Hard pass on RistLOLainen

Franzen 2.0 for a 40 point dman and a solid defensive d prospect. Ristolainen isn't as has defensively as he gets tabbed.

Risto is a bum. Just stop.

Risto has a career-143, conversation ends there

The Sabres are -392 since he came into the league. He plays top pair minutes. By default he's going to be minus a ton. I'm not saying he's a stalwart but with a solid defensive partner and second pair duties I think you'd be surprised at how not bad he is.

microstats show he is not good at a lot of things I don't care about his plus minus. at best he is a #4 and pp specialist and with Hronek there is no need for a pp specialist

I completely agree he's an offensive 4 and a PP specialist. I just don't think much more of Mantha most days so I don't think the value is all that off. And most microstats aren't team or usage adjusted that I've found, and being on a terrible Sabres team make things like WAR lower than they otherwise would be.

How do you not like Mantha?

Risto was soo bad, he was holding Dahlin back (and he's a rookie). His numbers aren't 1 year bad, they are career bad. He's an offensive dman yes, but he's a powerplay vulture. Which means he should be playing 5/6 dman minutes.

He went from playing 26 minutes/game in 2017/2018 to ending the 2018/2019 season playing 23 minutes/game (and that's after starting the season averaging over 25 minutes/game, for 2019 he averaged 24:38 per game over 81 games played). He also averaged over 3 minutes of PP time per game. His drop in playing time aligned with BUF getting a better RHD (Montour). The same people that are claiming Risto is great are claiming that Gardiner was awful.

And what's everyone's problem with Franzen? As a late bloomer, he was better than a .60 PPG player, along with being a .75PPG player in the playoffs. As the #3 piece (and really #4 piece on a team with Lidstrom around), I'd take that for Mantha. He wasn't a playmaker, he's a goal scorer, and he did it pretty well. He's never going to rack up huge points.