Summer 2025: NHL Offseason

[SwampD]

1 hour ago, PromoTheRobot said:

....that he was willing to give It's a press conference, not a deposition under oath.

Your assumption they don't have a plan is an opinion, as is mine that they do. But I think mine makes more sense logically. You're is based on emotion.

All he gave were excuses.

Mine assumption is based their own past admissions.

 

I ***** hate all this *****!

Why the ***** are we even talking about Kevyn f*****g Adams and what his plan is or isn't?!?! If Pegula gave a single ***** about the Sabres Kevyn would have been gone a long time ago.

I still think we're screwed until the team is sold to someone who actually wants to win.

[PromoTheRobot]

3 minutes ago, SwampD said:

All he gave were excuses.

Mine assumption is based their own past admissions.

 

I ***** hate all this *****!

Why the ***** are we even talking about Kevyn f*****g Adams and what his plan is or isn't?!?! If Pegula gave a single ***** about the Sabres Kevyn would have been gone a long time ago.

I still think we're screwed until the team is sold to someone who actually wants to win.

We need a move just to fill the vacuum.

[FrenchConnection44]

 Not the Sabres. 
 

 

[ponokasabre]

A bit of Samuelssen rumors to tease us

[WhenWillItEnd66]

They are not going to buy him out. The answer to this team problem comes from within..... 🤣 

[PromoTheRobot]

3 hours ago, ponokasabre said:

A bit of Samuelssen rumors to tease us

Gently pumping the tires on 'Muel.

[shrader]

18 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

You can if they're over 35yrs old 

Also guys coming off of long term injuries. He checks all the boxes. 

[SwampD]

15 hours ago, ponokasabre said:

A bit of Samuelssen rumors to tease us

That’s not a rumor. That’s just two guys talking about his situation.

[Taro T]

21 hours ago, thewookie1 said:

It's heavily hedged to the fact he hasn't played in two years and may never return to form or need to retire again. 

That being said, I never knew you could structure a contract with that much bonus potential. 2 mil cap hit that can balloon as high as 7mil.

Toews is a special case.  He's over 35 and coming off injury.  Notice the contract is only for a single year.  

There are 3 classes of players that can sign contracts which include performance bonuses:

Players on ELCs who are allowed to negotiate bonuses for certain listed achievements.  (Though the actual bonus itself can be negotiated as long as the total of bonuses if all achieved doesn't put the total earnable salary in any single year of the up to 3 year long ELC years above the rookie cap of ~$3.8MM.  There's the rookie salary cap (minus bonuses) and then there's the rookie salary CAP (including performance bonuses.)

Players 35 and older can sign contracts with performance bonuses provided the contract is for a single year.

Veterans (players w/ 400+ NHL games credited towards pension earnings) that were on IR for at least 100 days in the last season of their most recent SPC contract are also allowed to have earnable performance bonuses in their contract provided the contract is only for 1 season.

As long as the player contract doesn't put the player outside an allowable contract (can't be for less than the league minimum without meeting any bonuses and can't put the player over the individual salary threshold should the bonuses be met) then there are essentially no limits on what non-ELC performance bonuses are allowable.  (Said essentially because the total of all earnable performance bonuses for those players qualifying for non-ELC performance bonuses can't cause the team to exceed the cap by more than 7.5% of the SC. (This is the team's "performance bonus cushion".))

And if the achievement of bonuses put a team over the cap, they don't get dinged for them in that season they're earned.  They count against the team's cap in the next season.  E.g. a team with $1MM in cap space has a player earn $2MM in performance bonuses.  At the end of the year, the 1st $1MM counts against the cap in the current season and the other $1MM counts against the team cap the following year.  (Similar to how when a team buys a player out, the cap hit doesn't all hit in the 1st year of the buyout.)

[ponokasabre]

11 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Toews is a special case.  He's over 35 and coming off injury.  Notice the contract is only for a single year.  

There are 3 classes of players that can sign contracts which include performance bonuses:

Players on ELCs who are allowed to negotiate bonuses for certain listed achievements.  (Though the actual bonus itself can be negotiated as long as the total of bonuses if all achieved doesn't put the total earnable salary in any single year of the up to 3 year long ELC years above the rookie cap of ~$3.8MM.  There's the rookie salary cap (minus bonuses) and then there's the rookie salary CAP (including performance bonuses.)

Players 35 and older can sign contracts with performance bonuses provided the contract is for a single year.

Veterans (players w/ 400+ NHL games credited towards pension earnings) that were on IR for at least 100 days in the last season of their most recent SPC contract are also allowed to have earnable performance bonuses in their contract provided the contract is only for 1 season.

As long as the player contract doesn't put the player outside an allowable contract (can't be for less than the league minimum without meeting any bonuses and can't put the player over the individual salary threshold should the bonuses be met) then there are essentially no limits on what non-ELC performance bonuses are allowable.  (Said essentially because the total of all earnable performance bonuses for those players qualifying for non-ELC performance bonuses can't cause the team to exceed the cap by more than 7.5% of the SC. (This is the team's "performance bonus cushion".))

And if the achievement of bonuses put a team over the cap, they don't get dinged for them in that season they're earned.  They count against the team's cap in the next season.  E.g. a team with $1MM in cap space has a player earn $2MM in performance bonuses.  At the end of the year, the 1st $1MM counts against the cap in the current season and the other $1MM counts against the team cap the following year.  (Similar to how when a team buys a player out, the cap hit doesn't all hit in the 1st year of the buyout.)

Chicago trades Joe Veleno to Seattle Burakovsky 

[ponokasabre]

Ek has Byram to Philly E4 

 

So he def isn’t going there lol

 

i still think there could be a Sammy for Risto swap

[Thorny]

On 6/20/2025 at 8:25 AM, PromoTheRobot said:

Relax. Things will get done. Other teams may have thought they could take advantage of Adams, especially with agents feeding journalists stories hoping to put pressure on the Sabres. 

We have desirable assets and leverage. Eventually teams will come to the table with serious offers.

 

Agree tbh. Say what you want, but one needs to get up preeeeeeety early in the afternoon to get the jump on Kevyn Adams

[ponokasabre]

oh my god it’s happening!

[Archie Lee]

1 minute ago, ponokasabre said:

oh my god it’s happening!

Well, if true, I could not have been more wrong on that. 

[ponokasabre]

1 minute ago, Archie Lee said:

Well, if true, I could not have been more wrong on that. 

Yes still needs to be confirmed from the Sabres side

bur this shows they are serious about changing this roster 

Sammy could not be here anymore more with his injury history, his cap hit, his lack of toughness, and put that all in with him being part of the leadership, no way 

[shrader]

2 hours ago, Taro T said:

 

And if the achievement of bonuses put a team over the cap, they don't get dinged for them in that season they're earned.  They count against the team's cap in the next season.  E.g. a team with $1MM in cap space has a player earn $2MM in performance bonuses.  At the end of the year, the 1st $1MM counts against the cap in the current season and the other $1MM counts against the team cap the following year.  (Similar to how when a team buys a player out, the cap hit doesn't all hit in the 1st year of the buyout.)

Does it matter at all the timing of when a bonus can be achieved? That 20 game bonus for Toews, he can reach that pretty early. It seems like it would be easy enough to count that against the cap, but I can see why they wouldn’t want to do it that way. 

[Taro T]

47 minutes ago, shrader said:

Does it matter at all the timing of when a bonus can be achieved? That 20 game bonus for Toews, he can reach that pretty early. It seems like it would be easy enough to count that against the cap, but I can see why they wouldn’t want to do it that way. 

For the cap, no.  Because while stuff like this is pretty easily determined, you can get gray REALLY quickly and once you start trying to say well THIS counts against the cap but THAT doesn't, you get counter examples that look similar to A but were treated like B and it likely ends up ugly.  Way easier to just say, we'll figure it out at the end of the season provided you don't have more potentially earnable performance bonus money in total than is allowable and we'll figure that out when you submit the contract to the league for approval.

For escrow, yes.  So that 20 game bonus will be likely be factored into the escrow calculations pretty early in the season whereas the SC bonus won't factor in at all as all regular salary will have been earned or expected to be earned by the time the last escrow estimate is made.  And ALL of that will get factored into the final disbursement back to the players (or from them if the calculations were REALLY off) next summer.

[Flashsabre]

1 hour ago, ponokasabre said:

oh my god it’s happening!

This was not a rumor. It was two guys in a podcast talking about what the Sabres should do with him.

[mjd1001]

The fun of being a Sabres fan:

-NHL player transactions (trades, signings, extensions, etc):  In the past week, 26 of them.  0 from the Sabres.

-Since June 1 (last 3 weeks).  NHL total transactions, 57 of them (mostly re-signings, a few trades).  0 from the Sabres.

-Since the beginning of May, there is ONE Sabres player transaction, Signing D Erik Brannstrom to a three-year contract. The rest of the NHL well over 100.

I mean, I'm not a person to say make a move the the sake of it, but there really isn't much to talk about here lately.  You would think the team that has the longest playoff drought would be one of them that would be wanting to make the most moves to change things.