"From all the teams that miss the tournament, Buffalo is the one who needs to make the most changes in order to be competitve next season."
Hutton goes blind and has 0-8-4 stretch,
The PK and PP are the worse in the league,
Skinner scores 14 goals,
Sheary, Vesey and Rodrigues have career bad years.
If ANY one of those did not happen, the team is in the preliminaries,
If NONE of them happen they are chasing the Leafs for the third overall spot.
One also has to ask, what coach thinks it is a good idea to put Sobotka on the 2nd line? Did anyone consider how much that contributed to Skinner's awful year.
Let me add, only 8 teams gave up fewer 5 on 5 goals than the Sabres last year. With better GK it would have been even fewer teams.
So I cannot disagree with your opening line more than I do.
As to the trades:
Stepan is paid more then Okposo why do I want two of them on my team and for a 2nd?
@NeedTheCleanser and
@littlejerryseinfeld are correct.
I would rather keep Mittelstadt over Puljujarvi. Casey took the demotion while Jesse jumped to Europe. Give me the player with class.
Montour is worth a lot more than the 43rd OA. He had the best +/- among all Sabre skaters, only Scandella had a better PDO, only Ristolainen and Dahlin had a higher pts/min, Miller, Ristolainen and Dahlin all had more PP time than he, he had the highest 5 on 5 SV% of all Sabre defensemen, do I need to go on?