How Jason Karmanos hiring impacts Sabres

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before- Pegula ownership has hired a leadership tandem who’ve shared previous success in Carolina and brought them in to help in Buffalo. Only this time, it is for the Buffalo Sabres.

Sound familiar? If the cross-town neighboring Bills team comes to mind, so might their success in turning their franchise around into a playoff team looking to win a championship.

The Buffalo Sabres hiring of Jason Karmanos as associate GM to oversee the AHL Rochester Americans has significant implications towards the drafting and development of players in the team’s system. Especially in a front office that has seen sweeping changes in personnel.

Acting as the GM of the Amerks, Karmanos will oversee the scouting, player development, and analytics departments per Sabres PR.

His previous roles have included being the assistant GM for 13 of the 15 seasons he was with the front office with the Carolina Hurricanes, and as the vice president of player operations position for three of his seven past seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins, spending the most recent four years as their assistant general manager.

His tenures in Pittsburgh and Carolina yielded several Stanley Cup Championships, one with the Hurricanes in 2006 and two more with the Penguins in 2016 and 2017. Five of his years spent with Carolina were with Sabres GM Kevyn Adams, which included building the Hurricanes championship club. The two go back a long time as teammates during their playing days on Team USA’s entry squad for the 1994 World Junior Championship. Karmanos also played college hockey for four seasons while attending Harvard.

No stranger to the game or front office operations, the 46-year-old Orchard Lake, MI native is the son of Peter Karmanos, the long-time majority-owner of the Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes franchise.

Karmanos joins the Sabres during a youth movement of call-ups by way of Kevyn Adams to evaluate the prospects in their pipeline. 20-year-old Dylan Cozens (10 pts in 29 games), 22-year-old Casey Mittelstadt (14 pts in 29 games), and 23-year-olds Tage Thompson (9 pts in 27 games), Rasmus Asplund (8 pts in 17 games), and Arttu Ruotsalainen (1 goal in 5 games) have offered a potential glimpse at the Sabres future.

With 24-year-old captain Jack Eichel out for the season with a neck injury and the team sporting a record that will vie for a top draft position, Adams was active ahead of last week’s trade deadline. The GM flipped Curtis Lazar, backup goalie Jonas Johansson and the one-year contracts of veterans Taylor Hall and Eric Staal for winger Anders Bjork and a second, third, fifth, and sixth-round picks in the upcoming 2021 NHL draft.

Based on the Sabres current record, player development depth, and the productivity level of the players shipped out, the recent asset return may be of greater long-term value. Especially as Adams prepares ahead of an important head-coach-appointment decision, an expansion draft as well as new lottery rules, as well as a free agency period in which the Sabres have eight potential UFA’s and five potential RFA’s.

With 10 potential picks in this year’s draft on top of last year’s picks, a young elite star in Eichel, plus a young crop of young players to surround him with, the GM-associate GM duo appears to be aiming to achieve the same type of success they found working together in Carolina.

As the Sabres look to build around and support Eichel to compete next season and beyond, Karmanos is poised to play one of the more integral roles in developing a championship contender here in Buffalo.