Team Breakdown: Wrapping up the Pacific

I only have three teams remaining on my list of Pacific division trade options the Buffalo Sabres could explore. The clubs remaining are the Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks, and Vegas Golden Knights. Anthony will be handling the San Jose Sharks which is the last remaining team in the division to cover.

I decided to combine the Kings, Ducks, and Knights into one breakdown. They don’t have a lot of options that would make sense for the Sabres. Thus, I didn’t feel it made sense to do an individual breakdown for each.

Los Angeles Kings

1. Adrian Kempe | C/W | Age 24 | Two-years, $2 million

Kempe is the only player on the Kings that the Sabres would likely have an interest in. Austin Wagner is an interesting player, but he just received a new contract at the beginning of September.

Kempe could be a good option as a third-line center to slot in behind Eichel and Staal. He can hold that spot until Cozens is ready to move to the middle if they start him on the wing. If the Sabres are looking for a player that can be responsible defensively, Kempe makes even more sense.

Over the last two years, he has been one of the best defensive impact players on the Kings. He’s third among all forwards on that roster in Evolving Hockey’s shot quality against and first in shot attempts against in their RAPM model.

He’s not going to be able to handle the defensive zone deployment of Johan Larsson. The Kings have deployed him over 53% in offensive-zone starts the last two years. However, that doesn’t mean his defensive impacts are inflated due to that deployment.

Kempe is coming off of a down year in terms of production, but there are signs he will bounce back. He had a career-low shooting percentage last season and shot 4.5 goals below expected at 5 on 5, according to Moneypuck. He’s a player that will likely max out around 15 goals and 35 points.

Anaheim Ducks

Honestly, I have nothing here for the Ducks that are realistic ideas. Rickard Rakell would be awesome, but they’re not moving him.

Vegas Golden Knights

1. Alex Tuch | RW | Age 24 | Six-years, $4.75 million

Tuch is an interesting player. He’s battled injuries throughout his career, but when healthy, he’s been an impact forward. He had a down year during the regular season by scoring only eight goals in 42 games. His offensive impacts this past season were underwhelming as well, but as you’ll see below in Micah McCurdy’s impact, charts it looks like an outlier.

The idea of an outlier season was essentially verified during the playoffs when he was one of the Knights’ best players. He scored eight goals and 12 points in 20 playoff games.

So, why would Vegas make him available? Well, if they plan to go hunting for a big name defenseman like Alex Pietrangelo or Torey Krug, as the rumors have indicated, they’ll need to shed some salary. According to Cap Friendly, they only have $4.9 million in cap space. If they find a taker for Marc-Andre Fleury it’ll free up $7 million in cap space, but it’ll likely cost them an asset or they’ll need to retain salary to get him off the books.

2. Chandler Stephenson | C | Age 26 | RFA (arbitration-eligible)

Stephenson is another player the Sabres could look into if the Knights can’t afford to bring him back. The twins’ contract model projects a contract of three-years with a $2.4 million cap hit. That’s not a restrictive price for the Golden Knights.

Having said that, the price could have gone up after he had a strong playoff performance for them as their third-line center. Stephenson fits the mold of the type of player the Sabres could be looking for as their third-line center. Micah’s impacts have him as an average player essentially, that is responsible defensively, and has above average scoring impacts.

The one thing that you do have take into account here is that quality of teammate improvement could be boosting his impacts and production levels.

That’s it for the team breakdowns in the Western Conference. We’re a week out from the first round of the NHL Draft.