Pearson and 4th round pick for Kapanen I'm all in on!

The main reason you see a lot of Buffalo fans dealing him is due to the glut of similar forwards on the team and in the pipeline. They have Thompson, Cozens, Krebs, and Mittelstadt at center currently with Savoie, Ostlund, and Kulich whom were just drafted all being centers. Some see Mittelstadt as the odd man out at some point, and I don't completely disagree long term. That said Kap doesn't fill a need for the Sabres at all, they'd just be removing one forward to replace him with another.

What Buffalo needs most is a top 4 right handed Dman along with half the NHL teams. If they were to add a forward it would either need to be a top line player (a significant upgrade type) or a player who can play in the middle 6 who has a ton of grit to his game (someone like Foligno, Greenway, Wilson etc.). They have a ton of middle 6 skilled forwards but lack the high end skill and lack that guy that other teams hate to play against.

Just my opinion, I'm sure others may disagree.

Okay that makes sense. I guess down the line he may get knocked down the pecking order. I do agree though, I dont think BUF need Kap, but it was worth seeing what others thought.

I am on the fence about Pearson. I still think Kap could do more, but how long do we give him.

I'd take that as a straight hockey trade if I was MN.

Don't think the Coyotes will move Boyd or Fischer as both want to be there at this time. Ritchie probably gets flipped for a pick at the TDL but if you were strictly talking about dumping Kap, then Ritchie for Kap n a pick could be done. Retain 50% on Ritchie to make it that much more interesting as well.

What pick would it take?

I feel like it could be interesting, but I still feel like Kap has the higher ceiling. That extra cap space could be really big for us though. Its a tough one, because I think our org still sees Kap as someone who can bounce back to what he should have been.

Depending on retention:
Ritchie @ 50%

Kap
*Conditional pick

* 23 3rd rounder could become 23 2nd rounder if Ritchie has a XX number of points in the playoffs and plays in XX percentage of games.

I'd be happy if MN lost Jost though waivers. I'm not that interested in Kapanen. He is something different than the small, LHS, C/W, fringe NHLer clones (Dewar, Jost, Rossi, Shaw, and Steel) that make up a good chunk of the FWD group in MN. Add in the 2 quality small LHS FWDs (Zucc and Kaprizov) and 2 small d-men (Spurgeon and Addison) and MN is just a very small team overall.

Sabres fans want Mittelstadt dealt because he's been the worst forward on the team in nearly every game. He was destined to leave barring a Thompson like explosion but he's taking up space at this point. Sabres keep benching guys like Hinostroza and Quinn for him to continue to suck

Your pretty accurate tbh. Sabres dont need another forward. However Mitts is the odd man out right now, they keep benching quinn (who looks better than half the team) for Casey to stink up whatever line he's on