Archie Lee

For it to work, Byram, Norris and a contract in the Quinn, Greenway, Samuelsson territory would need to go.

They need to add a goalie who is above the level of a guy they can sneak through waivers on cut-down day. That’s likely the best we can hope for. There are no great options, maybe no obvious good options. I would probably try to sign Vladar, but I acknowledge that he is not a great option.

Until we see otherwise, I think the safe money is that the Sabres will spend to an internal cap that comes in under $90 million. I could be wrong and this is the year they go big. It sounds like the Canucks are keeping Pettersson (unless there is news I’ve missed), but if he is available the Sabres could take a run. If the Sabres moved Byram and Norris in a Pettersson trade, they would still have room to add Robertson for futures. A top line of Pettersson centring Robertson and Thompson, would certainly change how the Sabres are viewed.

I wholly disagree with this. Benson on the left wing on a line with Thompson on RW, and Norris or Kulich at centre, will have one giant question mark, and it won’t be Thompson or Benson.

I personally doubt that Peterka or most modern players have great issues with tough coaching. It is a misconception in my view, that the modern star athlete has been coddled by parents and coaches through their young lives. I actually think the opposite is more likely to be true and that they have been driven hard. My best guess is that Granato said things in meetings, practices, and games, that if said to us at work would have most of us calling HR. Sometimes it’s not the message but the delivery. I’m not a Ruff fan. I admire what he did as a Sabre coach a generation ago. I don’t think he is currently the right guy for this or any NHL team. He comes across as fake tough to me. I think players see through his bluster and that there is little substance there. System and structure are just slogans and catchphrases. Maybe Peterka is just a chronic pouter. For now though, when it comes to the question of where the blame lies in the erosion of a relationship between the Sabres and a young player, I see no reason to give the benefit of the doubt to Pegula or Adams. I’ve seen multiple young players who didn’t want to be here go on to better things. I’ve yet to see Pegula and Adams do the same here.

Here is my issue with the 2 trades the Sabres have made: they are not the trades that are made by a 79 point team that is committed to making the playoffs after 5 straight years of missing under a GM who is in the last year of a contract (never mind Pegula's larger 14-year Reign of Error). Shayna Goldman said something similar on Sabres Live, when explaining why she graded Utah higher than the Sabres in the Peterka deal. It's not that the trade is entirely bad or that the players coming in aren't good, it's that the Sabres need something bigger, something more substantive, something that puts them on the path to being a playoff team this year. The two trades they have made so far, do address handedness on D (something Adams previously told us he doesn't worry about), and they do make the Sabres bigger and harder to play against (also things that Adams previously seemed unconcerned by). They don't make the Sabres more experienced (by age, games played, playoff history, etc.). On balance, they probably don't make the Sabres more talented as Peterka would currently be considered the best "talent" in the trades. They do make the Sabres younger and cheaper, and a reasonable concern is that these are the most important factors. Until we see the return on the Byram trade and/or what the Sabres do in free agency or with other trades, these are trades that nibble on the edges of what the Sabres need to do to take a next step. For now, the big picture is that the trades are fine (I guess), but ultimately they are not the big swings that the Sabres need to take.

I’m a vacuum, I like the trade. I don’t like that it makes us younger. I don’t like that the focus seems to be on getting cheaper (though dumping Clifton is good). Timmons is projected by AFP to get $2.6 on a two year deal. Also, in less than 12 months we have gone from handedness not being an issue to it being ultra-important. It all ties in to the view that there has never been a coherent plan.

McLeod is the closest thing we have to a sure thing at centre. And I know he isn’t a sure thing. He is actually the one guy I am low-key worried about getting an offer sheet. He will turn 26 in Sept. He is 6’3”. He is a natural centre. He is one of the best skaters in the NHL. He is good defensively. He can win face-offs. He is a good and dangerous penalty killer. And he just had a 53 point season, where he never had consistent line mates. Regression is a real risk, to be sure. But with centres being hard to come by and with the cap going up to $113 million in two years, $7 million for a centre who profiles like McLeod, isn’t crazy in my view. If you are a team with a lot of cap space that is a contender and needs a centre and isn’t worried about losing their 2026 1st, say Carolina or Winnipeg, I think a 5x$7 offer sheet for McLeod could make sense. That would cost them something like picks 27 and 98 in 2026.

McLeod is a much surer thing as a top 6 centre for the coming season, than Kulich. Not even close.

It’s a bit cringey to me.

I agree with that tweet. I’m not outright down on Quinn. I like the kid. I still think he has upside. I hope he busts loose this year. But he was a net negative player last year. You can’t pay almost $3.5 million to a player without greater certainty that they will positively impact your team. Whether they spend to the cap or have an internal cap, that’s money that needs to be spent on a more sure thing, in my view. I guess he could still be traded. But this makes it less likely, I think.

On Rust, I might be wrong on this, but I think he has a partial NTC through June 30th and it comes off July 1. So, unless we aren't on the list or he outright waives his NTC, a trade might not be an option until July 1. Again, I might be wrong.

Just for clarity, Rust started 50% of his shifts "on the fly". Of his shifts that began with a face-off, 62% started in the o-zone. This is ok by me, as it is how I would use him with Kulich and Zucker. My heavy d-zone, match-up, line would be McLeod, Greenway and Tuch. Three big and lengthy players who can all play solid D, two of whom can really skate, two of whom can play physical, one of whom can be nasty. Norris, Benson, Thompson would be line 1. This is potentially weak, but Thompson has 50 goal seasons in him I think, and Benson can take a step forward and drag them into the fight most nights. Krebs, Malenstyn, Doan are line 4. Doan will hopefully make line 4 what it was intended to be a year ago. Rosen, Kozak, Lafferty would be the depth, with likely two of them headed to the Americans to start the year. Centre is not strong with Norris and McLeod both playing a line higher than ideal (Norris, to me, more so than McLeod). I also, generally, just don't think Ruff has it in him to get a team playing with the needed structure. A good coach though, and I think it is a playoff capable group of forwards.

We are all just fans. Nobody here traded Peterka for anything and nobody here is trading Byram.

Helenius, I would say no. Quinn or Rosen? Yes. We are running out of positions for Quinn if we acquire Rust.

Well, I disagree with you that Byram is a poor player.

You make great points. I like both players that we acquired. The Sabres are not so deep that we are in a position where we can only get better if we get the best player in a 2 for 1 trade. It may well work out. Here is an issue I have. I don’t recall where I saw it, but this morning someone posted a current list of the NHL’s youngest teams based on current rosters. The Sabres are 3rd youngest. The teams around us are generally a who’s who of NHL teams that nobody thinks will make the playoffs in 2025-26. Kesselring and Doan are both younger than our average age. That doesn’t mean that Kesselring and Doan are too young to help an NHL team win. But if a person thinks, as I do, that youth and inexperience were factors in our regression over the past two seasons, then Adams didn’t address that shortcoming with this trade.

Assuming the Sabres stay where they are, there are two names I want to hear get called before then: O'Brien and McQueen. That will mean Martone, Hagens, or Martin have fallen (I don't think there is any chance Frondell or Desnoyers fall to #9).

I admire your conviction on Frondell. I have not seen the kid play, so my opinions are based solely on the opinions of others (including yours). There seems to be a real possibility that he goes #2 to SJ. You have him ranked quite a bit lower than anyone I have seen, but you're not alone in thinking he is not a top 5 pick. This is why I love the draft. I would look forward to tonight, even if the Sabres had no 1st rounder. I find it fascinating to watch how individual teams sort out the details on these kids.

To the bolded, I will need to see what happens with Byram and how close the Sabres come to the cap before I can draw the conclusion that you have. I think it is possible that a factor in Peterka wanting out is that we were offering a two year bridge at $6.5. That he immediately signed with Utah might be a sign that the Sabres did not offer what Peterka wanted in a contract, and Utah did.

I've heard more than one of the insiders say that this year may be different and that all of the activity that you typically see get done by July 3rd, may take into August to be done this year.

There were two interview clips I heard yesterday on the trade and Peterka. They sort of align. Mike Peca was the first. Peca loves Peterka and thinks Utah got a 40 goal scorer. More significantly perhaps, is he said that in the 2nd half of their season together in Rochester, Peterka figured out how being defensively responsible and committing to puck retrievals on the D side, would benefit his offence. It made me think there is a better two-way player in there somewhere. The 2nd interview was with Ray Ferraro. He thought the Sabres did well and that once Sabre fans get to watch Kesselring/Doan they will see that they got two good players, in particular Kesselring. He also told an anecdote about a Sabre game he covered last year where after every shift Peterka would come and sit on the end of the bench and do a 45 degree turn away from his teammates and coaches. He said that all signs were that Peterka had emotionally checked-out on the Sabres. The link between the stories is that Peterka has more in him to give. We will find out if he is a player who will eventually find something he doesn’t like in any situation and let it negatively impact his game, or if he just had another case of the Sabre-Blues. I would bet on the latter. Also, Ferraro’s comments gave me hope that we didn’t lose this trade. Lastly, I’m all over a 3rd line of Kulich centring two veterans in Zucker and Rust. Give Kulich what we never gave Cozens: two seasons between two vets who can teach him how to be a pro. Turn the trio loose; their purpose is to outscore the other team’s 3rd line.

Agreed fully. I would even give him PP time with Dahlin. Ras is the best passer on the team and has vastly improved his shot. I think it would open up our PP if we put Dahlin on the right wing wall where he would give us a 2nd way to get the puck to Thompson (the cross ice pass).

I would be fine if they extended him and just stapled him to Dahlin. After yesterday, we would have our top-4 potentially nailed down for several years.

I don’t like the trade, but I would not say I hate it. I am a Sabre fan and by default I am finding things to like about Kesselring and Doan. Legit things to like. I don’t like the trade because I fear it portends what the next moves will be. There has been much speculation on an internal cap. A similar return for Byram and we pretty much have our confirmation. If Adams can move Byram and Quinn and extras for a veteran right shot D and a veteran middle-6 winger, both with playoff bonafides, and find a way to add a veteran goalie who can play 35-40 games as UPL’s partner, I may yet come around on our roster.