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Sabres Sign Jason Zucker

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Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff reports the Buffalo Sabres have agreed to a one-year, $5MM contract with free agent forward Jason Zucker.

Zucker, 32, projects to be a cheaper veteran replacement for Jeff Skinner, who had the final three seasons of his $9MM AAV contract bought out on Saturday. Unfortunately, he’s also a lower-ceiling option. Zucker had just 14 goals in 69 games split between the Coyotes and Predators last season, his lowest offensive output in a healthy season since 2015-16.

He’s still a viable depth scoring option, just likely not in a top-six role for a team intent on making the playoffs. Buffalo likely believes there’s some rebound potential they can unlock by sticking him with some faster, younger linemates – potentially in the top six alongside Dylan Cozens and Jack Quinn. However, Zucker is seven years removed from his career-best 33-goal, 64-point season in Minnesota – is it fair to expect him to sniff rediscovering that?

Zucker does play a physical game for his smallish frame (5’11”, 192 lbs), though, an area Skinner’s game notably lacked. It’s a facet of Buffalo’s team game they’re likely looking to improve under head coach Lindy Ruff next season. Unlike Skinner, Zucker also has a strong history of recent possession numbers and plays a much more well-rounded game. Still, for a $5MM price tag, they’re likely hoping for at least 20 goals and 45 points out of him this year.

Sabres Sign Sam Lafferty, Josh Dunne, Felix Sandström

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Making a solid addition to the team’s bottom six — Chris Johnston of TSN reports the Buffalo Sabres are expected to sign forward Sam Lafferty. Per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the contract will be a two-year, $4MM contract between Lafferty and Buffalo.

Buffalo has also signed forward Joshua Dunne to a two-year contract, per Andy Strickland (Twitter link). Strickland adds that the deal will be one-way in the second year. They’ve also added goalie Felix Sandström on a two-way deal, per TSN’s Darren Dreger.

Heading into the offseason, the Sabres were looking to upgrade the team’s bottom-six and the signing of Lafferty does just that. Lafferty followed up a 2022-23 season split between the Chicago Blackhawks and Toronto Maple Leafs which saw him score 12 goals and 27 points in 70 games with 13 goals and 24 points in 79 games with the Vancouver Canucks this past season. On the defensive side of the puck, Lafferty has put up 92.9% and 91.3% on-ice save percentages in the last two years, respectively. The only criticism of Lafferty’s game may be his work in the dot as he only mustered 150 faceoff wins in 356 attempts for the Canucks last year.

Aside from Lafferty, Dunne and Sandstrom will likely start the year for the Sabres AHL affiliate, the Rochester Americans. Dunne is coming off a disappointing regular season with the Cleveland Monsters of the AHL as he scored two goals and seven points in 25 games. While finding consistency after an injury is always difficult, Dunne performed well for the Monsters in the 2024 Calder Cup playoffs scoring seven goals and 11 points in 14 postseason contests.

Sandstrom represents a solid addition to organizational depth at the goaltender position. Although Buffalo will hope Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Devon Levi will receive the majority of starts next season, Sandstrom has plenty of experience as a backup at the NHL level. Two years ago, Sandstrom spent the year as a backup for the Philadelphia Flyers as he posted a 3-12-3 record in 18 starts while earning a .880 save percentage and 3.72 goals against average.

Sabres Attempting To Re-Sign Zemgus Girgensons

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  • The Buffalo Sabres are still waiting to hear if forward Zemgus Girgensons plans to test free agency (as per Lance Lysowski). It was reported a month ago that the Sabres wouldn’t re-sign the 30-year-old, but they have reportedly offered him a contract to stay in Buffalo. The Riga, Latvia native has spent his entire 10-year NHL career with the Sabres, dressing in 688 games. Girgensons has only topped 20 points twice in his career and not since the 2014-15 season.  He signed a one-year $2.5MM last June to forgo free agency but had the worst offensive season of his career with just eight goals and six assists in 63 games. While he didn’t produce much offense, his possession numbers at even-strength weren’t awful with a CF% of 49.2%.

Sabres Acquire Beck Malenstyn From Capitals

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The Buffalo Sabres have acquired the rights to pending-restricted free agent Beck Malenstyn from the Washington Capitals, sending Pick 43 in the 2024 NHL Draft the other way.

Beck Malenstyn was one of two notable RFAs in Washington’s system, alongside forward Connor McMichael. The two headlined a stressful summer for the Capitals – who are facing three remaining free agents, including McMichael and Max Pacioretty, with just $7.6MM in cap space if you factor in the team receiving LTIR relief for Nicklas Backstrom. Having recently acquired the ever-cheap Logan Thompson, Washington now sits just two contracts short of a full NHL roster.

For their role in helping Washington sort out their summer, Buffalo receives the hefty frame of Malenstyn, who carved out a meaningful role on Washington’s third line as a rookie this year. He recorded 21 points and 25 penalty minutes in 81 games through his inaugural season – more points than he’s managed in any one AHL season, despite spending the last four years with the Hershey Bears. Before his move to the Capitals lineup, Malenstyn’s career-high sat at just 16 points, recorded in 65 games with Hershey in 2021-22. He even took a step back in scoring last year, posting just 10 points in 40 games while supporting Hershey to their first of back-to-back Calder Cups.

Now headed to Buffalo, Malenstyn will serve as relief to a Sabres team that may lose each of Zemgus Girgensons, Victor Olofsson, and Eric Robinson to unrestricted free agency. If that is the case, Malenstyn would vie for a strong role on the third-line wing, though he’ll face pressure from top prospects like Matthew Savoie, Isak Rosen, and Jiri Kulich.

Sabres Sign Kale Clague To One-Year Extension

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The Buffalo Sabres have signed defenseman Kale Clague to a one-year, two-way contract extension. The deal with carry a league-minimum $775K cap hit at the NHL level, marking Clague’s third consecutive one-year, league-minimum contract.

Clague hasn’t found his way to consistent NHL minutes yet, instead serving as Buffalo’s de facto call-up this season. He was recalled five different times, never spending more than a few days with the NHL roster until an early March call-up held him with the team through the end of the year. Even then, Clague appeared in just three games this year, recording one point and one penalty. The stat line nearly outweighs his performance with Buffalo last year, when he totaled four assists in 33 games, but Clague has found his best groove in the minors, where he managed 23 points in 42 games this season.

Returning to the Sabres on a two-way deal likely places Clague right back into the fringe of the NHL lineup. He could also end up a second option to reigning NHL rookie Ryan Johnson, who played the first 41 games of his NHL career this season, recording seven assists. Johnson also added nine assists in 27 AHL games, though he’s still searching for his first goal. At 22, he should be Buffalo’s preferred choice for any spare minutes – situating Clague in a race with players like Nikita Novikov and Riley Stillman, vying for top-pair minutes in the minors and the occasional NHL opportunity.

Sabres, Sharks Swap 2024 First-Round Picks

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The Sharks have moved up three spots in tomorrow’s first round of the 2024 NHL Draft, acquiring the 11th overall pick from the Sabres, per a team announcement. They’re sending the 14th overall pick back to Buffalo, which they originally acquired from the Penguins in last year’s Erik Karlsson trade, along with the 42nd overall pick, which was previously acquired from the Devils as part of the return for Timo Meier in February 2023.

San Jose general manager Mike Grier now holds a slightly higher pick that should give him a chance to draft a slightly more impactful talent to develop alongside Boston University standout center Macklin Celebrini, who they’ll be taking with the first overall selection in just over 24 hours. It comes at the expense of a decently positioned second-round choice, although they do still have their own second-rounder in addition to the Lightning’s (No. 53). They picked it up via the Red Wings yesterday, along with defenseman Jake Walman.

Sabres GM Kevyn Adams, meanwhile, had the 11th pick on the block as far back as early this month. Most assumed he’d be leveraging it for some win-now help, which today’s move may actually benefit. The difference in value between No. 11 and No. 14 isn’t terribly large in this year’s deep draft class, and he now owns an additional second-round pick to toss into a trade for a top-six forward. Hurricanes pending RFA Martin Nečas and the Jets’ Nikolaj Ehlers remain attractive options available for acquisition.

Buffalo also still has a deep prospect pool of their own, especially at forward. That made the selection expendable in the eyes of many. Just in the past two years, they’ve used first-round picks on left winger Zach Benson (2023, 13th overall), center Jiri Kulich (2022, 28th overall), center Noah Östlund (2022, 16th overall) and center Matthew Savoie (2022, ninth overall).

There is such a thing as too many prospects, especially with all of them on relatively similar timelines. Roster spots won’t exist for all of them, so it was always a sensical choice for the Sabres to leverage this year’s top selection for other assets.

Buffalo Sabres Intend To Buy Out Jeff Skinner

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Chad DeDominicis of Expected Buffalo is reporting that the Buffalo Sabres intend to buy out forward Jeff Skinner. Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported last week that the Sabres were considering a buyout of the final three years on Skinner’s deal, but with the buyout window opening today, all signs point to his time in Buffalo being finished.

Skinner is owed $22MM for the final three seasons of his eight-year $72MM contract and his buyout will be spread out over the next six seasons. The numbers broken down by year will look like this (as per CapFriendly):

  • Year 1 – $1.44MM
  • Year 2 – $4.44MM
  • Year 3 – $6.44MM
  • Year 4 – $2.44MM
  • Year 5 – $2.44MM
  • Year 6 – $2.44MM

Buffalo will save $7.555MM in the first year of the buyout which will give the Sabres $31MM in cap space to play with this summer as they look to get back to the playoffs for the first time in over a decade.

For Skinner, the buyout ends a run in Buffalo that was mired by inconsistent offensive production and poor defensive play. Skinner was acquired by the Sabres back in August 2018 for a package that included a 2019 second-round draft pick, a third-round draft pick in 2020, as well as a sixth-round draft pick in 2020 and Cliff Pu. The trade initially looked like a big win for Buffalo as Skinner posted 40 goals and 23 assists in 82 games. He then signed his massive extension in June 2019 and that’s when the relationship began to sour.

Skinner wasn’t able to maintain his 14.9% shooting percentage from the 2018-19 season and fell on hard times the next two seasons, posting just 21 goals and 16 assists in 112 games. He bounced back in 2022-23, tallying 35 goals and 47 assists for a career-high 82 points in 79 games, however this past season the 32-year-old’s numbers cratered once again as he fell to 24 goals and 22 assists.

Skinner will find work this summer, as there is no shortage of teams looking for scoring and not a ton of it to be found in free agency. Skinner’s defensive work remains an issue and he isn’t much of a puck carrier, but he should be able to latch on with a team on a short-term deal and possibly offer secondary scoring at a reduced price point.

Sabres Unlikely To Move Goalie, Won’t Extend Young Players This Summer

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The Buffalo Sabres used a trio of netminders last season as they searched for stability in the crease. Now, it appears that two-thirds of that group will be back next season as the Sabres are planning to roll into the 2024-25 season with Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Devon Levi as their netminders (as per Lance Lysowski of The Buffalo News). The news isn’t all that surprising given where the Sabres are at, however, they were recently linked to a pair of netminders in Linus Ullmark and Filip Gustavsson(as per The Fourth Period).

The Sabres have good reason to be optimistic about Luukkonen’s development as the 25-year-old took a massive step forward last season, dressing in a career-high 54 games and posting a 27-22-4 record. The Espoo, Finland registered an above-average .910 save percentage and a 2.57 goals-against average to go along with 9.4 goals saved above expected (per Money Puck). Levi also had good underlying numbers with 10.7 goals saved above expected in just 23 games. He did spend significant time in the AHL but appears poised to spend all of next season in the NHL. Luukkonen is an RFA, while Levi has one more year left on his entry-level contract.

Lysowski also tweeted that Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams has talked with the agents for Bowen Byram, JJ Peterka, and Jack Quinn to discuss getting new contracts done as they are eligible for extensions on July 1st. However, Adams doesn’t believe that those contract extensions will get done this summer, and there isn’t a lot of urgency as all three players will be restricted free agents on July 1st, 2025.

Peterka is the likeliest of the three to get a long-term extension done as the 22-year-old posted 28 goals and 22 assists in 82 games last season. The Sabres might look at a bridge deal for Quinn as he has dealt with injury issues and hasn’t been able to establish himself as a regular NHLer.

Byram could get a longer-term deal depending on how this upcoming season goes. The 23-year-old struggled before his trade to Buffalo but was very good offensively for the Sabres after his trade from Colorado. The Cranbrook, British Columbia native posted three goals and six assists in 18 games with Buffalo while he averaged almost 22 minutes of ice time per game.

Sabres Considering Buying Out Jeff Skinner

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The Sabres are considering exercising a buyout on the final three seasons of Jeff Skinner’s contract, reports Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. Skinner has a full no-move clause and is signed through 2026-27 at a $9MM cap hit.

Skinner’s tenure in Buffalo has been inconsistent, to say the least, but the timing of a potential buyout is puzzling. Now 32, he’s just one year removed from a career-high 47 assists and 82 points that nearly helped propel the Sabres to their first playoff appearance in over a decade. His line with Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch was one of the most productive in the league, with promising defensive results as well.

But that changed this year. Early-season injuries to Thompson seemed to derail everything for Buffalo, and Skinner was no exception. He didn’t have an awful season by any stretch of the imagination, but he did regress to 24 goals and 46 points in 74 games. He averaged 16 minutes per game, slipping into middle-six usage as the trio with Thompson and Tuch was routinely broken up, and his 0.62 points per game were his lowest in three years.

It’s still far and away an improvement from when most considered Skinner’s deal the worst contract in the league. In the 2019-20 and 2020-21 campaigns, Skinner had just 21 goals and 37 points in 112 games with a -33 rating, bumping him down to fourth-line minutes. His rebound in the later years of his deal has helped repair its value, but he’s still rarely been worth his $9MM cap hit over the life of the deal.

That said, the Sabres are still in a transitional phase between rebuilding and contention. They’re not in a cap crunch – yet – and while improving the roster is a necessary undertaking for general manager Kevyn Adams this summer, it doesn’t require dumping Skinner’s cap hit to do so.

A buyout would be a particularly expensive undertaking in the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons, just as the Sabres are ideally handing out serious cash and spending to the cap. It would cost $1.44MM next season, $4.44MM in 2025-26 and $6.44MM in 2026-27 before a $2.44MM annual cap penalty through 2029-30, per CapFriendly.

Evening Notes: Mittelstadt, Sabres, Goodrow

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Casey Mittelstadt proved to be one of the most impactful acquisitions of the Trade Deadline, joining the Avalanche in a one-for-one swap with defenseman Bowen Byram. Mittelstadt immediately stepped into a role as Colorado’s second-line center, scoring a confident 19 points in 29 games with the Avalanche between the regular season and playoffs. He was just what the doctor ordered for an Avalanche team at risk of lacking depth, but the Avalanche will now face the dreaded hurdle of having to work out his next contract. Corey Masisak of The Denver Post is confident the team will be able to retain Mittelstadt’s services, projecting the centerman could sign a middle-ground deal close to five years and $5MM in yearly cap hit.

Masisak came to these numbers while comparing Mittelstadt to the contracts Jared McCann and Pavel Buchnevich are currently on. McCann signed the five-year, $25MM deal Masisak projects for Mittelstadt, earning it after a stout 27 goals and 50 points in 74 games with the inaugural Seattle Kraken. Buchnevich carries a pricier $5.8MM price tag, though his deal ran for just four years. As pointed out by Masisak, each of Mittelstadt, McCann, and Buchnevich scored at similar paces – each above 0.70 points per game – in the two seasons leading up to their deals.

Other notes from around the league:

  • The Buffalo Sabres could be convinced to move one of their second-tier prospects to find a player that fits their system, shares Lance Lysowski of the Buffalo News. Lysowski mentions Isak Rosen, Viktor Neuchev, and Nikita Novikov among six options the Sabres could choose from in trade talks. The Sabres have already mentioned they’re open to trading the 11th overall pick and are now adding to their wallet ahead of the 2024 NHL Draft.
  • New York Rangers forward Barclay Goodrow could be a candidate for a buyout when the buyout window opens, shares Larry Brooks of the New York Post. Brooks noted Goodrow’s meager scoring with New York, including his limited 12 points in 80 games this season. Goodrow has made up for that meager scoring with a strong postseason, posting a career-high eight points in 16 games in a flurry of postseason success that’s beginning to define Goodrow’s game. He’s appeared in 97 playoff games over the course of his career, and while he’s totaled just 24 points in those appearances, he’s found a way to show up in pivotal moments. That clutch factor could make him a strong candidate to join a new playoff-caliber team should the Rangers decide to part ways with him this summer.

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