jahnyc

What a terrible trade. I believe Levi was a seventh round pick last year and the Panthers will be good next year, meaning the draft pick will be towards the end of the first round. No prospect or other player that will be slotted in now into the line-up. F- for this trade (and an A for the Risto trade). Adams is in over his head and I don't trust him to improve the team in free agency.

It definitely will be a new era if we trade Eichel, Sam and Riston in the near term. Unfortunately, this would be exactly the type of situation (selling significant assets) that you would want an experienced GM and team for. We don't have that, and we also have an understaffed scouting group, which is another concern. JB was an inexperienced GM, and we paid the price with a poor trade for Ryan O'Reilly. We can blame the Pegulas for putting constraints on JB, but maybe a more experienced GM would have been able to navigate ownership better and get a different result.

What if Ron Francis offered to take Skinner, assuming that the Sabres could get Skinner to waive his no trade?

I think the return for Eichel may be significantly less than what some are expecting given his injury, salary and remaining term on his contract. NHL GMs also know that he wants out of Buffalo, which will further negatively impact any expected return for him. It will be tough to get the package of players that this team needs for Eichel.

I wonder how good of a return the Sabres would get for Jack given his injury and big salary. Worried that we will have a repeat of the O'Reilly trade where our inexperienced GM gets us back a bunch of near useless pieces. Maybe my biggest concern is the long-term impact on the ability of the Sabres to attract talent and be a desirable place for players, which was already a problem. Whether Jack is using this situation for leverage to get traded, it is not a good look to have a dispute with your injured captain over his appropriate course of treatment. It also does not help when you have players like Risto and Sam being openly unenthusiastic about coming back. I guess a true house cleaning of the "veteran" players may end up happening.

Probably still a bad team, but if the team had strong coaching from the beginning of the season and a healthy Eichel, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that Hall and Montour would have made this team at least a .500 team this year if not better? I know that Hall was ineffective during his time here and Montour never seemed to live up to his perceived potential, but I do believe that with a better system and coaching, we could have had a different result. I think I would be optimistic for next season if we had Hall and Montour (understanding that both players would be free agents and would need to be re-signed).

How is KA being set up for success? He has no prior GM experience, the scouting staff was decimated, he inherited an awful head coach and he has no assistant GMs. That is a recipe for disaster, and I think we are seeing that now. After our playoff drought and consistently poor play over the last 10 years or so, It is not fair to expect that Sabres fans will accept that he will learn from his mistakes or learn on the job. This is not where the team should be with its hockey leadership. After everything, you would have thought the lesson to be learned is that this team needs strong and experienced management at all levels. The Sabres have made poor decisions with their coaches and GMs, with most sharing one common characteristic: no prior experience in the position they were hired for (yes, I am generalizing and not forgetting about the prior experience of Nolan and Bylsma). Unfortunately, the trading deadline went about as poorly as you would expect for a GM with no prior experience and no other resources (i.e., no President of Hockey Operations or Assistant GMs) in a complex situation because of cap limitations and Covid issues. We have the draft approaching, and the Sabres likely will have a high pick, but we will need to depend on a scouting staff that has shrunk significantly which will impact the ability to evaluate potential picks complicated by Covid. KA could become an effective GM, but it is highly unlikely under the current circumstances. He should be moved to another position within the organization and an experienced GM and President should be hired, along with a new and experienced coach.

We retained 50% salary and included Lazar. This is all we could get? This was a really bad trade.

Not as bad as the ROR trade because we are not getting a bunch of bad players with big contracts in return, but we just traded two players for one player who is worse than either of the two we traded. This is how a bad team stays bad for the foreseeable future.

If there was no retention of salary for Hall (and there was none for Montour), then financial considerations (i.e., reducing financial obligations) was an unfortunate part of the decision making with regard to these trades.

If the trade is with Pittsburgh, the return will be poor.

Living in NYC, I have been able to watch more Sabres games this season because of the number of scheduled games against the Rangers, Islanders and the Devils. I thought Montour was a bit of a bright spot, and showcased some offensive capabilities from time to time. I know that Savard and Montour are different type of players, but amazing to me the difference in the trade return for the players considering that Savard is 30 and will be a free agent after the season as well. Also surprised that the return for Staal was better than Montour. Seems every trade the Sabres make is a trade where everyone knows that the Sabres need to trade the player (i.e., Hall, Montour, Kane and O'Reilly), which always leads to underwhelming returns. Expecting the same result for Hall. While additional draft picks are always welcome, I don't think picks after the second round are likely to move the needle for our future prospect pool, particularly since we have reduced our scouting staff significantly in a year where there is more uncertainty in the draft than almost any other recent year due to Covid and the impact it had on draft eligible players.

If a player has an expiring contract at a point in the season where there is no possibility of making the playoffs and he is unlikely to re-sign with the Sabres, he should be traded for whatever you can get. Am I missing something?

This is not a good team now, and it likely will be worse next year. Hall and Staal likely will be gone, and the bottom six will continue to be awful. The Sabres will continue to have the same needs as in recent years: a quality second and third line center and better bottom six, goaltending and coaching. Without virtually nothing in the pipeline at center or wing, I have no idea how this team will improve in the near term.

Are Eichel and Reinhart still close friends? If yes, and you trade Reinhart, are the Sabres then prepared to trade Eichel after the season, because you would have to expect that he will be even unhappier than he already is with the current state of the team. I understand that Eichel does not make decisions for the team as to who to trade or keep, but trading Reinhart would have to be just another thing to push him to want to leave the Sabres.

I have watched the Sabres for more than 40 years and this could be one of the worst periods (if not the worst period) of hockey I have seen a Sabres team play. Can't even blame Hutton for any of this.

I know it is still early in the free agency period, but it is hard to not feel discouraged. Seems that not only have we not signed a player that would be a significant upgrade at a position of need, we have re-signed or signed players at above what should be their current market value. This is a bad combination and does not bode well for the upcoming season.

The Sabres way overpaid for Girgenson.

Schmaltz only would make sense if AZ retained some of the contract dollars.

I am sure that Eichel has opinions about the Sabres organization that would cause him to not be unhappy if he was traded to a major market team that was a contender for the playoffs and the Stanley Cup. He has experienced multiple coaches and GMs in his relatively short time with the Sabres, and he likely is well aware of how the potential cost cutting can impact the amount of money spent on players this offseason or even potential trades, including players he is close to, such as Reinhart. I don't think the surfacing of this rumor is without a basis in some reality. If the Sabres do not make the playoffs next season, I do think that Eichel will ask to be traded either privately or publicly. That seems somewhat inevitable at this point.

The current Sabres line-up has zero toughness. Risto is about the only physical type player that the Sabres have. Would be a mistake to trade him unless the make-up of the team changes significantly as a result of offseason trades and free agent acquisitions. I believe acquiring players with a physical presence should be a priority for the Sabres whether or not they trade Risto.

I agree the actions today feel like cost cutting measures, but didn't the Pegulas incur significant costs by firing everyone since I assume that they are still on the hook for the remaining terms of the contracts of JBot, Sexton, Taylor and the scouts? Maybe a housecleaning was in order, but this seems about the stupidest way to go about it by hiring a GM with no experience and then getting rid of all of the hockey people. What hockey people are going to want to come work for the Sabres after all of this and our recent history of firing GMs and coaches?

We have no pipeline of talent and JBott's judgment has been suspect with regard to the cap and trades. Could not even make the playoffs this year when the pool was expanded to more teams. I have no confidence in his ability to improve the team in the near or long term. I guess the housecleaning will come at the end of the next season.

I would hope before the Pegulas fire JBot that they have a plan in place and know that they have a GM replacement (and maybe President) who will be an unquestioned upgrade over what we currently have.

In terms of where we are currently, I am really concerned that improvement will not come in the near future at the forward position from Rochester or our pipeline. Do we have any forwards in Rochester that can make the Sabres next season (other than maybe Casey)? I find this situation kind of shocking considering our draft position over the last number of years, the number of picks made, and the young players acquired in trades. I also understand that we have a fair amount of cap space for next season, but that will go quickly to fill the number of spots that will be open because of departing players and the Skinner contract is going to become a significant drag on our overall cap going forward. Maybe we can trade one or more of our defenseman for some help upfront, but this has not happened to this point (and would have made more sense to have been done for the beginning of the season). We all have our views about JB's performance to date, but I do not have confidence in his ability to move the team in the right direction in the the near term or future.