- While many of Buffalo’s pending unrestricted free agents are likely to move on, Lance Lysowski of The Buffalo News suggests that forward Vinnie Hinostroza and defenseman Mark Pysyk are candidates to stick around with the Sabres next season. Hinostroza was a decent depth scorer in 2021-22, notching 13 goals and 12 assists in 62 games and if he’s willing to sign for around the $1.05MM he made this season, it would certainly make sense to keep him around. As for Pysyk, he shifted back to the back end after spending some time up front with Dallas and logged nearly 18 minutes a night in 68 contests. He made $900K this season and should come in with a similar price tag so if Buffalo wants some low-cost depth that’s familiar with their system, re-signing him would be a worthwhile move as well.
Sabres Rumors
Buffalo Sabres Acquire Ben Bishop
3:30 pm: The teams have made the trade official, with the Sabres acquiring Bishop along with Dallas’ 2022 seventh-round draft selection in exchange for future considerations.
1:25 pm: With Ben Bishop not expected to play again after several serious injuries, the Dallas Stars have found a way to move his contract. Kevin Weekes of ESPN reports that the Buffalo Sabres are close to acquiring his contract. No details on the return have been released so far.
Bishop has one year left on his contract and carries a cap hit of $4.92MM.
A move like this could help the Sabres get to the salary cap floor, while also helping the Stars get out of long-term injured reserve. While LTIR provides some flexibility, it also can result in negative penalties, as seen this season for the Stars, who will face a bonus overage of $675K.
Bishop is due a salary of $3.5MM this season, meaning the Sabres won’t even have to cover one of the more expensive years of the deal. The contract also includes a 10-team no-trade clause, though that likely isn’t much of an impediment given he isn’t expected to play again.
For the Sabres, who have just over $41MM in salary commitments for next season before any offseason trading, reaching the salary cap floor could be a legitimate challenge. Only Victor Olofsson sits as a restricted free agent expecting much of a raise, meaning general manager Kevyn Adams will need to be busy in the trade market and free agency.
The 35-year-old Bishop is a good start, though it is disappointing for Sabres fans that they’re not getting the goaltender from a few years ago. At one point, Bishop was among the very best in the world, finishing as a Vezina finalist three times and ending his career with an incredible .921 save percentage. That puts him among the very best of all-time, and as recently as 2018-19 he was the league leader with a .934.
Buffalo meanwhile will be looking for a real answer in net this summer, as Craig Anderson, Dustin Tokarski, Aaron Dell, Michael Houser, and Malcolm Subban are all pending unrestricted free agents.
The Dallas Morning News’ Matthew DeFranks was the first to report the return.
Former Sabres Defenseman Larry Hillman Passes Away
After leaving Toronto, Hillman would bounce around for five seasons, spending time with the Minnesota North Stars, Montreal Canadiens, Philadelphia Flyers, Los Angeles Kings, and Buffalo Sabres. Prior to the 1973-74 season, a 36-year-old Hillman would depart the NHL for the rival WHA, where he spent three seasons, the first two with the Cleveland Crusaders, and finally with the Winnipeg Jets, then of the WHA. All told, Hillman played 789 games in the NHL over 19 seasons, tallying 36 goals and 196 assists along with 565 penalty minutes. Hillman also had a brief coaching career, spending two seasons as the head coach of the Winnipeg Jets, compiling a record of 78 wins, 55 losses and eight ties in two seasons behind the bench for the Jets, still of the WHA.
Buffalo Sabres Sign Isak Rosen
The Buffalo Sabres have made another signing from their 2021 draft class. After fellow 2021 draft picks Olivier Nadeau and Aleksandr Kisakov signed in the past few weeks, the team has announced that they have inked another prospect to an entry-level deal: Isak Rosen.
Rosen, 19, was the Sabres’ second first-round pick last year and was selected 14th overall. The Sabres acquired the selection as part of the Rasmus Ristolainen trade. Rosen is a highly-skilled winger who has spent the past few seasons playing for Leksands IF in Sweden. He bounced between a few levels of Swedish hockey this season, getting into games for Leksands at the SHL level, Leksands at the U-20 level, and for Mora IK of second-tier Allsvenskan on a loan. Rosen also made Team Sweden for the short-lived 2022 World Junior Championships.
Rosen is a skilled winger whose combination of speed, shooting talent, and strong puck skills makes him one of the Sabres’ top prospects. With him signed to an entry-level deal, the Sabres will likely give him a chance to make the team out of training camp and now have even more options for how to best develop him next season. With promising young players such as Jack Quinn and John Peterka already there, this signing of Rosen adds another talented top prospect to the Sabres’ system.
Offseason Checklist: Buffalo Sabres
The offseason has arrived for half of the league’s teams that weren’t playoff-bound plus those that were eliminated early in the postseason. It’s time to examine what they will need to accomplish over the coming months. Next up is a look at Buffalo.
It wasn’t a great year in the standings but things are looking up for the Sabres. The team was much more competitive in Don Granato’s first season behind the bench and several of their young players made promising strides to show that brighter days could soon be on the horizon. With that in mind, Buffalo’s checklist looks a bit different than it has in recent years as they should now begin the process of trying to add talent and emerge from their rebuild.
Sign A Veteran Goalie
At the moment, Buffalo has six goaltenders under contract. Once the calendar flips to the new league year in July, that number drops to zero. GM Kevyn Adams will be busy on that front, to say the least, both in terms of NHL and AHL signings. Let’s look at the NHL situation here.
It’s widely expected that Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen will be promoted from the minors to fill one of the two spots with Buffalo as he continues his development and the team continues to evaluate whether or not he’ll be the goalie of the future for them. But the most games he has played in any of his professional seasons is 44. Between that and the fact he has just 13 NHL appearances under his belt, it’s safe to say that he’s not yet ready to assume the true starting role.
As a result, Adams will be looking for a veteran that is capable of playing more than a typical backup role. A short-term starter would make some sense or failing that, a platoon netminder to split time with Luukkonen would also work. Craig Anderson is among Buffalo’s pending unrestricted free agents and it seems like re-signing the 41-year-old would be their preference as he fit in quite well in his first season with Buffalo. It’s questionable if he can hold up under a higher workload than the 31 games he played in 2021-22 so if he is their choice, a veteran third-stringer to stash at AHL Rochester certainly would make some sense.
Decide Olofsson’s Future
Victor Olofsson has had an up-and-down tenure with Buffalo so far. After a surprise showing in his rookie season that saw him put up 20 goals and 22 assists in just 54 games, the two sides settled on a bridge contract, a reasonable course of action. The first year didn’t go well and for the majority of this season, things weren’t much better. At the end of February, he had just seven goals in 44 games and looked like he could be heading for non-tender territory.
But once March hit, the 26-year-old suddenly rediscovered his scoring touch, potting 13 goals along with 12 assists in the final 28 games. While the usual caveat about reading too much into production when a team is well out of playoff contention certainly applies, Olofsson may have shown enough to warrant another contract.
If that’s the case, what is the right deal? This is Olofsson’s final year of RFA eligibility so it’s not as if they can work out a short-term pact and then re-assess before he’s UFA-eligible. With him being unrestricted no matter what, a one-year contract isn’t ideal from Buffalo’s perspective while finding common ground on a long-term deal could be tricky given the year-to-year variability in his performance.
Olofsson is owed a $3.25MM qualifying offer and has arbitration eligibility this summer. With a little over six weeks until qualifiers are due, Adams will need to make a decision on this front sooner than later.
Add Defensive Help
At the moment, Buffalo has just three defensemen signed for next season that are locks to make the opening roster. They’re all aged 22 or younger in Rasmus Dahlin, Henri Jokiharju, and Owen Power. That’s a solid cluster of young impact blueliners that are going to be around for a little while but they need some veteran support.
This is something that the Sabres haven’t really tried to address in recent years which is understandable with the team clearly more interested in being at the bottom of the standings than the top over that stretch. Doing so allowed Dahlin and Jokiharju to log heavy minutes and play through some mistakes.
However, assuming their plan is to start to push forward with trying to get back to the playoffs after missing the postseason for an 11th straight year, they need some veterans capable of logging heavy minutes to work with these three. In an ideal world, they find three of them, one to partner with each youngster which would allow someone like Mattias Samuelsson to see more AHL action.
That said, adding three impact blueliners would be a tall task for any team, especially since there aren’t a lot of them available in free agency this summer. With more than ample cap space though, this seems like an area where Adams should have the green light to bid aggressively. Three would be perfect, two would be nice, but one is simply a necessity if they want to help their goalies and more importantly, help their young rearguards find another level in their development.
Thompson Extension Talks
The first season of Tage Thompson’s bridge contract didn’t go well as he put up just 14 points in 38 games in 2020-21. Heading into this season, expectations were quite low as a result. If he could lock down a full-time spot and play with some consistency, it likely would have been viewed as a success.
But what the 24-year-old did in 2021-22 was far beyond realistic expectations, likely beyond even the most optimistic projections for Thompson as he put up 38 goals and 30 assists. That goal total put him 19th in the entire league while he also made the transition to playing down the middle. While it took several years, Thompson certainly showed the offensive promise that made him a first-round pick back in 2016.
Thompson’s timing for his offensive outburst was pretty optimal as well as he’s eligible to sign a contract extension once free agency opens up in mid-July and he officially enters the final year of his deal. If Adams and the Sabres believe that Thompson’s performance is a sign of things to come, they will almost certainly try to work out an extension this summer as anything close to a repeat performance in 2022-23 will only drive the asking price higher. Meanwhile, after being a depth player for the first few years of his career, the prospect of a big money, long-term extension might appeal to Thompson. This is something that doesn’t have to happen but it wouldn’t be surprising to see both sides take a run at an extension in the coming months.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images. Contract information courtesy of CapFriendly.
Ruotsalainen: No Interest In Signing In Switzerland, Intends To Re-Sign With Sabres
- Following Rochester’s elimination in the AHL, Sabres winger Arttu Ruotsalainen told reporters, including Mike Harrington of The Buffalo News, that his intention is to re-sign with Buffalo and not go to the Swiss League as has been previously suggested. Assistant GM Jason Karmanos also stated a desire to keep the 24-year-old in the fold. Ruotsalainen, who will be a restricted free agent with arbitration eligibility this summer, had four points in 18 games with Buffalo this season but was quite productive in the minors, notching 51 points in 57 contests while tying for the team lead in playoff scoring.
Sabres Will Pick 9, 16, 28 In 2022 Draft
- With the Florida Panthers being swept out of the second round, the Buffalo Sabres now know exactly where they will be selecting in the first round. CapFriendly tweets out that the Sabres have secured picks nine, 16, and 28, with the latter being from their Sam Reinhart trade with the Panthers. That’s an impressive haul for a team that already has two first-overall picks in the mix and several other young impressive talents up front. The Sabres now have to find a way to put it all together and finally contend for the playoffs.
Buffalo Sabres Sign Olivier Nadeau
The Buffalo Sabres have announced today that they have signed forward Olivier Nadeau to a three-year entry-level contract. Nadeau was the team’s fourth-round pick in the 2021 draft.
Nadeau, 19, has been playing for the Shawinigan Cataractes of the QMJHL for the past three seasons. He followed up a rookie campaign where he only posted 23 points in 58 games by nearly doubling his point total, scoring 45 points in 34 games in 2020-21. That form made him a top-100 pick at the 2021 draft, and he has followed up that success with a strong 2021-22 campaign. He had 35 goals and 78 points in 65 games this season to go along with six points in six playoff games. Nadeau’s size and skill combination make him an intriguing prospect, although some worry about his skating and overall speed.
Regardless of the exact makeup of Nadeau’s prospect profile, it’s clear that Nadeau helps contribute to the Sabres’ prospect pool being among the league’s best. The team recently signed a second-rounder from the 2021 draft, Aleksandr Kisakov, and should have more prospect signings to finalize as the offseason continues.
Buffalo Sabres Sign Aleksandr Kisakov
While Sabres fans were not met with good news last night, failing to move up in the NHL’s draft lottery, they do get a positive headline today. The team announced that prospect forward Aleksandr Kisakov, the 53rd overall pick last year, has chosen to cross the Atlantic and sign a three-year entry-level deal with the team. This news is made especially significant given the new relationship (or lack thereof) between the NHL and KHL, as many observers believe that signing players from the KHL could be made more difficult as a result of that development. That proved to be no issue with Kisakov, though, and he joins a Sabres organization that is overflowing with optimism after an uplifting past few months.
Kisakov, 19, is a speedy winger whose creative, pacey style of play saw him selected in the second round of the 2021 draft. Playing for Dynamo Moscow in Russia’s junior league, Kisakov posted 56 points in 51 games, leading his team. Kisakov’s success at the junior level paved the way for him to make his KHL debut, and although he went scoreless in four games for Dynamo Moscow at the KHL level, his mere presence on the ice there is reflective of his fast rise as a prospect. Kisakov went from only 18 MHL points in 2019-20 to 73 in his draft year, so the Sabres have to be optimistic that he will be able to maintain that breakneck developmental pace on North American ice.
The Sabres’ prospect pool is among the league’s best, and adding Kisakov directly into their system means their embarrassment of riches just got a little bit deeper. The team already boasts AHL Rookie of the Year Jack Quinn and has other top prospects such as John Peterka waiting in the wings. With Kisakov now in the mix, the next step for the Sabres will be bringing over fellow Russian prospect Prokhor Poltapov, who was selected 33rd overall at the 2021 draft.
Montreal Canadiens Win 2022 NHL Draft Lottery
Beginning this season, the full effect of the changes to the draft lottery rules announced last year are in place. Starting this year, teams can only move up a maximum of 10 spots if they’re selected, meaning teams originally set at picks 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 cannot move up all the way to the first overall pick. A win for one of these teams in the first draft lottery secures the pick for the team that finished last.
The team with the best odds coming in will win the draft lottery for the second straight year, though. The Montreal Canadiens will pick first overall in their own building, the first time such an occurrence has happened since 1985 when the Toronto Maple Leafs drafted Wendel Clark at Maple Leaf Gardens. The New Jersey Devils moved up from fifth overall to second overall, bumping down the Arizona Coyotes, Seattle Kraken, and Philadelphia Flyers down one spot each.
The order for the top 16 picks of the 2022 NHL Draft is as follows:
- Montreal Canadiens
- New Jersey Devils
- Arizona Coyotes
- Seattle Kraken
- Philadelphia Flyers
- Columbus Blue Jackets (via Chicago Blackhawks)
- Ottawa Senators
- Detroit Red Wings
- Buffalo Sabres
- Anaheim Ducks
- San Jose Sharks
- Columbus Blue Jackets
- New York Islanders
- Winnipeg Jets
- Vancouver Canucks
- Buffalo Sabres (via Vegas Golden Knights)
While Shane Wright is still the consensus no. 1 overall selection across public draft boards (and NHL Central Scouting), there’s been recent noise about players like Juraj Slafkovsky and Logan Cooley potentially challenging him for first overall. That’s an upset unlikely to happen, though, as Wright had a terrific second half of the 2021-22 campaign, finishing with 32 goals, 62 assists, and 94 points in 63 games with the OHL’s Kingston Frontenacs. He also has 10 points in eight playoff games at the time of writing. While teams will draft him for his elite playmaking ability, he’s got an underrated shot when he chooses to use it as well. Standout Slovak defenseman Simon Nemec, Czech defenseman David Jiricek, Canadian forward Matthew Savoie, and Finnish forward Joakim Kemell are also names to watch for near the top of the draft board.