Who is Part of the Buffalo Sabres Core Moving Forward?
Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period joined Sirius XM NHL Network Radio with Dennis Bernstein and Steve Kouleas on the Power Play and was asked, once the direction for Alex Tuch is settled, what are the Buffalo Sabres going to do next in terms of looking at the core of this team and what to build around?
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
Dennis Bernstein: “Dave, once that business (Alex Tuch negotiation) is settled one way or the other, what do you do with this core? With (Tage) Thompson, with (Rasmus) Dahlin, with (Owen) Power? Is this fixable? With one or two moves, do you have to move out a core player? What do you think happens beyond Alex Tuch negotiation?”
Dave Pagnotta: “Well, I think it’s been identified. And look, here first of all, I will add to this that the fact that they had Jarmo Kekäläinen coming in in the summer as an advisor, as a senior advisor, allowed him to get properly acclimated to the organization. This isn’t a scenario where a guy’s coming in cold and needs time to figure out his roster, his team, his staff, what they have in the system, what’s coming up in the pipeline, all of that stuff. He’s already had months to figure all that out and to navigate through it and analyze it.
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So that’s a big bonus in terms of just, a new guy coming in, well educated and able to put his tentacles on things relatively quickly, and within that time period before this change happened. The Sabres identified that Thompson and Dahlin are the two guys that are at the head of the core and of this group. And yes, of course, you’ve got Owen Power, you’ve got Bowen Byram. You’ve got a pretty sound d-corp with (Michael) Kesselring as well once he’s healthy.
And then you’ve got (Mattias) Samuelson back there. You’ve got a bunch of other pieces up front, some young pieces up front, (Zach) Benson, (Josh) Doan, etc. I think they think you identify those key pieces and you say, All right, here’s how we want the rest of this to look, and here’s where we may be forced to make moves in order to better our team in other areas.
Bowen Byram and Owen Power are no strangers to the rumor mill. Byram, especially more so. This goes back to last season. Power to a certain extent. His name was popping up. It came up more in the draft, and then in the summer. I think Thompson and Dahlin are leading the way here. They’re the primaries. And then you find, you know the Part B core pieces, and build around all of that.
If they’re looking to be more aggressive in terms of adding up front, then you could utilize one of those defensemen to try to bring in some extra firepower at the forward core and in the top six. That would not be out of the realm of possibility. And quite frankly, guys that wouldn’t surprise me if they go down that road, whether it’s utilizing a Byram or Power or even a UPL in net.
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NHLRumors.com Note: The Buffalo Sabres are rolling into the holiday break winners of seven straight. They are 5-0 since Jarmo Kekäläinen. There is a belief in the room that they can make the playoffs and end the drought. Again, teams will be calling about some of their players, especially their goaltenders. At some point, Kekäläinen will need to decide who gets shipped out because a three-goalie system doesn’t work.
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