Matthew Fairburn

And certainly he was not a popular guy locally, but you know, he, he,

they would be getting theoretically a better version of Kevin Adams because he came in with so little experience in hockey operations when he started as general manager of the Sabres that the five and a half years he spent here, he had to navigate a lot without a lot of help.

And, you know, he was, he did, you know, do a rebuild.

Right.

And I think Vancouver is kind of entering that, you know, phase right now.

So, you know, the, the highs and lows, he went through the, the,

experience he got, mistakes he made, he would theoretically be able to apply to his next stop.

had a really positive impact on this group.

And that's why I bring up the leadership and I bring up, you know, some of that, that piece of it, not all of this is entirely Kevin Adams fault.

Like he, you have to understand how he got the job and the fact that he had pretty much no hockey ops experience before he got the job.

He really became general manager because of his proximity to Terry Pagula.

And he,

You know, they fired Jason Botterill during the pandemic and hired Adams without a search.

And his first day on the job, he's firing 20 something people that work in the organization in various capacities.

He has nobody around him with any hockey ops experience.

And really, you know, to start that way, you're going to make a lot of mistakes.

But also what happens when that when you start that way publicly, it's hard to separate the

yourself from how you got the job, right?

Fans figure, you know, fans know, fans know your story, your background and all of those things.

And so they viewed him as somebody that was, you know, a proxy for ownership in ways.