Any deal of this size cannot be longer than 2 years. You have to leave 10 mil in cap space for next summer extensions.

They have room.

Make Giroux deal 2 years and that's something worth thinking about.

Ownership isnt going to spend beyond the floor this year. At most, you'll see long term extensions for olofsson, Cozens and maybe Thompson.

What makes you say that they won't spend?

Like it. Only nitpick is I'd probably just keep Mitts as my 4C if you're that low on him. Or at least make sure Peterka and Quinn earn the job, and then do this kind of trade

Lingering effects of the pandemic and a worse average attendance than the Coyotes. They already started doing this last year. Thats why they brought in the analytics dept. Try and squeeze more out of each dollar.

It's more or less the worst kept secret that theyre bleeding and until they draw fans back they're not spending past the floor.

Pegulas spent big money the entire time they've owned the team. They didn't last 2 years because there was 0 hope for this team, and they were moving the face of their franchise. It's completely rational for them to not spend or make any significant moved while they waited for their rookie GM to make arguably the biggest trade in franchise history - especially with the points you made about attendance.

Fans were rightfully pissed at ownership and Kreuger ran the team into the ground. But the pandemic is over, and the buzz around the team right now is up to 11

You're not wrong about the analytics team, but I don't think it means that they won't try to squeeze every bit out of 82.5 mill. Every team in the league is doing it, and what the Sabres were doing before wasn't working.

There was straight up a report mid pandemic that the Sabres were setting an internal cap much lower than the salary cap. Also lets not forget they gutted the scouting department (still haven't made any new hires) and fired a popular AHL head coach in chris taylor to save some coin.

They got absolutely bodied financially by the fans. Avg. attendance was literally half of what it was in 2016. They're not spending north of 68 ish mil (in salary so maybe the cap hit might be a little higher) until they get some gate revenue back

The majority of the attendance issue was closed border and the vax pass, both of which will be gone next season. Now they have to contend with inflation, but season tickets should start to go up again, the more that travel opens up. The Sabres have been bad for a decade but were still 18000+ up until 2019