The Buffalo Sabres Have To Stop The Endless Rebuild

Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period was on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio last Friday with Steve Kouleas and Bruce Boudreau and was asked if Sabres management can stop the exodus out of Buffalo. As Pagnotta notes, at some point, the rejigging of the core has to stop.

NHLRumors.com Transcriptions

Bruce Boudreau: “Well, you know what? I think if they (Buffalo Sabres) want to improve the team, and that’s great. And they can improve the team and get better right now, because I think 14 years is long enough to miss the playoffs. Then go ahead, by all means, trade him (Bowen Byram). But I think you’re on a slippery slope.

If a guy wants to leave the team and you trade the first guy, and now all of a sudden, another guy wants to leave the team, and you trade that guy. You know what’s going to happen now? Somebody’s going to say, ‘Well, hey, everybody wants to leave. I’m getting out of here too.’

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And so I think, I hope that’s not the reason. I love my Sabres. But so I hope that’s not the reason that they, if they do get rid of him, that they end up getting rid of him.”

Dave Pagnotta: “Yeah, it’s a great point. I mean, you don’t want to set a precedent here. And then everybody who’s a little bit unhappy for whatever reason, besides, no, forget about it, get me out of here. At some point, they’ve got to stop the bleeding, and do you know enough patchwork to keep things going?

Now, on the bright side, it seems like Alex Tuch is poised for an extension in Buffalo. They’ve started those discussions, and I’m sure that will carry over into next week, as well as they try to lock him into a long-term deal. So you’ve got a good sign there.

You’ve got Tage Thompson locked in for a while. You’ve got (Rasmus) Dahlin, you’ve got (Owen) Power. You’ve got (Michael) Kesselring right now, Josh Doan coming in that trade as well. You’ve got some solid foundational pieces. They brought in Josh Norris in the Dylan Cozens trade. So they’ve got some good pieces to build around.

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I think the messaging here, to your point is, all right, we’re going to get this done because this is going to be a hockey trade. It’s going to make us better. But that’s it. From that point on, we want to add to this group. We want to continue to insulate our core. We don’t want to just rejig our core.”

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