rktkt66
Joined: Jun. 2018
Posts: 927
Likes: 595
A few reminders relative to Botterill's latest interview:
1. At the draft last year, when asked about O'Reilly, he said that Ryan was a part of their team and denied rumors about a trade. Two weeks later, O'Reilly was dealt to St. Louis
2. He staunchly defended Housley to the media just before the trade deadline this year....several weeks later, he fired Housley.
3. He recently told the media how they liked the versatility of Sheary, Vesey and Nylander to play either wing.......a week after his interview with the Buffalo media, Nylander was traded for Jokiharju.
Moral to the story is that just like Regier did and 99% of the GMS not named Murray or Rutherford, Botterill is never going to reveal a pending move out of fear that he loses some bargaining leverage in discussions with other teams. I listened to the WGR interview from Tuesday and it was the usual "we're fine...we're happy with things....we want to get better when there's an opportunity to do so....yada, yada"
I'm not expecting a buyout or a bunch of cap dump-type deals but I am expecting that, before opening night, a RHD will be traded and another offensive-minded forward to bolster the top 9 will be acquired. The Sabres had one of the worst offenses last year and Botterill isn't foolish enough to think that adding Vesey and Johansson and promoting Olofsson is going to solve that big of a problem. My gut feeling is that it will be a RW for Eichel's line as opposed to a 2C that are few and far between in terms of realistic targets and improvements over Mittelstadt, Johansson or Rodrigues.