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Myth Busting: Botterill never had a bad cap situation to clean up

by Chad DeDominicis - 33

We found out from a report from John Warrow of the Associated Press on Tuesday evening that Jason Botterill would return to the Buffalo Sabres for his fourth season as general manager. At this point, it wasn’t a surprise, but not a decision that went over well with the fan base.

Botterill’s tenure in charge of the hockey department has been a rocky one in Buffalo. There’s no denying that he has made some good moves on occasion, but there is a lot of bad that overshadows the good.

Going into his fourth offseason, I wondered to myself if the Sabres are in a better or worse spot than when Botterill took control of the team. You’ll often hear his defenders mention how he had to clean up a mess from former general manager Tim Murray. While that’s true to an extent, how bad was it compared to now?

2017-18 Salary Cap

There’s a belief out there that Botterill sold the Pegula’s on the idea of getting to the 2020 offseason to clear his cap space and have a clean slate to build his roster. This is a similar approach to what Brandon Beane pitched Kim and Terry Pegula when he was hired as general manager of the Buffalo Bills. The results on the football side have been promising.

Back to the hockey side, you can shoot a bunch of holes into that theory. First off, an ownership group that bought into it taking four years to turn around the team with their core in place is hard to believe.

The thing to look at here and understand is that the Sabres appear to be in a worse cap situation today than they were back in 2017.

Let’s go back to when Botterill took over the Sabres in May of 2017. The Sabres were coming off of a 78-point season. The key players on that club were Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart, Evander Kane, Ryan O’Reilly, and Rasmus Ristolainen. Botterill walked into a situation where his top two centers (Eichel and O’Reilly) were under contract for a combined $8.4 million, but only for that season. Eichel was scheduled to be a restricted free agent in the summer of 2018.

One of Botterill’s first moves was to get Eichel signed to an eight-year contract worth $80 million. Getting that long-term deal in place was key and props to the Sabres general manager on getting that done.

Alright, back to the cap itself in 2017. Murray strapped Botterill with three anchor contracts in Zach Bogosian, Matt Moulson, and Kyle Okposo which cost a combined $16.182 million. Even with those contracts on the books and only two major restricted free agents, the Sabres had just over $24 million in cap space that summer.

Well, that doesn’t seem to fit the narrative that Botterill walked into a bad cap situation. Having $24 million out of the gate is a good situation to have with some good young talent on the roster.

That summer, he utilized the cap space and brought in $9.6 million from a trade with the Minnesota Wild and traded a draft pick for Nathan Beaulieu. He sent Tyler Ennis, Marcus Foligno, and a draft pick to the Wild for Marco Scandella, Jason Pominville, and a draft pick. Both Scandella and Pominville had multiple years remaining on their contract. The ironic twist here is that the “throw-in” cap dump of Pominville may have been one of his better acquisitions.

2018-19 Salary Cap

Moving onto the summer of 2018, we again see that Botterill had plenty of space to work with. He had roughly $20 million in cap space in the offseason before the 2018-19 season.

Now, this is where things start to unravel a little for Botterill. First, his only major restricted free agent that summer was Reinhart. Instead of getting him under contract on a five or six-year deal that carried a cap hit of $5.5-6 million he went with the bridge deal. He signed the 2014 second overall pick to a two-year deal with a $3.65 annual average value.

In doing so, he kicked the can down the road and pushed Reinhart into an arbitration-eligible RFA negotiation in the 2020 offseason. It’ll now cost them at least $2 million more on the cap for a long-term deal this time around.

This is also the offseason of the dreaded O’Reilly trade. The Sabres dumped off their second-line center and his $7.5 million cap hit to the St. Louis Blues. In return, they picked up Vladimir Sobotka, Patrik Berglund, Tage Thompson, and two draft picks.

Here’s the odd part, again. The Sabres took on more salary in that deal than they traded away. The three players acquired combined for a cap hit of $8.275 million. Sobotka and Thompson had two more years remaining on their contracts, while Berglund had four years remaining on his.

Botterill got off the hook with Berglund leaving the Sabres due to personal reasons. Imagine having his $3.85 million hit on the books for another two years at age 32.

By the way, this also shows you that Botterill’s remarks that the O’Reilly trade created the cap space to acquire Jeff Skinner is false.

2019-20 Salary Cap

Onto the last offseason. In the summer of 2019, Botterill had $28 million in cap space to play with. This time around, he did have five restricted free agents to deal with and a major pending unrestricted free agent in Skinner. He got a deal done with Skinner, but it came at the cost of an eight-year deal with a $9 million cap hit.

All of the restricted free agents that summer was given one-year deals except for Jake McCabe. Again, kicking the can down the road, which we’ll get to in a moment.

2020-21 Salary Cap

Now, we’re back to the current time with this upcoming offseason. This is the year with all the cap space and the contracts cleared, right?

Not so fast. It’s not real.

As you can see above, the Sabres do currently sit with $34 million in cap space with a flat cap ceiling of $81.5 million. That’s a lot of money. Now, pull the curtain back and notice that the Sabres have nine restricted free agents that need new contracts this summer. By not committing to any players long-term, Botterill pushed all of his RFA’s into one offseason.

Yesterday, we found out the Lawrence Pilut is signing in the KHL, so we won’t count him in this exercise. If you use Evolving Hockey’s contract projections and give out the cap hit to the eight remaining restricted free agents, it totals $23.6 million. Add in Dylan Cozens cap hit to the mix and the Sabres only have roughly $9.3 million in space after the cap overage penalty is accounted for.

Let me bring this all together for you. Here is how much cap space the Sabres had in each offseason under Botterill after restricted free agents were accounted for:

  • 2017 – $20.9 million
  • 2018 – $16.9 million
  • 2019 – $18.8 million
  • 2020 – $9.3 million (projected)

Of course, Botterill can decide to move one or two of these restricted free agents in the offseason, but this is the picture of reality if he doesn’t. After hearing him talk up his young talent yesterday in his post-season conference, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he does hang onto all these RFA’s.

So, not only is the cap worse today under Botterill, but we’ve also debunked the notion that he was handcuffed by some mythical cap issue leftover from Murray’s tenure. We also see that he has potentially less cap flexibility this year than he has had in any offseason during his time in Buffalo.

Conclusion

The more layers you peel back on the onion, the decision of bringing back Botteril becomes more questionable. He’s made a handful of questionable cap decisions in his tenure that has put the team in the situation they are now.

His prospect pool isn’t much better than what it was when he took over. The only high-end prospect he has to show from three years of drafting is Dylan Cozens. After that, he has a pool of low-ceiling prospects and question marks.

Any notion that the failures of today are in any way tied to that of the previous regime is utter fiction. The cap situation wasn’t as bad as some think and he was given a core of young players that he still maintains on the roster, outside of O’Reilly.

The shortcomings are on the shoulders of Botterill alone. He’s failed to find a replacement for O’Reilly at center, he hasn’t been able to evaluate impact forwards, he decided to not move out a defenseman in his log jam this past season, and he is responsible for the current situation with the salary cap.

Salary cap data via Cap Friendly

33 thoughts on “Myth Busting: Botterill never had a bad cap situation to clean up”

  1. It’s unreal how bad he’s messed up. I don’t hate him as much as some people do but for a guy who was supposed to be a cap specialist he is really a letdown

  2. Wow, just discovered the new website.
    Thanks and good luck!

    Regarding Botterill…if he doesn’t nail it this year the franchise might not recover for “another” 4-5 years.

    What are the Pegula’s thinking? Do they really believe that out of 18 draft picks with only 2 being on the NHL roster is progress eventhough one of them (Mittlestat) just might turn out to be a bust that we can’t afford to see happen.

    My opinion is they’ve searched for a new GM and had no takers and they settled on GMJB.

    That’s why they took so long to voice their “confidence” in him. Good grief.

  3. Rasmus Dahlin…. future captain.
    There’s no doubt in my mind it’ll happen at some point.

    When it does it’ll signify that things went south here for Jack for whatever reason.
    A perennially bad roster with several low experience coaches (besides Dan Blysma) and with no playoffs year after year will be the reasons Jack won’t he here his entire career.

    I hope I’m terribly wrong about all of that but the future is Dahlin in my opinion unless this franchise wrecks or hinders his development

    But that can’t happen here, right?

  5. .
    Rasmus said it first but I’m glad to see Jack chimed in but it sounds like he views the first 5 years as a frustrating and wasted opportunity.

    I don’t see him sticking around and losing for another 2+ years.
    This is why my Dahlin as captain scenario seems like a real probability withn the next 3 seasons.

    ▪︎Eichel: ‘I’m fed up with the losing and I’m frustrated’▪︎

    Buffalo Sabres captain Jack Eichel didn’t mince words when speaking about missing the playoffs for the fifth straight season since entering the league in 2015.

    “Listen, I’m fed up with the losing and I’m frustrated. It’s not an easy pill to swallow right now,” Eichel said on a conference call Thursday, according to Postmedia’s Michael Traikos. “It’s been a tough past couple of months and a tough past five years.”…cont.

    https://www.thescore.com/nhl/news/1975647

  6. 1) Is there a solid center we can draft in the first round that would be ready for next year? If so would Mittelstadt be ready as well or is he worth trading? I had heard from our radio guys that Casey’s issue is he would rather party in the offseason in Minnesota than stay up here for conditioning training. He seems too soft and that explanation should be looked into – if he has no hunger to be elite, then dump him for some assets. 2) goalies- Hutton didn’t help last year and 5-6 goal games seemed to be all i remember- I know Ulmark got hurt but why can’t we go back to the older style of NHL when the top goalie played 80-90% of the games?? IS ULMARK OUR #1 goalie? IF so, play him as much as possible. 3) We need urgency the whole year- first we missed the playoffs by a point or two – and that would have been wide open this year. 2 wins against Ottawa would have been the difference. if we don’t get a run in the playoffs – at least make it next year and win a couple rounds the following year – then I think Eichel could be demanding a trade and we will get fleeced in that one too. 4) we need to find a way to not waste Skinner – if we do not get a solid center first WHY NOT – and second then put him w/ Eichel until we get another Center. Why pay him 9 mil if you just want to turn him into what you DIDN’T BOTHER TO FIND OUT BEFORE YOU SIGNED HIM – meaning you knew he was a finisher, he doesn’t just create goals, he doesn’t give you 100 assists, he is a cherry picker and he’s good at it — SO WHY SEE RESULTS, PAY HIM FOR THOSE RESULTS, AND THEN SPLIT UP THE REASON HE GAVE YOU RESULTS? IT’S LIKE MOVING MOGINLY TO THE 3RD LINE BECAUSE YOU WANTED A MORE BALANCED TEAM. HUH? AND 5) FINALLY – ROR TRADE WAS HORRIBLE AND BOTTS SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED JUST FOR THAT. BUT REGARDLESS YOU HAVE A GUY SHARE HIS HEART AND FOR THAT HONESTY YOU SHIP HIM OUT INSTEAD OF FIXING WHAT IS BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY WRONG – YOU NEED A PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS AND TO TELL KINDLY KIM TO PLEASE STICK TO THE OTHER BUSINESSES. AND NOW THAT EICHEL IS SAYING THE SAME STUFF, ARE YOU GOING TO LISTEN? OR WILL YOU SHIP HIM OUT TOO? IS HEARING THE TRUTH FROM CAPTAIN OBVIOUS TOO HARD TO HANDLE? YOU GUYS LITERALLY NEVER RECOVERED FROM THE TANK YEARS AND THERE DOESN’T SEEM TO BE ANY RECOVERY YET FROM IT. PLEASE STOP MAKING EXCUSES AND GET A PRESIDENT OF HOCKEY IN WHO KNOWS THE GAME AND MAYBE GET A GUY LIKE BABCOCK IN HERE WHO WON’T CODDLE THESE PRIMADONNA SOFTEES.

    MIKE-THE-PHARMACIST

  7. skinner – f we do not get a solid center first WHY NOT – and second then put him w/ Eichel until we get another Center. Why pay him 9 mil if you just want to turn him into what you DIDN’T BOTHER TO FIND OUT BEFORE YOU SIGNED HIM – meaning you knew he was a finisher, he doesn’t just create goals, he doesn’t give you 100 assists, he is a cherry picker and he’s good at it — SO WHY SEE RESULTS, PAY HIM FOR THOSE RESULTS, AND THEN SPLIT UP THE REASON HE GAVE YOU RESULTS? IT’S LIKE MOVING MOGINLY TO THE 3RD LINE BECAUSE YOU WANTED A MORE BALANCED TEAM. HUH? AND 5) FINALLY – ROR TRADE WAS HORRIBLE AND BOTTS SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED JUST FOR THAT. BUT REGARDLESS YOU HAVE A GUY SHARE HIS HEART AND FOR THAT HONESTY YOU SHIP HIM OUT INSTEAD OF FIXING WHAT IS BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY WRONG – YOU NEED A PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS AND TO TELL KINDLY KIM TO PLEASE STICK TO THE OTHER BUSINESSES. AND NOW THAT EICHEL IS SAYING THE SAME STUFF, ARE YOU GOING TO LISTEN? OR WILL YOU SHIP HIM OUT TOO? IS HEARING THE TRUTH FROM CAPTAIN OBVIOUS TOO HARD TO HANDLE? YOU GUYS LITERALLY NEVER RECOVERED FROM THE TANK YEARS AND THERE DOESN’T SEEM TO BE ANY RECOVERY YET FROM IT. PLEASE STOP MAKING EXCUSES AND GET A PRESIDENT OF HOCKEY IN WHO KNOWS THE GAME AND MAYBE GET A GUY LIKE BABCOCK IN HERE WHO WON’T CODDLE THESE PRIMADONNA SOFTEES.

    MIKE-THE-PHARMACIST

    1. If it’s so terrible then refute it with actual facts. I don’t necessarily agree 100% with their point of view, but they provided very good stats to back up their argument.

  9. Terrible article from an amateur ‘journalist’ as bad as his takes on advanced stats.

    This is a pathetic attempt to spin a narrative as I’ve ever seen.

    1. The two minutes you sat thinking up an even better comment were well spent.
      Journalist in quotes. “You wish you were a journalist, you may even claim to be a journalist, but you, sir, are no journalist. The journalist you think you are is an amateur, at that. Ha!”
      You remembered the article was terrible, but you forgot that it was dishonest. C’mon, attention to detail.
      Good job getting your advanced stats dig in. I can tell that you respect advanced stats, just not this guy’s.

  10. Thank guys, good article.

    My only issue is when you pull it all together. You show that Botterill won’t have much cap space left after signing RFA’s. Whilst that’s obviously true, but I think the piece of the picture you are missing is how many “gaps” are there on the roster. Based on some very quick maths, signing all the RFAs this year would lead to 5 spaces needed to be filled (to get the roster to 23), whereas in some other years that number is higher (e.g. in 17-18 & 18-19 it would have been 8 & 7).

    I don’t think it distracts from your overall point, which I agree with, but there is an argument that the cap space left in other years isn’t a true reflection. Plus you could argue that it’s relatively cheaper/easier to sign RFAs than UFAs, so the 15+m in other years might not stretch as far as it first appears.

  12. Very much appreciate the stats and the narrative is directionally correct. Three points –
    1) Jokiharju is missing from this year
    2) Need to note how many roster spots are needed at each position (11/5/2) so thee forward and two D are needed. $9M is a lot if you only need one body. It’s not if you need 5. The math is really $8 for 3 forwards and a D man.
    3) The math on the Rienhart bridge v long-term deal does not add-up or line up. You need to compare it to the totality of the deals over the overlapping period and analyze versus a % of cap during those periods.
    Pls fix.

  13. This seems more like a hit job rather than an even sided article.

    One bad mistake Botterill’s made concerning cap is Skinner. Even that by maybe $2 mill. He absolutely stole Eichel for $10 mill a year. He signed Reino to a good bridge. Hopefully we don’t overpay him this offseason.

    Look at it your way sure we weren’t in cap trouble when he took over but we were definitely headed that way.

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