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Moving on from our free agents to players under contract next year #19 Cody Hodgson RW/C (four years left at $4.25 million per, age 25) Buffalo 78/6/7/13/-28/12 Junior hockey officials called Cody Hodgson the Canadian Hockey League 2009 Player of the year, as well as the OHL’s hardest worker, best faceoff man, best penalty killer and most sportsmanlike player the season after he was drafted 10th overall. Canadian fans called him a hero and the NHL’s best prospect after he led Team Canada to gold in the 2009 World Junior tournament, leading the team in scoring with 16 points in six games. Coach Alain Vigneault suggested he was making excuses when he went to a back specialist after failing to make the Canucks due to a poor training camp the next fall. (The specialist discovered a problem and declared him unfit to play. Hodgson subsequently refused to train with the Canuck staff.) Canuck manager Mike Gillis told the media he was a problem child after trading him to the Sabres in one of the more unpopular trades in Vancouver franchise history while gossip swirled about his helicopter dad. Since the trade, Sabrespacers have called him everything from the solution to the Sabres’ first-line centre problems, to a soft defensive disaster. Yes, people have said a lot of things about Cody Hodgson during his relatively brief career. But they have never said he couldn’t score. Until last year. After averaging 47 points over 82 games in his first three NHL seasons, and leading the Sabres in scoring in 2013/14, the bottom fell out for Hodgson last year. Playing mostly right wing instead of his usual centre, he scored just six times all season, even spending a handful of games as a healthy scratch. By mid-November, he was buried on the third or fourth line and lost his spot on the power play. Perhaps surprisingly, he never complained, even as trades and injuries opened up spots in the top-six and Ted Nolan kept him nailed to the bench. Hodgson’s play was so poor that talk surfaced about the team buying him out this summer. The theory is his trade value at this point is non-existent. Because of his age, the Sabres can buy his contract out at a cap hit of about $800,000 over the next eight years. If they wait, the hit will double and some have argued the team would be better off cutting their losses now. It’s not clear at this point how — or if — Hodgson fits into the plans of Tim Murray and Dan Bylsma. His is a situation that bears watching. Links to the rest of the series: Anders Lindback: http://forums.sabres...nders-lindback/ Pat Kaleta: http://forums.sabres...patrick-kaleta/ Johan Larsson: http://forums.sabres...-johan-larsson/ Matt Hackett: http://forums.sabres...1-matt-hackett/ Andrej Meszaros: http://forums.sabres...ndrej-meszaros/ Phil Varone, Zac Dalpe, Jerry D'Amigo: http://forums.sabres...e-dalpe-damigo/ Mikhail Grigorenko: http://forums.sabres...ail-grigorenko/ Tyson Strachan, Andre Benoit: http://forums.sabres...han-and-benoit/ Mark Pysyk: http://forums.sabres...w-3-mark-pysyk/ Tim Schaller: http://forums.sabres...9-tim-schaller/ Matt Ellis: http://forums.sabrespace.com/topic/23427-roster-review-37-matt-ellis/