think the Sabres are going to share personal information about, you know, players' health or not that I'm asking about a specific player,

but just sort of a medical philosophy. I wonder to, even though Jack had asked out, even before the ADR issue and spinal fusion, considering the success of ADR with not only Jack Eichel, but Tyler Johnson,

Joel Farabee, like it's more of a common practice now in the NHL. It always had been in MMA and football, but it hadn't been in hockey. I wonder if now the Buffalo Sabres medical team has changed their tune about

ADR. I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that during that saga, and you could talk to, you could talk as a player to us here, obviously. Other players watch that and said they're not letting this guy have the surgery that he wants. They're not

allowing him to have a level of bodily autonomy that we should. But given the success of it with not just one athlete, but a handful, I wonder if that's changed in Buffalo now. I don't know the answer. I don't. I don't the players watch it.

Listen, two-part question. Has it changed? I would hope so. I'm not privy to the knowledge of the doctors or any of that. So I don't want to speak out of turn, but it has to be when you lose a guy like that. And the backlash over at all,

as it unfolded. So I'm going to speak from a player's point of view. Two parts again. If it's a serious injury like that, I want to have the final say on my own body. It's my body. It's my career. I'm not going to sign up for anything

that I don't think is going to help me. And I'm going to do my research. I'm going to go to their doctors, get their information. Then I'm going to go to my doctors. and try to come up with a plan. But in the end of the day, it's Matthew Barnum's decision to what we're going to do here.

Yep. And then further speaking of, like you said, people know when coaches treat players like shit. Yeah. People know when organizations are cheap. People know when you just aren't treated well, and this just falls in the line. This is the same thing as not spending money on a practice rank

or not giving them all. all the tools that they need to be successful. So this falls into that category on a big, big way. Of course, players talk when they're becoming free agents. I think every player in the NHL while Jack Eichael was going through a situation with the Buffalo Sabres and asked the exact same question, what if this was me? I think that every single player watched that and said, it might be Jack now, but do I want to go there and maybe this is going to be me next time?

I think that's a, I think that's a, a, that was a major issue. I think you're bang on. I think that was a major issue with the Sabres. And not just for Jack Eichol. It may have felt like it was just Jack Eichol, but it wasn't. It was for other players around the NHL. 100%. Great point.

Absolutely. 100%. All right. Enjoy the rest of your day. We'll see what happens next, albeit decisions on coaching or, or players or whatever, but there's a, not a dull moment these days around the Buffalo Sabres. Thanks, as always for popping by.

Thanks, bud. No problem. I also want to thank everyone here. Masking to Colorado raised a million and a half dollars Extreme hockey out here. Oh, wow. Brian Barard, Sheldon, amazing outdoor game.

It was just a lot of fun. A great, great time out here and great people. I love it. I absolutely love it. Congratulations, Barney. That's a significant number. Congratulations on being a part of it, pal. Hey, cheers, buddy.

Have a great show. week every day this month I can't get out my head lifestyle ambitions day to day because you can call it all right I went to the dark man and tried to give me a little medicine I'm like now I'm in that's fine

I'm not against those methods but new it's me and myself and how this is going to be fixing my mind I do on a bracket. I turned on the music. I do on a bracket. I turn on the music. It's turning up there, I don't get you sometimes losing.

Have been on the days that we're wrong.