Jeez why the heck are you overpaying so much?
You do know Ristolainen is horrible defensively.

I wouldnt even give Roslovic for Ristolainen.

Ah but Risto / Laine are from Turku / Tampere & the feud between those cities is absolutely BRUTAL

Perreault is still quite underrated but the inclusion of his contract generally implies a cap jettison to be offset by augmenting the return going his way

I hear the rivalry between Espoo and Oulu is much more fierce

There’s a few Sabres fans who want Roslovic,
but i don’t get it
He’s a good 3rd line winger
I just don’t see the upside others do,
and I’d rather just keep Risto

Buffalo doesn't do this. Cant afford to take cap dumps, nor do we want to

As a Sabres fan I’d rather simplify and do Niku for Miller or Montour. Miller has two years left, Montour just 1. Both around $3.8M cap hit

Yes Risto plays against the top opponents, four different head coaches give him maximum ice time, he hits, scores 40pts/year.
I just looked this up, he had the LOWEST give/take away ratio of any Sabre defenseman and the third lowest gva/60 among ALL NHL defensemen who played more than 30 games.
NO NHL defenseman had more hits than he had last year.
He had a horrible +/- last year, but it was respectable this year.
I would only trade him for a boat load as he will only be better next year.
If the trade did not have Perreault, I would still want a good pick, probably a first as neither jack nor Sami are top performers, just decent roster spots.

I have no idea why Sabre fans are so in love with Roslovic.
NHL Totals 180 26 41 67 0.37 pts/gm born Jan 1997
Mittelstadt 114 17 22 39 0.34 pts/gm born Nov 1998
Give Casey two more years and better wingers to see how he compare then.
Who would even dream of trading Ristolainen for Mittelstadt.
Yet we see it on this site often Rasmus for Jack?

Many of the Analytics #s ppl point to that make Risto look bad are actually more “team” stats than “individual”
Especially anything Corsi related
Those stats will look bad for players on bad teams,
and better for players on good teams

Is Risto an “amazing” player?
No, he’s not
But he is much better than his haters give him credit for.
He’s a solid Top4 defenseman,
who’s stats will go up as the TEAM around him improves

That’s my take on it anyways

To be fair, even the more advanced stats that attempt to account for team play don't look very pretty for Risto.

I'm not saying he's a bad player, or 'below replacement level' as some statheads would say, but his bad analytics aren't just a result of playing for bad teams. I still think he's a solid #2/#3 defenseman and brings a lot to the team.

I think we are in agreement here.
Is he among the top 20 or 30 NHL defensemen, probably not.
Would he be a top pairing defenseman on many NHL team probably.
He ranks among top 30 with hits, pts and TOI nearly every year.
But when I see him called garbage and Sabre fans trading him for a 2nd, I wonder if any of them watch hockey.
He is big and he is still young and has not reached his prime.
moving him for nothing without getting value in return is just silly.

Yep, agreed

My (realistic?) wishlist for the rest of the offseason:
1- goalie upgrade over Hutton, would love Kuemper
2- sign Hoffman at around 5mil, wed have to move out Montour though (maybe in the goalie trade)
3- bring back Pilut cheaply

Hall-Eichel-Reinhart
Skinner-Staal-Hoffman
Olofsson-Eakin-Cozens
Girgs/Okposo/etc etc etc for 4th line defensive duty

Dahlin-Risto
McCabe-Jokiharju
Pilut-Miller
-Irwin

Kuemper
-Ullmark


That’s a definite playoff team imo
And if Kuemper does his thing, we might be able to make some noise in the playoffs

Well we can certainly plan for the best, and of course adding Kuemper and Hoffman would be a dream team that as you say would really rock.
IMO the team underperformed last year.
With Hall, Staal, Kahun, Cozens, Mittelstadt I see a really good team.
We need a better PK coach, the team is too passive.
Keep the puck out of the defensive zone, who knows what will happen.

Once the season starts, I will need to meet you face to face and discuss hockey.

Let's presume Hoffman signs elsewhere.
I think we need to put Mittelstadt into the line up.
Eakin had only one more goal than Casey last year, but it took him an extra 18 games.
Here is a fun fact, look at Eakin's last four years his goals, ass pts per game are 0.138 0.2 0.3375
Then look at Casey's career of 114 games and his goals, ass pts per game are 0.154 0.202 0.356
Casey played fourth line minutes with third line players and produced third line output.
Eakin's stats are somewhat inflated as he had one really good year in his last 4, take out that year, his offense is a little better than Larsson with many more OZ starts.
IMO Hall and Eichel are playmakers while Reinhart is for support.
So that line would have two playmakers and no true sniper.
Add Mittelstadt, sign a less expensive Kahun, and give Hall his own line to run:
Skinner-Eichel-Reinhart
Hall-Staal-Olofsson
Kahun/Mittelstadt-Cozens-Okposo
Girgenson-Eakin-Kahun/Thompson
I love fun facts, only Jack, Victor and Sam scored more pts/min than Kyle.
But those three were nor playing with the scoring machines of Girgenson and Larsson.
My opinion based on stats Cozens will be much better than Reinhart and putting him at #3 center would groom him to move up.
It would also give the team a chance to see if Staal has a replacement and could be traded away at the TDL.

But who knows what Krueger will do, after all he thought Sobotka was a top six forward.

I like a lot of your ideas,
but idk if Ralph/Adams have the same thought process
I guess we’ll have to see what happens

In the meantime.... GO BILLS!!!