Sabres pass

Ew no thanks. Ristolainen is awful and that's not nearly enough to get Ottawa to take Eriksson. A 2nd a 4th and a guy who is KHL bound? Easy pass.

Sabres won’t do that deal.
Canucks will.
Goldy as above is already KHL bound.

Eriksson may be nothing special but is useful for the Sens for only 2years for $5m real money for Melnyk. A 2nd/4th isn’t a bad offer. Benning won’t give more & would ride it out imo.

I honestly forgot Goldy signed already lol. Well, just replace him with another young-ish bottom-sixer that could be good for the Sens even in long-term?

E: Honestly, why wouldn't the Sabres do that though? They know fully well Risto sucks, might as well cut their losses.

Risto has more value than that. The Sens imo only need a few good vet role players to buy time til the kids are ready. Plenty of those vets around for cheap.

He doesn't though? Yeah he can rack up a crapton of points on the powerplay, but at 5,4m you'd expect him to do more than that. Outside of his production on the PP he's a tirefire. I mean, sure, they could probably get some value out of him at 50% ret from a contender, but it's still iffy.

He’s been on a lousy team for a long time nowhere but up in the right situation. RHD are in demand & all he needs is a stable partner. Definitely a top D but top 2 D is where he might struggle. Stability in Buffalo is a 4 letter word & makes it difficult to assess him properly.

Still you'd expect him to have at least one season of positive corsi, xG% or GF%. He's had none. This year he was flat even on GF% but negative on everything else. He's just not very good.

Risto is awful and the Sabres still decline. That’s how bad Baertschi is

When healthy Baertschi is a fine NHL player. The problem is he's not worth his contract and he's rarely healthy. Making closer to league min he's definitely worth having on your team. I can't say the same for Ristolainen.

Haha. Risto is def so bad and his contract makes it worse