Why I can't blame the Philadelphia Flyers

The sports world (well, the hockey world at least) is abuzz at the Philadelphia Flyers' audacity in signing Nashville Predators captain Shea Weber to a ridiculous offer sheet that threatens to cripple the team however it turns out. It's either a financial crippling, making the centerpiece of one of the smallest of the league's small market teams pay through the nose for the man who has been their leader since he suited up for them or a publicity nightmare where (no offense to Pekka Rinne) the two best players on the team have left in the same summer. It also renews league-wide resentment towards the Flyers, who are either being resented for being the biggest of big fishes when it comes to making a splash in the summer or just a somehow less-honorable version of corporate-level Broad Street Bullying.

But I'm not buying it, and I'll tell you why.

What bothers me about the whole issue is the immediate flashback that most Buffalo sports fans will have to that terrible summer, when Kevin Lowe forced the Sabres to swallow the Thomas Vanek contract. The problem with that is that while Kevin Lowe was universally reviled for his actions in targeting both Vanek and then-Ducks rising star Dustin Penner (and G-d did I love Brian Burke for ripping him a new one after it), there's a question of vulnerability of the players targeted that is completely ignored. And because of that, and the situation, I don't think this is a fair comparison; in this case, Lowe took a swing at some low hanging fruit that was available at the time. He drastically over paid (not that the Vanek contract seems completely insane five years later) and in the end got one of the players he wanted. Good, young, developmental guys that had the possibility to be something great in this league.

And that is where my eyes are forced to look back a few weeks earlier in July.

In Buffalo, looking at that terrible Summer, there is still the argument over who we hated the most. Was it Chris Drury for taking the same money to go to play in Ranger blue for the same money we offered him? Was it Philadelphia for making a ridiculous offer to Danny Briere when the majority of us had already given up on him to chase Drury? Was it Lowe for making the Sabres eat the poison pill that was the Vanek contract when they were so low?

No. We hated the Sabres the most. We hated that Darcy Regier couldn't put the deal together for these guys. We hated that 'if we had just told Briere we'd take what was on the table for his long term deal, which was less than we offered him or Drury, he'd still be here.' We hated that Drury was upset that Briere was treated shoddily. We hated that we were watching a team that had the heart two summers previous if not the health to bring the Cup to Downtown Buffalo and had the skill if not the grit to do it the following year disintegrate.

So, as much as I hate the Flyers, I couldn't blame them for Briere and I can't help but blame Nashville for the mess they've gotten themselves into.

Look, I get it, they're a small market team that's fought, that's clawed tooth and nail to carve a rabid fan base out of Volunteer and Titan territory. We should want a guy who has so much grit and heart and pure "it" to stay in that town and help make that team what it could be if he just held on.

But here's the thing; Weber was a restricted free agent. People have been talking about the possibility of Weber being moved for over a year, be it the previous deadlines or now. You could have moved him for a player and some picks and remade your team. Or maybe, just maybe, you could have enticed him to stay. Not just enticed, but locked him in utterly and completely. You could have done something amazing, what the Sabres failed to do (because if you have Weber locked in long term before, maybe you get Ryan Suter and then you're looking at a Zach Parise or some other player up front.

You build yourself a dynasty, like they are growing in Pittsburgh. You make the guy who is the best player on your team and possibly the best player in the history of a team that had Mario Lemieux on it in Sidney Crosby a hero. You sign the OTHER guy who is a true superstar in Evgeni Malkin to a long term deal that doesn't cripple the team and hold on to a guy like Marc-Andre Fleury who can keep the roof from blowing off at the other end of the ice. And when you have a player like Jordan Staal  who you make an incredibly lucrative offer to and doesn't really want to go, you send him out and get a boatload in return.

At the end of the day, when the best player in the history of your organization's contract is coming up, you have three choices; lock him up, trade him away or run the risk of playing the blame game the way that Sabres fans did in '07 and Preds fans are going to have to do now.

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

Boom Goes the Dynamite - Philadelphia Flyers Extreme Roster Makeover

One years ago, Buffalo's own Patrick Kane scored in overtime to beat the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup Finals. Last month, they beat a 'coming' Sabres team before getting shellacked by the eventual Stanley Cup Champions. Not too shabby, right?

Today, according to various sources, they signed the top Free Agent goaltender in Ilya Bryzgalov to a nine-year, $51 Million contract that will make him (as of this writing, according to Sportsnet.ca 's Mark Spector) the highest paid NHL player next season at $10 Mil, and traded away center Jeff Carter to Columbus to clear up some cap room in exchange for a couple picks and a Jakub Voracek.

And they traded away Mike Richards. Their Captain.

O.O

Richards is heading West to the Los Angeles Kings for the rights to RFA Wayne Simmonds and World Junior Championship MVP Brayden Schenn. Richards was, as noted above, the Flyers captain and number one center, Carter the number two. To say that their roster has been 'shook up' is like saying that Niagara Falls is 'kinda impressive'.

And the Flyers certainly aren't done. Even if Danny Briere moves back to center, they still need another guy up the middle. With word that Brad Richards is likely looking at either the Toronto Maple Leafs or New York Rangers, it likely means more trades. There was an early word that Kris Versteeg was also moving, to Florida, but that was almost immediately poo-pooed by Panthers management. They also have the 8th overall pick in tomorrow's draft and cap room to work with.

It's going to be an incredibly exciting off season around the league, if it hasn't already gotten to that point just with these trades.

Sabres GM for the Summer - Part Two

Welcome back to my tyrannical reign at the top of the Buffalo Sabres. For those of you who missed the first half, shame on you. But, I am a kind dictator, so to review; I signed a third line center, locked up Tyler Myers long-term and moved six million dollars off the payroll. Are we clear? Okay, moving on..

4. Add someone solid on the blueline
At the end of the day, the Sabres defensive corps failed out. There were too many holes in the young, developing players who weren't quite there yet and veterans like Steve Montador and Shaone Morrisonn just didn't come through when we needed them to. I've already sent Morrisonn down to the minors, and Montador is a free agent who I'm not looking at resigning unless there's some inside information about an injury being responsible for his tanking the latter third of the year through the playoffs. I want one more veteran to go with Myers, Jordan Leopold and three of the youngsters.

A lot of people are talking about Kevin Bieksa of the Vancouver Canucks being the hot commodity of this year's off season. He's a solid player and this playoff became clutch. Last season he made 3.75 Million. If not for his playoff, I'd look at him getting somewhere between 4.25 and 4.5, but his stock is rising and he could be a 5 Million a year player or higher (ie Brian Campbell's ridiculous contract in Chicago). If the price is that high (or higher) I'm not a horse in that race.

I may, however, be interested in taking a look at another Canuck in Christian Ehrhoff. In Ehrhoff, you're getting a guy who can quarterback your powerplay and put in a lot of quality minutes. The guy put away 50 points last year and was a plus-19 through the regular season (he's plus-74 for his career) and has 12 points through the playoffs. Last year, he made 3.1 and with a very good season and a decent playoff, he goes over 4 million and if the Canucks win the cup, he could be up near 5. But, again, I think that Bieksa is going to get a lot more attention than Ehrhoff and that may keep his price down a little bit more.

Other options (ie slightly less expensive) may be the Hurricane's Joni Pitkanen, the Ranger's Steve Eminger or the Flames Anton Babchuk.There are also a couple of bold moves to be made. If Shea Weber is sitting there without a solidified contract, I take a long look at how many draft picks and how much money it will cost to win the RFA steal of a lifetime. There are also teams like the Flyers who need cap relief and have a lot of ducks to get in a row, and assuming they land Ilya Bryzgalov (and seeing how the functioned without him against Buffalo), maybe Chris Pronger becomes available. With either Pronger or Weber, it completely changes the way that you build your team and the Sabres have one of the top defensive corps in the league.

5. Remember how I wasn't going to go after the #1 Center this year?Forget that for a moment. While I'm not making the #1 center a priority this year, I'm not going to ignore a ringing phone or not think about what I might do. I'm looking at my four young defenders and guys like Nathan Gerbe and Tyler Ennis and wondering what one or two of them look like paired up with a pick. Or how a nice low two years of Derek Roy may look awfully attractive to a cash strapped team.

Throw away the 'former Buffalo Sabres Captain' baggage, and Danny Briere could be there for Roy. Or send our first round pick and Gerbe or Ennis to the Blackhawks for Patrick Sharp. Superstars like Jason Spezza could be on the market, with a relatively reasonable long term contract, say Spezza for Ennis and the first and second, or Gerbe, one of the defenders and the first or second. If Thomas Vanek can not take a step back with another star working with him, how potent does a top line of Vanek/Spezza/Stafford sound with a Second line of (Gerbe/Ennis)/Roy/Pominville? 

In summary, my Sabres could look very different than the team that's here now, if the right opportunity opens up, but that's not what I'm looking to do this year. I'd rather keep my team solid, keep some money in my back pocket and be able to make a move either next year or kill it at the trade deadline. If July 5th gets here, and we've added Ehrhoff, Fleischmann or Drury and a long term contract for Myers, I'm okay with what we're doing. If we make a big move and bring in a Weber, a Pronger, a Briere, a Spezza or even take a run at a guy like Brad Richards... I'm on board, because at least they're making good on their desire to grab the brass ring and hoist Lord Stanley's Cup at Niagara Square.