Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) \u2013 On Dec. 21, Jarmo Kekalainen hired former Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin to be his assistant GM.
Bergevin had been working as a senior advisor for the Los Angeles Kings and he said Buffalo seemed like a good fit for him to move to,<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere the team\u2019s at, it’s been awhile since they\u2019ve been in the playoff. I think their core, they have some good asset, good core, but you need to get better and I\u2019ve only watched five games live, so it\u2019s still for me an early stage to evaluate the team and there\u2019s a ways to go, but there\u2019s some good pieces in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that they have some really good pieces in place and you could ask anybody around the league it\u2019s always why haven\u2019t they made the playoffs or had success? They have good players and there\u2019s a reason why and personally I don\u2019t know what it is, but that\u2019s one of the reasons they brought me here, to give my views on where the team\u2019s at and where it needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bergevin said part of his job will be evaluations in Rochester, but he\u2019ll also be evaluating the prospects too and he was short and sweet when talking about his job description,<\/p>\n
\u201cBring the best information based on my experience to where the Sabres organization are and where they need to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bergevin suggested to Kekalainen that he hire Stacy Roest to the pro scouting department. Roest has had many years of scouting. Bergevin said the Sabres were in need of help on the pro scouting side. It\u2019s just another example of an organization that had people in jobs they weren\u2019t qualified to have. Kekalainen is fixing that in a hurry.<\/p>\n
This is the first time Bergevin has worked with Kekalainen, but he\u2019s know him a long time,<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew him when he was working with the Blues and then when I became GM, he was already in Columbus and over the years at GM meetings we hung out and then Jarmo\u2019s a guy that\u2019s very active on the phone and so was I so we got in a lot of discussions about players.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bergevin said he was very upfront with Kekalainen that he\u2019s still looking to be a general manager again.<\/p>\n
After Tuesday\u2019s practice Lindy Ruff said Michael Kesselring is looking good, but he did seem like he wasn’t going to use him Wednesday. Ruff did say his defenseman is real close. Josh Dunne is going to miss a little time with a mid-body injury. Ruff said it\u2019s something he\u2019s been playing through. Bo Byram missed practice for personal reasons and Ruff said he\u2019ll play Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Everything pointed to Ruff continuing his goaltender rotation with Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen likely to start Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) \u2013 On Dec. 21, Jarmo Kekalainen hired former Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-405451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}