I'd rather trade Pominville, Bogosian and Lehner. You can fetch some kind of deal of them. Nothing special, but better than just buying out.

And in the same token, I'd just buy Moulson out.

I'd rather trade them too. This is just done without the help of any other GMs. You could buyout Moulson. It saves you $308K in 2018 and costs you $666K in 2019.

so the answer to a terrible team is to just bring up all the guys from the AHL who weren't good enough to make this god awful team?

It's not that they weren't good enough, it's that they are still developing. Yes, bringing up younger/faster/more talented/cheaper players is definitely part of the answer. Would you rather have Gorges, Larsson and Johnson than Guhle, Mittelstadt and Ullmark? This is a team that is in the middle of their rebuild. Rebuilding teams develop their draft picks. The AHL is a pathway to the NHL.

Yes actually that would probably make us a lot better. The talent in Rochester is unreal, if those guys could get a chance of playing then our team would score more and play faster.

no, i would rather move the dead weight, make some trades and play in free agency.

Like I said above, this is an exercise that doesn't involve any other teams. I'm not pretending to know what we can get in a trade or what FAs would want to sign here. This is a way that the Sabres improve by just removing the dead weight, giving roster space for younger players and providing cap space for any players we do bring in.

This is the team I want to watch. IDK if it competes or not, but at least it's actually interesting.