All in to keep Eichel - Piet-Hall-2020 1st

Team: 2020-21 Buffalo Sabres

Initial Creation Date: May 28, 2020

Published: May 28, 2020

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

I wonder if Eichel has had the "you have one year" conversation yet? If he has I expect Buffalo to be EXTREMELY aggressive this off season both in the UFA market and in trading assets. This is my best shot at it.

BREAKDOWN:
UFA:
Sign Piet for over 80 million dollars and Hall for 63. Sure Buffalo might not be their first choice, but sell them on this agm idea and have him and Hall come together a la Parise and Sutter. Hall just bought real estate in Toronto so playing close to home (like Skinner) should be a draw and Piet is also a Toronto boy so hope proximity helps. Are the contracts overpayments? Yeah. Will they hurt down the road? Probably yes, but if you want to keep Jack happy it may be worth the cost.

Sign Fasth to a big deal. I figure Buf will need to overpay UFA's to come. Fasth is a good player who can slot wherever needed. If you'd prefer maybe Craig Smith instead.

I do not know about Buffalo's prospect depth too much so you can save nearly 1.5 million by not giving Simmonds and Weise those contracts and getting near league minimum 4th liners. Will allow you to carry spares. Beaulieu is just a placeholder near league min name for the 3LD. Was going to be Pilut but... yeah... (edited since posting to try and get a more realistic depth)

TRADES:
Botts goes back to his Pittsburgh roots and tries to get Murray hoping for a bounce back. Still don't know enough about your prospects so you can figure out who goes in that deal. No Pens fans, Murray won't be moved for some massive haul. Good goalies aren't worth that, let alone goalies who haven't been good in awhile.

I honestly have no idea what Risto is worth. As an analytics guy I wouldn't take him for free at his current pay but not all GM's go for analytics. It doesn't need to be WPG but maybe you can get 2 seconds for him from the right guy. Similar situation with Montour.

San Jose takes the final year of Hutton to be their backup in exchange for SJ moving up in the draft. Maybe Buffalo needs to add, but it wouldn't be too much more.

Use the 7/8th ovr pick to move the Okposo contract to NJD. Take Vancouver's 1st from next year instead.



IDK, this team is in some deep ****. You NEED Cozens to explode into a real 2C but overall this squad does look better, even if the contracts aren't great overall.

Expansion protected list:
Eichel
Hall
Skinner
Kahun
Olofsson
Reinhart
Fasth

Dahlin
Pietrangelo
Jokiharju

The better of Murray and Ullmark

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