appeared to echo<\/a> in his media availability, stating his belief that the Sabres could be a playoff team this season.<\/p>\nBeyond just the decision Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen has to make behind the Sabres\u2019 bench, there are even more changes the new GM might make to the club\u2019s overall hockey operations infrastructure. While Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen was running the Blue Jackets, the club drew widespread praise for its work in amateur scouting. Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen has long brought a specialization in talent identification to the table, which raises questions as to what Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen might want to do with the Sabres\u2019 scouting staff. While a GM often receives the lion\u2019s share of public credit or blame for their team\u2019s draft choices, the reality is that there are lesser-known figures in a team\u2019s front office that play a massive role in informing those draft choices as well, the chief figure being a team\u2019s director of amateur scouting.<\/p>\n
Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen himself served in that role earlier in his career, during his days with the St. Louis Blues, and when he was in Columbus, he brought along one of his trusted scouts, Ville Sir\u00e9n, to operate as director of amateur scouting in Columbus. It\u2019s entirely possible that Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen might try to see if he can bring Sir\u00e9n into the fold in Buffalo, restoring a partnership that has worked so well in the past. The Sabres\u2019 amateur scouting operation is currently run by Jerry Forton, who took up the position of director of amateur scouting in 2020-21.<\/p>\n
He was promoted to assistant GM by Adams in 2024-25. Sir\u00e9n does, of course, still work for the Blue Jackets, so right now it\u2019s entirely speculative as to whether Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen might want to bring his old lieutenant to Buffalo, but it\u2019s nonetheless worth bringing up as it relates to Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen\u2019s future plans.<\/p>\n
Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen might also, as part of the evaluations he\u2019s pledged of the team\u2019s operations, decide to retain Forton and keep much of the team\u2019s amateur scouting staff intact. For all of the issues the Sabres have had in recent years, getting talent out of the draft has not been one of them. And it\u2019s also not a foregone conclusion that if Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen were to want to bring Sir\u00e9n to Buffalo, that would have to mean an exit for Forton; there is some precedent in the NHL for an incoming GM to bring in \u201chis people\u201d while also retaining the existing leadership.<\/p>\n
When the Montreal Canadiens hired former New York Rangers GM Jeff Gorton to run their hockey operations department in 2021, he brought Nick Bobrov with him, someone who had served in a key scouting role during Gorton\u2019s days with the Rangers. But Gorton also retained Martin Lapointe, a key existing voice in the team\u2019s scouting department from the reign of former GM Marc Bergevin, and he now serves alongside Bobrov as co-director of amateur scouting. So it\u2019s also possible Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen explores trying to add Sir\u00e9n while also retaining Forton.<\/p>\n
Fundamentally, the Sabres\u2019 GM change has opened up a wide range of possibilities for its hockey operations department. When senior leadership changes, a trickle-down effect of changes typically follows, so it will be interesting to track what further staffing moves Kek\u00e4l\u00e4inen makes, and how those moves might also impact other clubs.<\/p>\n
Photos courtesy of James Carey Lauder-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buffalo Sabres made a significant change at the top of their hockey operations department yesterday, swapping incumbent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[741,49,48,152474,104809,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-350889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-buffalo-sabres","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-jarmo-kekalainen","12":"tag-lindy-ruff","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a><\/p>\n