On Realism and the Fickle Fan Base

I'm hearing a lot of "Hockey Heaven is a lie," "Terry Pegula was scared off by the Rangers, what the hell!?" and "I was going to come back to watching hockey, but now I'm not because they gave up on Richards" from fans on WGR550.com and in other places.

It is not the defeatist in me talking when I say this; The Sabres weren't going to get Brad Richards. I know we wanted him and that anything seemed possible. And it still is. But not every player wants to come to Buffalo. Some people want a big city. Some people really want to play with their favorite coach or want a ridiculous amount of money that is going to make it impossible to make the rest of the team function without gutting it.

And that's okay. If Richards doesn't want to be here and wants a ton more money than is realistic, Toronto, Los Angeles, Calgary and (the team I bet he will end up with) New York can have him. And if you have any concerns about us second guessing ourselves and whether he is going to be overpaid, wait until you see the contract that Tim Connolly will get signed to not long after the Richards deal is official.

But that is all okay. If we go to war with this team (lines below) we're much better than we were last season if we can bring it together at all. We should have beaten Philadelphia last year and we could have beaten Washington. Now we've greatly upgraded our defense and traded out Connolly for Ville Leino.Despite what Darcy Regier has said about being done, I don't believe it. I think it's a smoke screen so that we don't overpay for another center.

And if it's not, well, it's year one of a three year plan. I'm not settling. I'm looking at what's been done and think that we have a team that's a Cup contender (though not necessarily a Cup favorite yet, need to see what what the team looks like on the ice before I go that far). I believe, as I did during the time leading up to the Regehr trade, that defense was far and away the best place to put our money (rather than focus on an overpriced center). We have one of the top goaltenders in the league and we've made our defense better by an order of magnitude. We'll be fine.

No wonder Ryan Miller goes into hiding in the off season. After all the good stuff we said about our town in the lead up and the wooing of Robyn Regehr and Christian Ehrhoff, we've become hyper-negative. So everyone, take a breath, and quit your bitching. We've improved the team a lot, and if you think failing to overpay Brad Richards means that the team isn't doing all they said, you're barking mad.

But, if you want to get off the bandwagon now, just remember that we're not going to let you back on just because Darcy made a move, and we sure as hell don't want you at the Party in the Plaza or the eventual parade where we ask which gawky white guy is going to rap about winning the Stanley Cup.

I am Jack's Cautious Optimism

The Sabres are not done.

It is, as best as I can tell, impossible for the Sabres to go forward without making any moves. While this team is leaps and bounds better than last year's team, I don't know that they've gone from "Playoff Team" to "Stanley Cup Favorite" which is where we wanted them to be (and where they would have been had Brad Richards been signed today). We might be a Stanley Cup Contender, but to mix my sports metaphors, I want a quarterback, not a project.

Like I said, I don't think we're done. We've about a million to go below the cap (The Sabres, for the Record, have the highest cap number for next year as of this writing) and need to pay Enroth, Sekera, Weber and Gragnani. Kotalik and Morrisonn (the latter of which who, according to WGR550's Paul Hamilton, wants to be waived) will go away and give us more room. But we're sort of deep all over our roster except for center.

And we need a legitimate number one center.

Derek Roy is above average, but he's not the clutch player that we need to lead us out onto the ice. Ville Leino, for all the team's talk, would be better served on the left wing (and if we're doing individual goal songs, his should be the Thundercats Theme, seeing as he is their leader). I can live with Gaustad and McCormack as my bottom centers if Roy is second on the depth chart and we have a legitimate stud on the first line. It's the missing piece,

Now, there is a part of me that wants to scream that it's a three year plan and we could certainly go into the season with this roster and make a move near the trade deadline to bring someone in (because if you thought this year's Free Agent class was bad, don't even consider looking at next year). Or that we can trade for someone next year in the off season.

But that part of me is wrong.

Three years, to my mind, simply accounts for the possibility of injury and bad luck. I would expect to see someone else moved and think that Leino as a center is a bit of a smoke screen so as not to screw us in negotiations for another center.

As for the contracts, if Leino plays to the level of his contract, then I'll be pleased as punch. But it's a little high. As is Cody McCormack's who was also signed today, but I feel like his contract is less of a risk of being a huge overpayment. I also think that Christian Ehrhoff's contract is a little ridiculous, but that's the NHL in this day and age. He is far more proven than Leino and being payed less per year (If certainly not for the first two years).

At the end of the day, I give the Sabres a B on the report card, but do so in pencil. When we have the four RFAs taken care of and see what else happens in the trade market, I can then properly judge the Leino signing and maybe use a pen for my grade.

The Rich Get Richards

Is Brad Richards a realistic choice for the Buffalo Sabres to be going after?

This single question could be the most important one in the history of the franchise. And I don't know that I'm actually exaggerating at all with that assessment. Brad Richards is the man this year. He is the one whale available in the Free Agency market that opens this Friday at Noon. An acquisition of Richards would, without a shadow of a doubt, indicate that Terry Pegula's promise of Hockey Heaven (and the newly accredited University of Hockey) is more than just lip service.

Let's look at the pros first. Brad Richards is a legitimate number one center, which we haven't had since 2007. What's more, he's an even better center than either Danny Briere or Chris Drury. That's not to be critical of either of them, but you're talking about a legitimate superstar in Richards, scoring .972 points a game (716 in 772) in the regular season and 62 points in 63 games in the playoffs (compared to .799 during the season and 96 points in 97 playoff games for Briere). He has a ring from his time with the Tampa Bay Lightning. He wants to play in a hockey market that is a legitimate Stanley Cup contender which we're close to without him and possibly the top contender in the Eastern Conference with him.

I'm going to say that again. With Brad Richards and no substantive subtractions, the Sabres push to the head of the line with Boston, Washington and Pittsburgh.

And one last thing, for all the talk of his age, he has just turned 31 and minus a concussion at the end of last season (which he came back from to finish out the season and try to make the playoffs) he has never had serious injury issues. He's missed 5.8% of his games throughout his career, his career low for games played being 56 games in 2008/09. With reports in the New York Post that he's looking for 8 Years and between $50 and $55 Million dollars ($6.875 average cap hit at the top end) it seems a very reasonable price to take that step forward.

But it's not all unicorns and rainbows. The NY Post story stinks to me a little bit. Looking for comparables I'm drawn to compare Richards to Joe Thornton in San Jose. Thornton is a center, is also 31 years old (ten months older in fact than Richards) who is at just over a point a game during the season. Thornton makes $7 Million through the next three years, which (if I recall) happened before he hit the market and was a sort of a home town discount.

Add in that Richards is the only whale on the market and doesn't have the playoff questions that Thornton does (despite what he has done this year to amend that) and I worry that a story like that might be generated to get blood in the water and get offers up closer to $8 Million dollars or higher. Much higher if it ends up being a bidding war between Buffalo, Toronto and the New York Rangers.

Don't get me wrong; I'm more than willing to back up a Brinks truck for Richards. My only issue is if backing up said Brinks truck means that Uncle Terry can't install the Scrooge McDuck swimming vault for Tyler Myers.

Then there's the coin flip of whether a guy like Thomas Vanek and his emerging leadership role take a step back; can Vanek get the 'I'm Awesome' spirit into his head and be the captain we need him to be? If he can't do that with a top center to play with, well, then I don't know how much I need his services. It's not a Richards question, it's a team question. Can we pull together the way we need to.

I think the answer is yes and you go do what you need to do. Taking a look at the Sabres, there is room to be made having just over $11 Million Left (with the clutch deal that Darcy Regier made with Nathan Gerbe at 3 years/$1.433 Million per) under the cap. Assume that another $5 Million gets added to that when Kotalik and Morrisonn get sent to Rochester. I'm also sending Brad Boyes away (Florida isn't the only team struggling to make it to the floor) and I have $20 Million to work with.

Just to make the numbers easier to work with, let's call Myers plus Richards $13 Million. That leaves you $7 Million for your four RFAs, Cody McCormick and a third center or extra defender. That's a solid to great team there.

The rest of this is purely conjecture....

Derrick Roy and Jason Pominville have done a lot for this club, and I love Roy's contract for our cap. But their $9.3 Million will be nice to help Colorado get to the Salary Cap floor. Overpay to send them there, with Calgary's 2nd Round Pick (or perhaps our first) to get Paul Stastny. It gives me $2.7 Million more to work with and gets me a 2nd center who can be a #1 on a team without Brad Richards (and as Richards ages, can becomes the #1 when Richards becomes a #2). Can that get me Max Talbot (who wants to test the waters) or Chris Drury (if he's healthy). I'm willing to bring in another year of Rob Niedermayer or (shudder) Tim Connolly if that's the guy we're bringing in behind Stastny and Richards.

I offer the following lines for you consideration:

Buffalo Sabres 2011-12 Forwards
Thomas Vanek	Brad Richards	Drew Stafford
Jochen Hecht	Paul Stastny	Tyler Ennis
Zach Kassian/Nick Foligno	Drury/Talbot/Connolly/Niedermayer	Nathan Gerbe
Cody McCormack	Paul Gaustad	Pat Kaleta

Buffalo Sabres 2011-12 Defenders
Tyler Myers	Robin Regehr
Jordan Leopold	Marc-Andre Gragnani
Andrej Sekera	Chris Weber

With this roster, it leaves us something like $2 Million, give or take a million depending on what we land as a third center, to play with in regards to call-ups. That gives us time (and room) to see if Foligno or Kassian develop to replace Jochen Hecht's expiring contract and Luke Adam to become an emerging 3rd Center.

I will note that if we don't land Brad Richards, it's not game over by any stretch. Stastny is a fantastic target for a #1 center if we can grab him and allows us a little more money to work on another defender or a better

Sabres GM for the Summer - Part One

The Buffalo News likes their summer feature where some of the jobs of the major sports players are divied up between editors and columnists for a day; What would Bucky Gleason do if he was the GM at One Bills Drive? How would Mark Gaughan make the team Bucky put together do something on the field? How would Jerry Sullivan fix the power play?

Well, as an opinionated Sabres fan, I clearly think I have all the answers. (Or, at least I find it fun to consider what I might do to improve my team). So, here's my 'off the cuff' plan for the Sabres off-season.

(Note: I'm going to be working with the numbers that are essentially agreed upon in the media from what I've read in the News and heard on WGR 550 that the Sabres, with who they have signed, plus the remaining RFAs are going to have about $10 Million to work with)

1) Sign a Third Line Center
This year isn't quite the year to go fishing in the open waters for big game, unless it's not so much in the open waters but much closer to home (I'll get to that later). Brad Richards is a heck of a player, but his price is going to be driven up by the lack of other top tier players (let alone centermen) that are entering Free Agency this year. So, while I feel the number one center is a definite need for this team.

My first look is going to be at former Sabres and soon to be form Rangers Captain Chris Drury. I don't have qualms over the way he left in bringing him back to the team (if he will come at the right place) and I think he's the kind of player who can call business business and sit down with Lindy, Thomas Vanek, Ryan Miller and the rest of the leaders in the room and say, 'This is your team, not mine. I'm here if you need me, but you're the vocal leader. I'm the guy who's going to do my job and put everything out there on the ice.' If that works, and we can get him for somewhere between $1.75 and $2.25 Million, preferably lower but with reasonable performance bonuses, then I'm a happy man.

But, there are lots of ifs there, not the least of which being hangups from 2007 and the fact that his being bought out (which can happen from today onward) puts him on the market first. My secondary thought here is a guy like Tomas Fleischmann of the Colorado Avalanche. He's a solid player who didn't play a full season last year but was able to pick up 31 points over 45 games. Extrapolated to a full season, he'd end up with 56 1/2 points, which would have been good enough for second on the team in scoring (his 31 points would have tied him with Nathan Gerbe and Paul Gaustad for 9th on the team in scoring). According to Cap Geek, he made approximately 2.6 Million dollars last year, and it is possible that his price could go up based on the aforementioned center-light free agent market. If he can be had between 2.75 and 3.5, plus incentives, I'm all in, as he has the potential to fill a second-line roll behind Derek Roy if we need to wait to get our top dog.

Without going too much more deeply into the pool of Free Agents I would offer one more option. The problem is, that option is Tim Connolly. I am not a huge Tim hater, but I think that his time here may simply be done, and unlike Max Afinagenov, he doesn't have a huge local fan base to root for his return. What he is is a (mostly) solid center who became invaluable on the PK by the end of last season. I don't relish the idea of bringing him back, and certainly not for what we were paying him before. But, if we need to, say somewhere between 1.5 and 2.25, I would (reluctantly) sign up for it.

2. Keep the Fish you have
If not for the fact that Drury may be available at some point today, I would have made this my first point, because this is the single most important thing that the Sabres need to do; Lock Tyler Myers up and do it for the long term. There's a lot of talk about players with "It" factor, the guys who have the skill, the room to grow and the intangibles to be a sure thing. Myers is that guy, the way that there hasn't been a guy like that on this team since Pat LaFontaine. He is the guy on this lineup who is not expendable in any way shape or form. I sit the big fella down and say, "Tyler, you are the guy who is going to lead this team to the promised land," and then proceed to back up a Brinks Truck. My guess is that we land somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 Years and somewhere between $38 and $45 Million dollars. It's a huge pay day, but is nothing compared to what he'd get on the open market, and getting an RFA offer sheet next year on him that makes Vanek's look like pocket change is not at all unrealistic for a talent like his.

3. Clear Cap Space
Yes, I know, $10 Million sounds like a lot of money to play with. But, realistically, it's one big fish or two medium sized fish (to be mentioned in the second half of our run down). But that's just next year. Sabres owner Terry Pegula has redefined the goal of the team, the oft quoted "the Buffalo Sabres' reason for existence will be to win a Stanley Cup[1]." Barring miraculous work of EA Sports NHL trading proportions and/or remarkable effort from this squad, it's probably not going to happen this year. So I'm building for the future and keeping an eye on the cap, because it doesn't matter how much money our super-heroic owner has, the cap will keep it in check. Here are the two or three steps I would take;

1. Move Shaone Morrisonn down to the AHL team (whoever it ends up being). It moves 2.075 Million off the books while keeping him around in case we run short of defenders. It also lets him grow into a veteran role on the aforementioned AHL team.
2. Find someone to take Brad Boyes off our hands. Don't get me wrong; I like Boyes. I like him a lot, enough that I was considering trading away Drew Stafford's rights or just letting him go for a matched contract (and picks). I think that his slump towards the end of the season was because he was forced to play center and that even moving him back to the wing, he never got into his groove in the playoffs. I think he can be the guy who showed up the day he was traded here. But, I've paid for Stafford, and need the cash more than the player. If we trade him away for a low pick (a.k.a. thank you for taking this money off our hands) it's fine, but I see him being able to get a third round pick or a prospect for him.
3. This is the tricky one. I've already said that my number one center isn't my goal this year. But, I'm willing to look at it if the move is right. Derek Roy has two years at 4 Million a year left on his contract. For the right team, that could be a very attractive player at a very attractive price, like Boyes was to us this year. But... this is contingent on the right play being out there to get a Top Flight (if not Superstar) center that will work on this team AND then being able to replace Roy as a would be 2nd line center. 

That's it for part one. Stay tuned for the second half of my summation of what I would do, if I were the Sabres GM this summer.