So, about that salary cap

[gilbert11]

On 8/5/2025 at 8:55 AM, dudacek said:

Your answer is Sam Reinhart.

NHL teams in general sign players to deals like this with the assumption the player will be overpaid at the start of the contract and underpaid at the end of the contract as they develop.

The Sabres in particular also have to deal with the issue of attracting/retaining talent as one of the league’s less attractive markets and are more sensitive to the realities of “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” than, say, Vegas.

Those are your big picture contextual answers.

As to Power himself the tools and the pedigree are obvious; it’s also pretty clear after two years of watching him train, practice and interact that they regarded the person as someone they are comfortable investing in long-term.

When they signed him Power was coming off his second season with these statistics:

• ES points 26
• icetime 1880
• Corsi 52%
• GF% 53%
• xGF% 47.2%

These are Power’s peers at the time of signing their second contracts.

Luke Hughes

• ES points 28
• icetime 1506
• Corsi 56%
• GF% 52.8%
• xGF% 55%

Jake Sanderson

• ES points 15
• Icetime 1687
• Corsi 50%
• GF% 47.5%
• xGF% 49.2%

Moritz Seider

• ES points 24
• Ice time 1833
• Corsi 45%
• GF% 48.6%
• xGF% 42.7%

Rasmus Dahlin (bubble season)

• ES points 12
• Ice time 1211
• Corsi 55%
• GF% 43.6%
• xGF% 50.7%

Seider $8.5m and Sanderson $8m signed similar deals to his. We’ll see what Hughes gets soon. Dahlin signed a bridge for $6M which (with inflation) represents roughly what would have been the alternative to what Power signed.

I’d also point to the deals signed by the likes of Miller and Provorov this summer under the growing cap as a sign of things to come and a warning of how $8M is not going to be what it was, very soon.

None of that changes the fact that Power regressed in the 1st year of his 2nd contract while his peers continued to develop. We’ll see if that is a blip, or whether he bucks the trend and fails to emerge the way most players of his pedigree tend to, and the way he was on track to in his first 2 seasons.

Bringing it back to Reinhart. There's an example of a high-pedigree guy who wasn't an immediate star and the Sabres did not lock up. Fear of repeating that mistake has to be a motivator.

Your question was what did they see in him. There’s an answer. The contract still has 6 years to prove its worth.

I guess I just have to accept that Power is who he is.  I expected a 6’6” 225# defenseman to have a lot more than 26 hits in 79 games.  What a waste of size!    He’s like a 7 foot NBA player hanging out at the 3 point line.

[steveoath]

Why is the expectation for power to be a hitter? Was never like that prior to the draft. 

[JohnC]

7 hours ago, gilbert11 said:

I guess I just have to accept that Power is who he is.  I expected a 6’6” 225# defenseman to have a lot more than 26 hits in 79 games.  What a waste of size!    He’s like a 7 foot NBA player hanging out at the 3 point line.

What you expected him to be is different from who he is as a defenseman. Just because he does’t fall within your vision on how someone with his size should play doesn’t mean he is a failure. What it indicates is that you are off the mark in evaluating him. 
 

Power is going to be an anchor defenseman for us. Especially for defensemen with his size, it takes time to fully develop. He was the consensus top pick in his draft year. And he was the right pick for us. 
 

I just don’t understand all the lamenting about him. It makes no sense to me especially when there are so many other players who are question marks on this team, most notably our goalie.

[French Collection]

7 hours ago, gilbert11 said:

I guess I just have to accept that Power is who he is.  I expected a 6’6” 225# defenseman to have a lot more than 26 hits in 79 games.  What a waste of size!    He’s like a 7 foot NBA player hanging out at the 3 point line.

I know he was never a physical guy and will never be the Pronger clone some dreamt about.

I have said this in a few threads and I am just asking for 10% more grit than he has displayed. He has surely gained some strength in the last few years and he has the size. He needs to put forth a little bit more effort to be assertive in puck battles, he could win a few more by doing more than just boxing out and letting his body absorb the punishment. 10% means a small mental adjustment to want the puck more than ever and to realize how that shows your teammates that you will battle alongside them.

I am positive he is scared of having to fight if he battles too hard. It is not in him to grind but 10% could make a difference. The odd face wash in a scrum or defending a fallen mate would also raise his grit level and gain more respect on his team and around the league.

Like most players he spends the off season working on conditioning, strength and skills. He needs to mentally prepare himself to give 10% more in the grit department. It is just a small adjustment, not a huge physical demand.

[Archie Lee]

Perhaps this is not a meaningful thing, but the thread being revived a bit today got me back to thinking about the salary cap and the position that Adams had put the franchise in.  I did an exercise on PuckPedia of recreating last year's roster with this year's salaries (reverse the Peterka and Clifton trades; bring back Lafferty for Danforth, Reimer for Lyon).  If you recreate last year's end of season roster using the current salaries of those players, the Sabre cap hit would be just over $97 million.  That would be the 4th highest cap hit in the NHL. The only 3 teams with a current higher projected cap hit are Vegas, Montreal, and Florida, and unlike the Sabres they all have an obvious high-salaried LTIR candidate for the start of the season.

Obviously, this didn't happen and Adams should not be criticized for something he didn't ultimately do.  But, what he did do last season was ice the youngest roster in the league, that produced a 79 point season (7th worst in the NHL), and that if kept together would have had the highest LTIR-excluded cap-hit in the NHL this season. Again, perhaps not meaningful.  Or perhaps, evidence of gross incompetence (as it relates to his job duties). 

Edited 1 hour ago by Archie Lee