Free Agency and the Sabres

Okay, so free agency begins tomorrow, and the Sabres are poised to…watch, as usual. Buffalo almost never moves on day 1, and Darcy has stated he’s more likely to work some trades as he doesn’t like the free agent pricing. I don’t honestly blame him – how many of these big day 1 signings have made a huge difference? – but it takes some of the fun out of it. Mirtle has his three big board posts highlighting the free agent forwards, defensemen and goalies. We’ll ignore the goalies, as I don’t the Miller/Lalime tandem changing, with Enroth still waiting in the wings.

Looking at the other two lists, I’m not seeing a lot that would make me jump out of my seat. I’d be happy with Pahlsson, or maybe Mikael Samuelsson from Detroit…John Madden is an idea, if you go defensive-minded. But really, after the big names the Sabres will never sign, the Forwards list is a bunch of guys like what they already have. How many guys are better than Kotalik, who’s an option, just as an example?

On defense, much depends on whether or not Darcy finds a trade partner to take Tallinder or Lydman or whoever off his hands, if he even really wants to do that. The team has a lot of defenders right now:

Rivet – Butler
Tallinder – Lydman
Paetsch/Weber – Sekera(RFA)

Add to that Tyler Myers, who will do his best play his way in during the ~10 games he’s here before he’d have to go back to Kelowna. That’s a lot of bodies at the very least, and you’d have to think 1 or 2 of them would need to go for them to bring somebody in. And again, other than the big/too expensive names out there, who’s better than just bringing back Jaro? Scuderi? So basically, we’re left hoping Darcy can fleece someone in a deal.