How Sabres management imporved the team by allowing players to walk

The Buffalo Sabres have gotten a lot of criticism for allowing alot of their star players to leave town, notably Chris Drury, Daniel Briere, Brian Campbell, Jay McKee, and JP Dumont. While I would love to have Drury and Dumont back, it is important to remember why the team let Dumont walk in the first place. If the Sabres had signed JP they would have been over the cap. If the Sabres had signed all of these players they would have been well over the cap.

As a starting point I looked at the roster of the famed 2005-2006 team that did so well in the first season after the lockout. If Buffalo had resigned all of those players the cap hit for this season would be $73.846 million which is an astounding $17.146 million over the cap. The team that year consisted of Maxim Afinogenov, Chris Drury, Ales Kotalik, Daniel Briere, Tim Connolly, Thomas Vanek, Derek Roy, Brian Campbell, Jochen Hecht, J.P. Dumont, Teppo Numminen, Jason Pominville, Paul Gaustad, Mike Grier, Henrik Tallinder, Dmitri Kalinin, Toni Lydman, Jay McKee, Rory Fitzpatrick, Ryan Miller, and Martin Biron. This 21 man roster consists of all the players who had over 45 games played and the two starting goalies. Left off are Taylor Pyatt and Adam Mair, who played in 41 and 40 games, as well Andrew Peters who had 28 games, and goalie Mika Noronen who had four starts before being traded mid-season. However these extra players are still making close to the NHL minimum and would only have a small effect to the numbers.

Player	2008 cap hit
Thomas Vanek	$7.143
Brian Campbell	$7.1
Chris Drury	$7.05
Daniel Briere	$6.5
Derek Roy	$4
J.P. Dumont	$4
Jay McKee	$4
Jochen Hecht	$3.525
Martin Biron	$3.5
Maxim Afinogenov	$3.333
Tim Connolly	$2.9
Toni Lydman	$2.875
Ryan Miller	$2.667
Teppo Numminen*	$2.6*
Henrik Tallinder	$2.562
Ales Kotalik	$2.333
Paul Gaustad	$2.3
Dmitri Kalinin	$2.1
Mike Grier	$1.775
Jason Pominville	$1.033
Rory Fitzpatrick*	$0.55*

*2007 cap hits are used for Numminen (who is unsigned) and Fitzpatrick (whos cap hit for Florida can not be found)

Furthermore, besides being well over the cap and needing to trade away over $17 million worth of salaries for this season. This would also not make room for players such as Daniel Paille who only a bit player at this point, and Drew Stafford, and Patrick Kaleta who both had yet to play their first NHL game. Now looking back, with the notable exception of Chris Drury it would not have done the team any good to sign any of these players. Furthermore Miller is due an $4 million raise next season, and Pominville is likely to get the same. Yet only the salary for Numminen shows any possibility of going down (and even then it can not drop by more than $2 million).

So please stop complaining whenever Buffalo's management allows a player to walk. From this line up you could replace Dumont, McKee, Biron, Numminen, Afinogenov, and Connolly, all with players making the NHL minimum and you would still be over the cap. I think our current team is a huge improvement over that.

Pushing for the playoofs

The Sabres have gone an impressive 8-0-2 in their last ten games and are making a serious push to get into the post season. Things are complicated by the fact that the Southeast division is guaranteed at least one team, so beating the Capitals isn't going to make much of a difference. The one team they do have to beat is the New York Rangers.

Currently the Sabres are expected to have a 71.8% chance of making the playoffs, with a minimum of 14 wins needed to be expected to be given a spot in the postseason. This is the best the Sabres odds have been all season, but they need keep winning in order to keep it up.

The Rangers sit just one point behind Buffalo, and are the Sabres opponents Saturday afternoon. However with three games still to go against this team in what little is left of the season, these could potentially be big games.

If Miller can keep playing like he has, the Sabres should have no problem. They just have to hope the Drury keeps the half-hearted, low scoring mentality that he has had all season, and that he doesn't suddenly become the clutch player he was last season against the Rangers in the playoffs, because we all know that there is no stopping that.

In a lackluster performance, the Sabres drop their tenth straight

The Sabres have now lost ten straight games, as they were beat by the New York Rangers 2-1. The Sabres however did not deserve to win this game, and seemed to put very little effort into their play.

Miller should have made the easy stop on the Ranger's second goal, but the blame for the loss really goes towards Buffalo's inability to score. The puck was almost never in the Rangers end of the ice in the second and third periods, and the Sabres were outshot 25-15 during that time frame.

Buffalo's powerplay wasn't any better as they were unable to score on five chances including 1:52 of 5v3 time. With their almost two full minutes of the two man advantage, the Sabres were only able to manage two shots on goal. As bad as that was the team did even worse when only up by one player.

The line of Hecht, Pominville, and MacArthur were plus one in the game though, and probably put forth the teams best effort all night.

As good as Chris Drury was last season, I expected to notice him out on the ice a little more, but he didn't register too much of a presence in this game, and so far has had a rather poor experience with the talented, but underperforming Rangers this season.

Official Three Stars

Petr Prucha

Brandon Dubinsky

Blair Betts

My Three Stars

Petr Prucha (one goal, two points)

Brandon Dubinsky (one goal, two points)

Jason Pominville (a goal and plus one in the loss)

Hecht is the new Drury

The Buffalo Sabres got off to a slow start this season. This was the first season in a while in which Chris Drury wasn't there to be the leader for the team. However with a little more than half the season left to go the Sabres have found their new leader. That man is the German Jochan Hecht.

The past two season Hecht wasn't ever really noticed all that much. Jochan was a winger who while not playing poorly failed to match the point totals of others like Jason Pominville. Even his defensive abilities went largely unnoticed as he was outshinned by Drury and Gaustad in regards to two way play. This year all of that is beginning to change.

At the start of the season Hecht was named captain of the month. At the time the move was a tad bit surprising, but since then has proven to be more than justified. Hecht began to take Drury's role of the lead by example solid two way player. Even after he passed on the captaincy after the end of the month, he has stayed on as an alternate for every month since then. Additionally Hecht has already almost reached his goal total from last season.

Besides the solid two way hockey play Hecht has picked up another one of Drury's attributes, he has become a clutch player. He has twice as many game winning goals as he had last season, and is equal to Drury in that regard for the current year. Last weekend in the first game against Philly, Hecht scored the game winning goal in what was a come from behind one point victory for the Sabres. Then the very next night Vanek tied the game with just eight seconds to go, but got the goal by deflecting a shot from Jochan Hecht.

The Winter Classic is fast approaching and the Sabres will be naming a new team captain at that time. I think I know who it might be...

The Season Starts

Buffalo is one of the last teams have it's season opener tonight, when they play the New York Islanders. Kotalik is still not expected to play in either game this weekend, but the Sabres should be favorites to win both matches.

Elsewhere the Ducks have already played three games this season, and have come out with a win, a loss, and an OT/SO loss. One tally in each category to start the season, and not looking as good as they did last year already.

The Senators are the league leaders in the early going, after twice beating the Toronto Maple Leafs. As long as the Sabres can sweep the leafs themselves, this really shouldn't put Buffalo back in the standings any.

Second year forward Paul Stastny who should have won the Calder last year, had a hat-trick in the Avalanche's season opener against Dallas, but saw his team shutout yesterday against Nashville.

Buffalo's former captains are getting off to a fast start this season. Briere has already scored twice for Philadelphia, and Drury has a game winner for the Rangers.

Faceoffs

I hate to keep reminding everyone that the Sabres have lost Chris Drury, but last year he was the teams go to guy for faceoffs at 58.8%. This leaves a hole as to what the Sabres will do for faceoffs as this is a quiet, but important part of the game. The next best on the team is Gaustad with a 52.8 win percentage, but it's hard to rely on a player who gets only 13 min of ice time a game and is unlikly to be on the ice for the powerplay or the penalty kill. The next best two were Briere and Zubrus (oops both gone)... Center Derek Roy did decent, and surprisingly so did Stafford. I'm not sure how keen they will be on using a winger to take faceoffs, but he hasn't done too poorly... Tim Connolly did fairly well in the few games he did play, but would need to show that he can do well all season to be helpfull, heres to hopping for no more concussions...