As the Buffalo Sabres have descended into this 0-10-3 tailspin, landing them last in the NHL in points and headed toward a hard-to-fathom 14th straight season missing the playoffs, I keep thinking about the decisions ownership has made in its general manager hires.

Tim Murray was GM from January 2014 to April 2017, Jason Botterill from May 2017 to June 2020, and it's been Kevyn Adams since then.

All three were first-time NHL GMs. That doesn't mean they weren't qualified. Everyone has to get their first chance at some point, and especially in the cases of Murray and Botterill, they had worked their way up the NHL scouting and front-office ranks before landing the gig.

Regardless, looking at where the franchise is now with the benefit of hindsight, handing the reins to first-time GMs three straight times can't be glossed over.

Listen, no one is complaining in South Florida about first-time NHL GM Bill Zito, nor in Vegas about first-time NHL GM Kelly McCrimmon. But in Zito's case, he's got former GMs Rick Dudley, Paul Fenton and Les Jackson surrounding him in his inner circle. McCrimmon has George McPhee.

At the very least -- especially with Adams, who is a very likable guy with tremendous passion for the sport -- couldn't the Sabres have brought in some sort of mentor to help him along the way? Like how Jim Rutherford is helping along first-time GM Patrik Allvin in Vancouver?

Wouldn't it have made sense to bring in a Ray Shero or someone of that ilk to help support Adams? (Did I mention that Ken Holland is currently a free agent?)

Then there's this point I made when the team fired Botterill: Giving a GM only three years on the job doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't know whether Murray or Botterill would have gotten the Sabres over the playoff hump eventually, but I do know three years wasn't enough time for either to get a fair crack at it. Any longtime NHL team executive will tell you that it takes at least five years for someone to implement their vision on a franchise, especially for a full rebuild.

Every time you change GMs, you're starting over. Any new GM is going to want to redo much of the inherited roster, and that takes time.

At the very least, Adams has had more time than his two predecessors did. He's in Year 5.

And it looked so promising just two years ago, when the Sabres finished one point behind the Florida Panthers for the last wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. I don't have to tell you how divergent the paths have been for Florida and Buffalo since the end of that regular season in April 2023, though.

The Sabres have locked up young core players to long-term deals: Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens, Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, Mattias Samuelsson and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. All of them would be desirable NHL commodities on their own. But as a whole, they have failed to come together consistently as a nucleus of a team resembling a playoff contender.

The temptation now for Adams, or the pressure weighing on his shoulders, will be to make a roster-altering trade to shake things up. That's a natural reaction.

And league sources suggest he's pretty open-minded in his conversations with other teams. A lot of different things could happen depending on what teams are willing to do.

But as we've seen, there's a risk of a panic move the franchise could regret. Sam Reinhart, Brandon Montour, Jack Eichel and Ryan O'Reilly are all former Sabres who became Stanley Cup champions elsewhere. There are different reasons those players ended up out of town, sure. But it all comes back to the seemingly never-ending question of what ails the Sabres franchise. It is a damaged brand.

And also facing Adams: As difficult as it is right now, especially for an awesome fan base in Buffalo that deserves so much better, this is the worst time to make a sizeable trade when the majority of your players are depressed assets with lowered values.

The smarter move is to wait this out and more fully investigate the market in the summer, when bigger trades are easier to pull off.

And between now and then, there's the low-hanging fruit of yet another coaching change. Maybe Lindy Ruff is shown the door to give the team the short-term bump a coaching change often brings. But firing a coach eight months after he was named to replace the last coach fired seems rather flimsy as a fix.

Ultimately, the question that faces this franchise yet again is whether it needs to change GMs.

If the answer is no, then is there an experienced, president of hockey type who can be brought in to help Adams?

And if the answer is yes, it will be fair to ask why anyone should trust the process that leads to that next hire. And then some form of reset will need to occur when someone new takes over. So yet more patience will be required from a fan base that's probably, and justifiably, run out of it.

There are no easy answers.

There is plenty to work with on this roster. There is absolutely talent there. But 13-plus years of losing has also created a culture that needs saving.

And that might be the hardest part of all.