Sabres are at .500 (14-14-4) after returning from a six-game Western road swing.
The Buffalo Sabres held a media availability to announce the hiring of Jarmo Kekalainen as the club’s 10th general manager. Owner Terry Pegula introduced the 59-year-old, who was hired as a senior advisor to former GM Kevyn Adams in May, and who had just returned from Finland after the passing of his father.
"Starting in the fall of 2024, the Sabres organization, including some outside consultants and our management, performed an analysis to bring in a senior advisor to assist our hockey organization. Jarmo was the choice that we brought in,” Pegula said. “Over the last seven months, he has shown to me that he is capable of leading our organization into the future. He's made bold moves in the past, several complicated three-team trades, and he just has a confidence that I believe will help our organization in the future."
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Kekalainen served as GM of the Columbus Blue Jackets for 11 seasons and represents a departure for the Sabres, who have not hired an executive with previous experience since bringing in Scotty Bowman in 1979. Bowman’s record was generally unsuccessful after leading Buffalo to a Stanley Cup Semi-Final in 1980, so experience automatically does not equate to success.
Kekalainen has a wide breadth of knowledge of the league, which will be refreshing after a decade of Sabres general managers who were learning on the job. After seven months of observing the club, which is tied for last place in the Eastern Conference with the Blue Jackets, Kekalainen hinted that the current Buffalo squad has the talent to make the playoffs, but lacks other key facets.
"When I came here, one of the reasons was that I really believed in the skill and the talent on this team, but I define the talent a little bit differently," Kekalainen said. "That's going to be the focus on moving forward. I think character is the biggest part of talent. I think that the competitiveness, the relentless work ethic that you have, whether it's on the ice for practice or in the gym, that's the talent that we need to focus on. There's been games this year where we looked like it was going to be easy, and then we lost because we got outworked. That's unacceptable, and that's going to be something that we're going to focus on every day here, each and every day, because the talent, the skill alone, is not going to get you the wins in this league."
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