Over the past few months, there has been a lot of conversation about the Buffalo Sabres spending on player salaries. The discussion came to the forefront when Jeff Skinner was bought out. One of the benefits of that buyout was an extra roughly $7.5 million in cap space this offseason.

It would allow Kevyn Adams to use that on other players to assemble a playoff roster. According to Puck Pedia, they have $14.55 million in cap space. They still have Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Peyton Krebs remaining as restricted free agents to sign. If you assume they sign on the high end of their projections, there would be at least $7 million in cap space remaining. That would essentially leave that Skinner buyout benefit, unused.

I believe this is the roster the Sabres will bring to camp after they sign their remaining restricted free agents. Never say never, but the chatter has been they don’t anticipate adding anything else.

Salary Spending

I don’t know if the Sabres management is working with an internal salary cap. There have been rumors, but nothing I’ve been able to confirm. Terry Pegula has spent on a re-vamped front office staff for Adams. He also spent on players in the past, but things changed when Covid hit. We all remember the 3 E’s press conference after Jason Botterill was fired.

Let’s start by simply looking at the facts of their spending and cap space utilization from the 2021-22 season to now. I used Puck Pedia and Spotrac to pull together all of this data.

I’ll start with their actual cash spending. This is data from Spotrac that calculates how much actual cash they spent on players in each of the last four years. In some cases, the salary in a specific year can be higher or lower than the cap hit based on the negotiated contract breakdowns.

You’ll see in the charts below, that the Sabres have been in the bottom five of player salary actual cash in each of the last four years.

Over the last three years, only the Arizona Coyotes franchise has spent less cash on player salaries than the Sabres. That organization relocated to Utah this summer.

If you include this offseason, the Arizona/Utah franchise and the Anaheim Ducks are the only two organizations to spend less cash.

Even if you include the remaining restricted free agents the Sabres have to sign, they won’t close the $14.3 million gap on the Ottawa Senators.

Let’s flip the view to the salary cap itself. Below is a breakdown of the percentage of unused cap space in each of the last four years. Some teams are going to have negative percentages because of bonuses and long-term injured reserved players that are being accounted for in these numbers.

Also, take note that in the 2024-25 chart I cheated to improve the Sabres view in the data. I put their cap hit for the 2024-25 season at $81 million to account for remaining RFA signings. The other 31 teams I didn’t adjust. Teams such as the Detroit Red Wings, Boston Bruins, and Carolina Hurricanes would likely jump the Sabres in that chart once they sign their remaining RFA’s.

Once again, the Sabres find themselves at the bottom of this data. They have had a lot of unused cap space on the board in the last few years. The Sabres and the Ducks are the only two teams in the last four years to have at least 7% or more of their cap space unused in each season.

They’ve left a combined $46.4 million in cap space on the board the last four years, even when you adjusted up the number this summer. That’s 13.88% of their cap space that has been left unused during that time. That’s the second-highest in the league behind the Ducks.

The chart below is why this is all relevant to evaluating if ownership is handcuffing the Sabres front office. Over the last three seasons, Adams has the 11th-lowest dollars spent per standings points earned.

What this means is that his front office is working within the means of this “Moneyball” spending to get an above-average return on investment if you will. If there is a limitation in place, they’ve had success winning games in spite of it. There could be an argument crafted that if he’s able to spend more money it would result in more points earned.

This doesn’t mean that Adams is a great general manager or that he should be retained if they fail to make the playoffs after this season. He’s responsible for the final result of his roster regardless of any limitations in place. However, it’s still important to understand the landscape.

Conclusion

There’s no confirmation that an internal cap exists, but we do have evidence that would support such a claim. The full offseason hasn’t played out to safely say the Skinner buyout was more of cash savings than we thought, but it’s trending in that direction.

The argument against spending the last few years has been the core needs their new contracts. Well, Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens, Owen Power, and Rasmus Dahlin have their new deals in place. The Sabres are on pace to be $7-8 million under the cap still.

Now, some conversation has shifted to the next wave that needs their new deals (JJ Peterka, Bo Byram, and Jack Quinn) so they have to be responsible for the future. This is cyclical excuse-making for a lack of spending.

According to Puck Pedia, the Sabres will have over $33 million in cap space next offseason with a $92 million cap ceiling. Even if you allocate $25 million of that cap space to the five big players that need new contracts (including Luukkonen) the Sabres would have $8 million in cap space. That’s before they’d remove anyone off the roster to create more.

The Sabres still have time before camp to put this narrative to rest, but I’m not confident they will. Leaving a good chunk of cap space on the table again this offseason in a year that must result in a playoff berth is questionable decision making to be polite. It’s offensive to fans if ownership has indeed continued to put an internal cap ceiling in place.

Data via: Puck Pedia and Spotrac