The 2020-21 season is now officially complete. We can fully shift our focus to the offseason for the Buffalo Sabres and things should start to get going rather quickly here in the next few weeks. Expansion Draft protection lists are due to the league by next Saturday. The Expansion Draft is on July 21st, followed by the NHL Entry Draft on July 23rd.

Therefore, this will be my final written form of a mock offseason for the Sabres. For those podcast listeners of Expected Buffalo | The Podcast, you’ll get one more podcast version this weekend.

I’ll say off the top that I got very creative here and the likelihood of these moves may be slim. However, I hope that Kevyn Adams and his staff are thinking about these ideas as ways to be creative with their cap space.

Expansion

Alright, let’s dive into it and get the easy part out of the way. The expansion draft plan stays the same as my previous version with a small twist. I decided to pay off the Seattle Kraken to take Colin Miller in the expansion draft by trading them a 2021 fourth-round pick and the rights to defenseman Lawrence Pilut.

Pilut will likely never play for the Sabres again, thus it makes sense to use him as an asset while I still can. The mid-round pick is one that I can recoup somewhere else in the offseason and I get to protect players that I feel are important to my roster.

Trades

Now, we get to the fun. Make sure you pay attention because a few of these deals are creative.

Trade 1: Buffalo Sabres acquire Marco Rossi, Calen Addison, Adam Beckman, Matt Dumba, and a 2021 first-round pick (21st overall) in exchange for Jack Eichel

In this version, I send Eichel to the Minnesota Wild. In return, the Sabres get a first-round pick, but it’s in the back half of round one. They also acquire the Wild’s top prospect in Rossi. We all know about this player after the draft last year. He missed all of last season with a complication from Covid-19. All indications are that he’ll make a full recovery and be ready for next season.

Addison is the top prospect out of the Wild system. He’s a right-shot defender that is an intriguing player. There are some questions about his defensive game, but he can develop into a dynamic defenseman. The 21-year-old had six goals and 22 points in 31 games for the Iowa Wild of the AHL last season. He did get into three games in the NHL and registered one assist.

And how about this little piece of work from Boldy to Calen Addison, as well? pic.twitter.com/VFIYOw3zSV

— Scott Wheeler (@scottcwheeler) April 10, 2021

Under the right development, Addison could be a good top-four defenseman in the NHL. He’ll likely need to be paired with a strong defensive defenseman while he rounds out his game.

Beckman isn’t a well-known prospect with the Wild. He was their third-round pick back in the 2019 NHL Draft. The Canadian-born winger was a scoring machine for the Spokane Chiefs of the WHL in his D+1 season. He scored 48 goals and racked up 107 points in 63 games during the 2019-20 campaign. This past season he scored 17 goals and 27 points in 21 WHL games. Beckman also got some pro experience in the AHL and produced in that small size as well.

His best trait is his shot and finishing ability. As I’ve mentioned a handful of times, finishing ability would be a focus of mine this offseason.

The final piece of this deal is Dumba, but he’s not staying with the Sabres.

Trade 1/Part 2: Buffalo Sabres acquire a 2021 first-round pick (13th overall) from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for Matt Dumba (Sabres retain $1.5 million for the next two years).

Surprise! We have ourselves a good old-fashioned three-way trade. The Sabres act as the broker in this part of the trade and retain 25% of Dumba’s cap hit over the next two years. All parties win out in this deal. The Wild get the top-line center they covet, the Flyers get the right-shot defenseman they’re searching for, and the Sabres get the big assets in return for Jack Eichel.

The Wild are in a spot where they likely need to move Dumba to not lose him in expansion and to create the cap space to fit in Eichel’s $10 million under the salary cap.

So to recap here is how the full trade reads:

• Sabres receive: Marco Rossi, Calen Addison, Adam Beckman, 13th overall, and 21st overall
• Wild receive: Jack Eichel
• Flyers receive: Matt Dumba at a cap hit of only $4.5 million

Trade 2: Buffalo Sabres acquire Vince Dunn and a 2022 first-round pick (New York Islanders), New York Islanders acquire Vladimir Tarasenko (Sabres retain 50% salary), and the St. Louis Blues acquire Oliver Wahlstrom, Bode Wilde, and a 2021 third-round pick.

I told you some of these trades were a little creative.

I pull out my broker hat and utilize my cap space to once again pick up an asset. This time I have to eat a little more money, but I get a first-round pick for the 2022 NHL Draft. The cost for the pick is retaining $3.75 million on Tarasenko’s deal for the next two years.

The only way this trade works for the Islanders is getting someone to broker the deal. In this deal, I also pulled Vince Dunn from the Blues side for making this work.

As I said at the top, the likelihood of this particular deal happening may be small, but it’s not outlandish. The Sabres need to be smart about using their cap space to their advantage. There are plenty of teams to target this offseason for this purpose.

Trade 3: Buffalo Sabres acquire Warren Foegele and Alex Nedeljkovic from the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for the rights to Linus Ullmark, Rasmus Ristolainen, and a 2021 third-round pick (Montreal Canadiens pick).

Here’s the move where the Sabres get their starting goaltender for the next few years. In 31 Thoughts yesterday, Elliotte Friedman mentioned how the Hurricanes are wary of Nedeljkovic’s arbitration award after his strong season. If they’re open to moving him the Sabres should be all over this.

Nedeljkovic is 25-years-old and had a great season backstopping the Hurricanes to finishing first place in the Central Division this past season.

You can see in Evolving Hockey’s chart above how strong his shot-adjusted numbers were this year. There’s reason to be skeptical because this is only one season, but he has put up good numbers in the AHL before becoming a full-time NHL goaltender.

Foegele is the winger in the deal that the Hurricanes are also looking to move. The 25-year-old is a middle-six winger that can play in a lot of situations. In Micah McCurdy’s isolate impact model below, he’s a strong offensive player and is also good in his own end of the ice.

It would be nice if he had a better finishing rate, but I think his strong forechecking ability outweighs that. He’s the type of player that makes you harder to play against on a nightly basis. Not because he’ll drive opponents through the boards, but because he’ll be pressuring the puck all night long.

The pieces going back are filling a few holes on the Hurricanes roster. Ullmark’s rights are sent to the Hurricanes and he becomes their new starting goaltender moving forward. Ristolainen fills the void on the right side of the blue with the departure of Dougie Hamilton. The Hurricanes have had an interest in Ristolainen in the past. I know they’re an analytics team with Tulsky, but they did acquire Brady Skjei a few years ago.

You can basically break this trade down like this:

• Ullmark and 3rd for Nedeljkovic (may still be low)
• Ristolainen for Foegele

Trade 4: Buffalo Sabres acquire Mikko Koskinen and a 2021 fourth-round pick from the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for a 2023 seventh-round pick.

There’s not much to say here. This is just once again using my cap space to acquire an asset and recoup the fourth-round pick that I sent to Seattle. The Oilers are considering buying out Koskinen. The Sabres can do them a favor here and take the final year of the deal. It allows the Oilers to then shift their focus on potentially buying out James Neal.

2021 NHL Draft

Let’s move onto the 2021 NHL Draft. I walk into this draft with three picks now (1st, 13th, and 21st). I used a draft simulator to determine which players I would select in this draft. Here’s how it shook out:

1st Overall – Owen Power | LD

There’s some noise around William Eklund being the Sabres pick at one as of late. I believe those rumblings are true, but I decided to stick with Power as the top pick here.

13th Overall – Fedor Svechkov | C

I know, no Russians allowed. If the Sabres can get past this fear (aka the owner) then Svechkov would be a great pick in this spot. He may be the most complete two-way center in this draft.

21st Overall – Cole Sillinger | F

Shocker, I took another player with a great shot. Sillinger has the offensive upside to his game, but there are some questions in other areas such as his skating. I’d honestly be surprised if he’s sitting on the board at 21 come July 23rd.

Restricted Free Agents

I’m not going to go into great detail on the contracts that I gave out to the restricted free agents. I used Evolving Hockey’s contract projections as the baseline to figure these out. However, I will touch on two contracts briefly.

You’re going to find Sam Reinhart listed here. I thought hard about making a trade for him in this version, but as the days go by it’s feeling more likely than not that he’s with the Sabres to start the season. In this version, I work out a three-year deal with the 25-year-old forward.

The other interesting contract is Rasmus Dahlins. I went for the long-term play in this one. Deep down I still think it’s likely his camp will want a bridge, but if the Sabres can cash in on some value they should do so. If he continues to play as he did under Don Granato there won’t be a risk in going long-term.

• Sam Reinhart – 3 years, $7.5 million AAV
• Rasmus Dahlin – 6 years, $6 million AAV
• Henri Jokiharju – 2 years, $2 million AAV
• Casey Mittelstadt – 3 years, $2.25 million AAV
• Rasmus Asplund – 2 years, 1.25 million AAV
• Vince Dunn – 3 years, $3 million AAV
• Warren Foegele – 3 years, $2.9 million AAV
• Will Borgen – 1 year, $900k
• Alex Nedeljkovic – 3 years, $3.5 million AAV

Final Roster

Forwards

Jeff Skinner – Sam Reinhart – Anders Bjork

Arttu Ruotsalainen – Dylan Cozens – Warren Foegele

Rasmus Asplund – Casey Mittelstadt – Victor Olofsson

Zemgus Girgensons – Marco Rossi – Tage Thompson

Kyle Okposo

Defensemen

Rasmus Dahlin – Henri Jokiharju

Vince Dunn – Will Borgen

Mattias Samuelsson – Calen Addison

Goaltenders

Alex Nedeljkovic

Mikko Koskinen

Prospects/Picks Added

• Owen Power
• Fedor Svechkov
• Cole Sillinger
• Adam Beckman
• 2022 first-round pick

Notes

• Cody Eakin was waived to the AHL
• $12.1 million in cap space was remaining

Long-Term Outlook

Data via: Cap Friendly, Evolving Hockey, and Hockeyviz.com

Photo Credit: Chris Tanouye/Getty Images