By JOHN WAWROW

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The Buffalo Sabres fired general manager Kevyn Adams on Monday in a move made 2 1/2 months into his sixth season, with the team sitting at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings and already in jeopardy of extending its NHL-record playoff drought to a 15th year.

The decision was made by team owner Terry Pegula and announced in a press release.

Adams’ replacement was already with the team in Jarmo Kekalainen. The former Columbus Blue Jackets GM was hired by Adams in June to serve as a senior adviser. The 59-year-old Kekalainen is from Finland and was the NHL’s first European-born GM in spending 11 years in Columbus before being fired in February 2024.

“We are not where we need to be as an organization, and we are moving forward with new leadership within our hockey operations department,” Pegula said. “We are dedicated to building an organization that is competitive year after year, and we have fallen short of that expectation.”

The decision to fire Adams comes despite the Sabres enjoying their first three-game winning streak of the season, following a 3-1 victory at Seattle on Sunday night. Buffalo returned home after splitting a six-game road trip and is now off until hosting the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday.

Adams has been criticized for mismanaging the team’s assets, inability to secure a franchise goalie, and failure to address a leadership void that continues to linger on a team that’s finished last in the overall standings four times and no better than 19th during its playoff drought.

Under Kekalainen, the Blue Jackets reached the playoffs five times and set a franchise record with 50 wins and 108 points in 2016-17. He previously held executive roles with the St. Louis Blues and Ottawa Senators. Kekalainen also spent three years as general manager of Jokerit in Finland’s top professional league and worked with the Finnish national team program.

“It is a great honor to be named general manager of the Buffalo Sabres,” said Kekalainen. “I am humbled to be the steward of this team and look forward to experiencing the passion that Sabres fans bring to every game.”

Kekalainen’s promotion comes a day after his father, Kari, died after a lengthy illness at the age of 82. Kekalainen posted a message on his Instagram account, referring to his father as his coach and idol, translated from his native Finnish.

Adams’ missteps also include second-guessing himself for failing to make a roster move to help spark the team during an 0-10-3 skid last season that essentially knocked the Sabres out of contention before Christmas.

Adams entered this season on the hottest of NHL seats and with reportedly two years left on his contract.

He long ago fell out of favor with Sabres fans, who began chanting “Fire Adams” so often the team elected to not introduce the GM as traditionally happens during Buffalo’s season opener in October. Last year, fans brought blow-up palm trees to games in response after Adams lamented the difficulty he had attracting talent to Buffalo because the city has high taxes and no palm trees.

Adams took over in June 2020 and following a last-place finish launched a major rebuilding plan that led to the team trading its top players — highlighted by the deals that sent Jack Eichel to Vegas and Sam Reinhart to Florida. After showing signs of development, and Adams proclaiming the Sabres competitive window opening, the Sabres have instead regressed over the past two seasons.

Buffalo went from finishing with 91 points and one win from ending its playoff drought in 2022-23 to 84 points the next season and 79 last year.

This season, the Sabres (14-14-4) are are once again struggling with consistency in the first half of their second season under coach Lindy Ruff, who is back for a second stint in Buffalo. The Sabres have spent much of the season hovering at .500, have been competitive at home (9-5-2) but have struggled on the road with two of their five wins coming in regulation.

This wasn’t the plan Adams laid out in closing last season by saying everything was on the table to turn the Sabres into competitors.

He opened this season with: “We need to win. And I’m fully aware of that.”

Adams, with input from Ruff, spent the summer adding grit at the expense of offense by trading two-time 20-goal-scorer JJ Peterka to Utah to acquire forward Josh Doan and hulking defenseman Michael Kesselring. The deal has had middling results. While Doan ranks second on the team with 10 goals and third with 23 points, Kesselring has been limited to playing just nine games due to injuries.

Another trade that has yet to pan out involved Buffalo and Ottawa swapping top-line centers, with the Sabres acquiring talented but injury prone Josh Norris for Dylan Cozens in March. Norris appeared in just three games before aggravating an oblique injury last year, and is limited to just six games this season.

Adams has mismanaged Buffalo’s goaltending position, starting with losing Linus Ullmark to free agency in the summer of 2021 after saying he was assured by the goalie he’d re-sign with the team in March. The Sabres have had 11 goalies start at least one game since.

The Sabres are now on their fifth GM since Darcy Regier was fired a month into the 2013-14 season.

Adams is from Buffalo, and a former NHL forward, who won a Stanley Cup title in 2006 with Carolina over his 10-season career.

He had no front-office experience and held a business role with the Sabres when replacing Jason Botterill in June 2020. Botterill’s firing was deemed a cost-cutting move, with Adams purging much of the team’s hockey infrastructure as the NHL dealt with the uncertainty of the COVID pandemic.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

By MIKE SCHNEIDER

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A man convicted of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump on a Florida golf course last year has decided to use an attorney during the sentencing phase instead of representing himself as he did for most of the trial.

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The sentencing hearing for Ryan Routh in Fort Pierce, Florida, was pushed back from this week to early February after he requested and was granted an attorney to represent him during the sentencing and appeal phases of the trial.

The federal courtroom erupted into chaos in September shortly after jurors found Routh guilty on all counts, including attempting to kill a presidential candidate and several firearm-related charges. Routh tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen, and officers quickly dragged him out. The pen Routh used was flexible to prevent people in custody from using it as a weapon.

Prosecutors said Routh, 59, spent weeks plotting to kill Trump before aiming a rifle through shrubbery as the then-Republican presidential candidate played golf on Sept. 15, 2024, at his West Palm Beach country club.

At Routh’s trial, a Secret Service agent helping protect Trump on the golf course testified that he spotted Routh before Trump came into view. Routh aimed his rifle at the agent, who opened fire, causing Routh to drop his weapon and run away without firing a shot.

In the motion requesting an attorney, Routh offered to trade his life in a prisoner swap with inmates unjustly held in other countries and said an offer still stood for Trump to “take out his frustrations on my face.”

“Just a quarter of an inch further back and we all would not have to deal with all of this mess forwards, but I always fail at everything (par for the course),” Routh wrote.

In her decision granting Routh an attorney, U. S. District Judge Aileen Cannon chastised the “disrespectful charade” of Routh’s motion, saying it made a mockery of the proceedings. But the judge, nominated by Trump in 2020, said she wanted to err on the side of legal representation.

Cannon signed off on Routh’s request to represent himself following two hearings in July. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that criminal defendants have the right to represent themselves in court proceedings, as long as they can show a judge they are competent to waive their right to be defended by an attorney.

Routh’s former defense attorneys served as standby counsel and were present during the trial.

By ANSELM GIBBS

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) — The government of Trinidad and Tobago said Monday that it would allow the U.S. military to access its airports in coming weeks as tensions build between the United States and Venezuela.

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The announcement comes after the U.S. military recently installed a radar system at the airport in Tobago. The Caribbean country’s government has said the radar is being used to fight local crime, and that the small nation wouldn’t be used as a launchpad to attack any other country.

The U.S. would use the airports for activity that would be “logistical in nature, facilitating supply replenishment and routine personnel rotations,” Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. It did not provide further details.

Trinidad’s prime minister previously has praised ongoing U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.

Only seven miles separate Venezuela from the twin-island Caribbean nation at their closest point. It has two main airports: Piarco International Airport in Trinidad and ANR Robinson International Airport in Tobago.

Amery Browne, an opposition senator and the country’s former foreign minister, accused the government of being deceptive in its announcement.

Browne said that Trinidad and Tobago has become “complicit facilitators of extrajudicial killings, cross-border tension and belligerence.”

“There is nothing routine about this. It has nothing to do with the usual cooperation and friendly collaborations that we have enjoyed with the USA and all of our neighbors for decades,” he said.

He said the “blanket permission” with the U.S. takes the country “a further step down the path of a satellite state” and that it embraces a “’might is right’ philosophy.”

American strikes began in September and have killed more than 80 people as Washington builds up a fleet of warships near Venezuela, including the largest U.S. aircraft carrier.

In October, an American warship docked in Trinidad’s capital, Port-of-Spain, as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump boosts military pressure on Venezuela and President Nicolás Maduro.

U.S. lawmakers have questioned the legality of the strikes against vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean, and recently announced that there would be a congressional review of them.

ROCHESTER — Matthew Onofrio, the former Mayo Clinic nurse anesthetist turned commercial real estate investment “guru,” was sentenced this week to three years in prison and ordered to pay $5.39 million in restitution to a Bloomington bank.

In handing down her sentence, Judge Susan Richard Nelson described Onofrio as the “ringleader and architect of a vast bank fraud.” She said she wanted to send a message to other would-be fraudsters that there is no such thing as a get-rich-quick scheme, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minneapolis.

Onofrio’s sentence will start on Feb. 10.

Onofrio’s attorney, Marsh Halberg, had requested one year of home detention or community confinement. The federal government, which brought the case against Onofrio, had asked for six years in prison.

The average prison sentence for people convicted of similar crimes in similar circumstances is five years, according to prosecutors.

Onofrio pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud involving a Minnesota property in St. Cloud on July 10 in the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. He was originally indicted by a grand jury and charged with three counts on Nov. 17, 2022.

Onofrio’s sentencing at the federal courthouse in St. Paul wraps up a complicated case that prosecutors described as involving $420 million in “fraudulently obtained bank loans” for 68 commercial real estate deals over a time period of about two years.

While none of the commercial properties listed in the 2022 grand jury indictment were in Olmsted County, Onofrio had been very active in buying and selling large commercial properties in Rochester. As part of the case, the court seized a $35 million bank account that he had with Premier Bank in Rochester.

In a related case, 82-year-old Rochester real estate agent Merl Groteboer was sentenced to one year of probation and a $10,000 fine after pleading guilty to one count of making “false, fictitious and fraudulent” statements to a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigations during a voluntary interview in 2023. The interview was part of the investigation of Onofrio.

Prosecutors say Onofrio created a real estate investment system that was “guaranteed to make him rich” as long as the buyers and the banks didn’t fully understand what he was doing.

He would find undervalued commercial properties and negotiate purchase agreements allowing him to purchase the property at a later date for a determined price. Onofrio then assigned the purchase agreements to his investors for a higher price, “earning himself a substantial profit.” He did not tell the buyers about the purchase agreements.

To line up inexperienced investors, Onofrio promoted his own financial success and real estate investment strategies in online professional networking groups, in YouTube videos and on a popular podcast called “Bigger Pockets” to craft a reputation as a real estate savant, who had cracked the code of commercial real estate investing.

“The problem with Mr. Onofrio’s investment program was that many of the aspiring real estate investors it attracted did not have the kind of money necessary to purchase the multi-million-dollar properties Onofrio offered,” according to the government’s case. “Banks typically will only approve a commercial real estate loan if the buyer has about 30% of the purchase price in cash, and very few of Onofrio’s investors had that kind of money. Mr. Onofrio therefore conspired with his investors to defraud banks by misrepresenting their creditworthiness in loan applications.”

That meant helping his clients prepare fraudulent financial statements to make it look like they had enough money to cover the down payment. When banks asked for proof of funds, Onofrio would temporarily wire funds into his clients accounts to create the illusion that they had enough money. He told the buyers to tell the banks that it was “family money.”

Sometimes he would actually loan the money to the buyer, but hide that fact from the bank.

While the judge and the federal prosecutors painted Onofrio as a “ringleader” and “fraudster,” his attorney as described him as a remorseful man who was a home-schooled, former missionary and is a devoted Christian who has led a law-abiding life, with the “exception of the 14-month range of his offense conduct.”

About 30 letters of support from his family, friends and church were sent to the judge to ask for mercy in his sentence.

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