BUFFALO, N.Y. — Kevyn Adams, then the general manager of the Buffalo Sabres, was furiously working the phone. And Jerry Forton, Buffalo’s director of amateur scouting, was sitting nearby hoping he was right.It was the first round of the 2022 NHL Draft, and the Sabres had already made two of their three first-round picks in a draft that would start to shape the future of the franchise. At No. 9, the Sabres selected Winnipeg Ice center Matt Savoie. At No. 16, Forton had a more difficult choice. Two players, Swedish center Noah Östlund and Czech center Jiri Kulich, were neck and neck on the team’s list. Forton thought Kulich had a better chance of falling to the Sabres’ next pick at No. 28 because of the role Östlund played in Sweden’s gold-medal-winning team at the under-18 tournament.But Forton was far from certain about his educated guess. Even if Kulich was more likely to fall than Östlund, he and Adams weren’t comfortable taking the chance. So after drafting Östlund, Adams tried to find a trade partner to move up from No. 28. He started at pick 17 and tried to trade with six different teams in front of them in the order. Nobody wanted to make the deal.So the wait from pick No. 16 to pick No. 28 was an agonizing one.“I was sick to my stomach every pick that went by, as were other members of our staff, that Kulich was not going to be there at 28,” Forton said.Those sitting at the Sabres’ draft table were finally able to exhale when the San Jose Sharks selected Swedish forward Filip Bystedt at No. 27. Without making a trade, the Sabres were able to get both Östlund and Kulich.The irony is that Forton’s reason for thinking Östlund would go earlier was because of Sweden’s performance at the U18 tournament. But Kulich was the MVP of that tournament, scoring nine goals and adding two assists in six games for Czechia. While the Czechs didn’t have team success, Kulich’s goal-scoring output was the 14th-best goal total in that tournament’s history. From a goals per game perspective, it was 12th.“On the power play, he was just … he had five or six goals on the power play at the under-18s,” Forton said. “I remember (Sabres scout) Frank Musil and I joking the one game that he looked like (Alex) Ovechkin out there.”