Quoting: Richard88
The thing with Montour is that he needs to be used properly to get the best out of him. He's not an offensive Dman who excels with OZ starts. His bread and butter is in zone exits and transitions, and when he's starting in the OZ that is completely negated. Put him on a pairing with a defensive guy who can clear the crease and retrieve the puck and give it to Montour to start the play.
I can see that you were watching the Montour I was watching the past 17 months.
As I said, IMO the Ristolainen trade was very close, I do not know who blinked.
I also think the talks continued to the following year, when McPhee offered Miller for a second.
Who could turn down that trade either?
Then later that month Bowman must have been drunk or had gun held to his head and swapped Jokiharju for Nylander.
As a result Buffalo has 4 top 4 defensemen and only had to give up a late first, late second, a "C" prospect and "B" prospect.
Then nearly all of the trading stopped.
So while it was not great to have a glut of RHD (Buffalo was one of the better 5 on 5 defensive teams) it did not work out as well as expected.
Let me add, at the beginning of the season, Buffalo had Gilmour in the press box (he even played 4 games) because both Pilut and Bogosian were injured.
Strange that playing 4 RHD, Buffalo was able to put together their best 10 games of the season. So maybe it is better to have 6 top 4 defensemen than balanced left and right.
BTW you just made a very good point that Montour was not used properly.
IMO a lot of Sabres were not used properly and he was just one of them (can you imagine Sobotka playing second line RW?).
I do not see any reason to expect next year to be any better.
You are an Aves fan and you do not follow the Sabres as closely as I do.
On the other hand everything Sakic touched last year turned to gold. Nichushkin, Donskoi and Kadri just to name a few all contributed more than I think was expected.
While adding Miller, Jokiharju and Johansson worked out OK, Vesey was a bust and Hutton, Sheary, Rodrigues and Skinner all had epic bad years.