Thursday: Berglund has cleared waivers, and is now expected to have his contract terminated.
Wednesday: The Buffalo Sabres have put an end to the situation revolving around Patrik Berglund. The team today placed Berglund on unconditional waivers for the purpose of terminating his contract. Berglund is currently suspended by the team for failing to report. Terminating the contract will completely remove Berglund’s remaining $3.85MM cap hit and average salary, which was meant to continue through 2021-22. He will be an unrestricted free agent.
Assuming that the contract termination is of the mutually agreed upon variety—opposed to the “material breach” of contract kind that ended Jake Dotchin‘s Tampa Bay career—Berglund is walking away from more than $12MM in order to leave the Sabres. CapFriendly explains how exactly these terminations are perhaps mislabeled as mutual, though do usually give the player the opportunity to report and avoid the termination.
In recent days, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported that Berglund failed to submit his partial no-trade clause in time to block a deal to Buffalo in the first place, when he was included in a trade that saw Ryan O’Reilly go to the St. Louis Blues. The veteran forward was also apparently frustrated with his role on the team and being scratched multiple times in the early part of the season.
For the Sabres, this actually comes as something of a blessing. Berglund had played quite poorly for Buffalo this year, and even in St. Louis had never taken the next step to become a consistent top-six forward. Though he does have some offensive upside given his multiple 20-goal seasons, the Sabres have other players who can take over the load for much cheaper. Wiping his cap hit from the books going forward will only help the team re-sign a player like Jeff Skinner, who is scheduled for unrestricted free agency and could be looking for a huge payday.
It’s not clear yet what Berglund’s plans are, but after termination he will be free to sign with any team in the NHL. There undoubtedly will be interest, but it will likely be hard to trust him after this latest stunt. Berglund’s absence was originally explained as a sickness, but after not showing up to the team he was indefinitely suspended.
Paging Chuck Fletcher…..
This makes the Ryan O’Reilly deal even better for Buffalo. Getting his cap hit off the books is a win. Since he was thrown in as a salary dump for the blues
He ruined his NHL career. I’d be advocating the Pens trade Brassard and then bring in Berglund to replace him at 3C before this stunt but, no one wants a flake.
Doug Armstrong do not bring this man back. Let him rot in UFA for a bit.
Sweeney and his team better be on the phone with Berglund’s agent, ASAP. Guy would be more than adequate for a 3rd line Center position for the B’s and the money he would be making for the rest of the season would be next to nothing.
I’ve heard speculation that Berglund did give his agent the no-trade list in time, but his agent didn’t get it to the Blues/NHL in time. If that’s the case, Berglund needs a new agent
Hey, Buffalo’s not all bad! We have great food, we’re better at surviving snowstorms than most of the country, our NFL team plays with integrity (i.e. they don’t cheat, though they do tend to lose more often than we’d like), we have lots of fun with plastic banquet tables, and we can pronounce the letter R correctly. Having said all that, at least your MLB team isn’t the Yankees. :-)
Plus layventsky, people can say what they want about BARFalo and the sabres but personally the Black & Gold fanbase respect “REAL” and your “fanship” up that way typically has great arena attendance even when the sabres sucked, cheap tickets (which is great for me when I’m up that way) and think you guys were among the top 5 in NHL viewership on TV etc. not too long ago. Not too shabby.
BTW, no one in the NFL plays clean. It’s an American sport BUILT on cheating, that’s the point…. Obviously know what you’re implying, but no, MA/New England’s NFL TEAM didn’t cheat to Championships either. That should be blatantly obvious as they clearly haven’t WON every SB they’ve played in. Don’t be a sore loser of bison city. Even if NONE of your sports teams ever win anything again professionally, you’ll always have buffalo wings at least to fall back on. LMAO
Jesus please do not let Armstrong bring him back to St. Louis.
I’d like to suggest that those who are inclined to roast the guy be mindful that there could be more personal reasons at play here that have little to do with hockey, and everything to do with taking care of one’s mental and physical well being. Would you rather be reading the kind of headlines that we’ve seen recently around Berglund or would you be happier reading that something tragic happened because he didn’t take care of himself. Let’s keep a little perspective here, folks. Just sayin’.