Curt

He wasn’t injured. The OHL didn’t have a 2020-21 season. That’s why he didn’t play a game in 16 months.

I’m assuming that this is interviews at the draft combine? The following is what I’ve seen reported by media or by Sabrespacers who were there. Interesting that mr. whoever on another site says they did interview Mateychuk and I specifically heard that they did not. Sabres Interviewed: Matthew Savoie Frank Nazar Cutter Gauthier Rutger McGroarty Marco Kasper Pavel Mintyukov Conor Geekie Ryan Lambert Filip Mesar Jiri Kulich Lian Bichsel Owen Pickering Jimmy Snuggerud Noah Warren Jack Devine Sabres Did Not Interview: Joakim Kemell Denton Mateychuk Seamus Casey Maverick Lamoureux Jack Hughes

I understand this line of thought, that a real defensive D is needed. That wasn’t really the subject of my post. Although I do think PKbrings some interesting things to the table for this D group.

I have no memory of Patrick, but I don’t recall Numminen ever being considered a defensive defenseman. By all accounts, Subban reinvent his game this past season into a more conservative, reliable presence. I understand that a defensive defenseman who will be a top PKer seems preferable, but I can see how PK could bring a lot to the table too. He was a top offensive defenseman for a long time. He has been under a lot of pressure situations and has a lot of experience in this league. I feel like he could probably help guide our own young, offensive defenseman for a couple of years.

Why not? How is it much different?

PK Subban is not going to command a particularly high AAV, or long term from anyone. No one is going to give him a 5-6 year deal. He is probably going to be looking at 2-3 year offers of $4-5M.

Bishops contract would need to fit under the cap on opening day of the season, but after that it could be moved to LTIR to create additional cap space.

Its the Pegulas’ team. KA manages it for them. It’s not his money that he is spending. I would assume that he needs to get his yearly budget approved by ownership. I expect that is, not a courtesy to them, but a requirement. Terry Pegula has not shown himself to be the type of owner who hires someone and then just quietly writes checks for them. He is the type of owner who is there for phone calls to free agents and sits in on prospect interviews. He is involved.

Yeah, I see how you could read that into it. We will see how the offseason is handled.

I would assume yes. Can’t think of a reason why he wouldn’t. Teams don’t usually use all 50 contracts in any given season anyway though.

Sabres do pay his salary, but since he is hurt, supposedly insurance is covering almost the entire thing anyway. So Sabres get a 7th in exchange for a small amount of cash. They were not going to spend to the cap ceiling anyway.

A 7th round pick for a stack of Pegulabucks.

Yeah, being used as a #1 defenseman, his play had been deteriorating for a few years, then last season the Devils finally gave up on the idea of using him as a #1 and he was a lot better. I don’t think he is out of gas’s, but he’s definitely not a first pair guy anymore.

Unless you thought that the Sabres were going to spend near to the cap, there isn’t any reason to be upset by this move. They are presumably getting something in exchange for taking on some salary. There will still be cap space remaining to acquire players if the right moves are available.

How many good UFAs sign for big money but only 1-2 years of term? I know this happened with Taylor Hall one time, but I think it’s very rare overall. How much the Sabres are willing to spend on player salary probably is not KA’s decision.

A big thing (pun intended) with Savoie is that he is listed as 5’9” and declined to be measured at the combine which probably means he is no taller than 5’9, if not shorter. There just are not 5’9-5’8” C’s in the NHL. Rightly or wrongly, I think it’s likely that NHL teams view him as a W. If that’s the reason he falls to 9, I’m more than ok with it. I think you are pretty spot on in your evaluation of Kasper. Savoie and Nazar are more dynamic in creating scoring chances than Kasper is. I haven’t done enough studying to really split hairs between the two though. Nazar is slightly larger. Nazar seems to be a better defender. Savoie probably has a better shot.

Was just listening to Corey Pronman on The Athletics Hockey Show podcast and I caught an interesting note. Pronman stated that he thinks the absolute earliest that either Savoie or Geekie might get drafted is #9 by Buffalo. This is based on his talks with scouts around the league.

Oh, I’m not advocating for the Sabres to sign Mikheyev. I’m just discussing the type of deal that I think he will get

Say what you like, but none of those players/contracts I listed ever put up a higher goals/game or goals/60 season than what Mikheyev just did. He is (potentially) a 25+ goal scorer who you can play in your top 6, on a checking line, on the PK, and on the PP. Big goal scoring winger who can play in all situations. He is going to get paid quite a bit IMPO.

Ok. I just looked up some actual comparables. These are all UFA contracts that were signed in the past couple years. Blake Coleman 4.9 x 6 Alex Wennberg 4.5 x 3 Joel Armia 3.4 x 4 Barclay Goodrow 3.6 x 6 Adam Lowry 3.25 x 5 Scott Laughton 3 x 5 Boone Jenner 3.75 x 4 Zach Hyman 5.5 x 7 Looking at these, I’d say that my guess of $4-5M probably is high, but maybe only by 500K. $3.5-$4.5M on a 4+ year deal for Ilya Mikheyev seems pretty in line with recent contracts. Most of the above contracts are also with some sort of NTC attached, full NMC in some cases. Anyway, my original point was that $2.75-3M is not going to be near enough and I stand by that. He will probably receive $1M more than that. UFAs are expensive.

I think that salary is a definite low ball. He is in line for a $4-5M contract with 4+ Years of term.

Things could unravel fast for them. In the course of just a couple years, they could go from a core group of Bergeron, Marchand, Pastrnak, Krejc, Chara, Krug, McCavoy, and Rask to just Marchand, McCavoy and I guess Hall.

Lol, 100th percentile, is that good? Just from watching scouting highlight videos, he was playing RD at times.

I’m going to share a thought that probably won’t be popular. If Pavel Mintyukov is available at 16, I could see the Sabres taking him. I have a few reasons for this. (1) he is a Russian already playing in NA. For a team that hasn’t had Russians in around in a long time, he could be a good guy to get in and he could help any Russians coming in the future to adapt. (2) in my opinion, he had the most impressive season of any defenseman draft prospect in NA. He led his team in points and scored 17 goals himself. (3) people question his defense, but he was on a bad team that really depended on him to create offense, and was often playing playing from behind. I think he was playing the way he was asked to. I’ve heard that his defensive play was pretty good prior to this season. I know the Sabres have a lot of high end LHD already, but he is the 3rd best D in the draft for me. If the Sabres have him evaluated as the 6th, 7th, 8th best draft prospect and he is still there at 16, maybe they just grab him.

I don’t know if a language barrier prevented some elaboration but Lekkerimaki didn’t give great answers there.