Quoting: Viqsi
Savard is paid fairly; Miller is overpaid. Savard is one of our defensive stalwarts; Miller is an "offensive defenseman" who can't measure up in scoring to our stay-at-home guys. I don't see those picks making up the difference.
* * *
Or, in other words, you badly wanted to use last year's near-career year by Miller versus last year's "worse year ever in his career" for Wennberg, but couldn't do it since it's a year old and so tried to work it in somehow so you could optimally minmax. Gotcha.
Let's be fair and include both player's career bests and career worsts. That's a four-year average. That puts Miller at 11+29+41+13=94 points over 51+65+82+61=259 games, and Wennberg at 22+25+35+59=141 points over 57+75+66+80=278 games. 0.36PPG versus 0.51PPG. Which is actually pretty close to their NHL career-long averages (some links for you:
http://sportsforecaster.com/nhl/player/9220/stats for Miller and
http://sportsforecaster.com/nhl/player/10389/stats for Wennberg).
Does that make it a good deal for Buffalo? I dunno. But it's not the open-and-shut "one is obviously overwhelmingly superior" case you're trying to make it out to be.
I always like to add links to my search, thanks for the help.
Yes, I do not like the trade at all.
Johansson could play 3rd line center and do a better job than Wennberg and would not cost the Sabres anything.
Miller is a solid defenseman, and IMO is worth more than what would be a third line center for Buffalo.
If I trade Miller it will be to a team in need of a top 4 RHD defenseman who can run the PP, but has a surplus of Right handed forwards who may want to cut cap and will take Miller and more to close the deal.
I guess I should have stuck to these facts when objecting to the trade. But I also feel adding $1,000,000 to the cap the player should be noticeably better than Miller.
Wennberg is Left handed, third liner and does not fill a need for Buffalo.
So many Buffalo fans are so disappointed with missing the preliminaries that they want to trash the entire team.
The teams defense is very solid. Only 8 teams gave up fewer 5 on 5 goals and the Sabres have one of the worse GK tandems and top 6 forwards in the league.
Miller at 27 is the oldest of the group and is young enough that his best years are ahead of him and he is on a good contract for the next 2 years.
Personally, I like having 7 solid NHL defensemen, but I would trade any of them except Dahlin for a top 6 forward even if I need to add.