Buffalo Sabres open for business
John Vogl of The Athletic: A massive effort expects to take place with the Buffalo Sabres in the next couple of weeks. Any pending unrestricted free agent and more may just get traded between now and then. Buffalo will have to eat a lot of salary cap, if necessary, to facilitate deals.
Players like Riley Sheahan, Tobias Rieder, Taylor Hall, and Brandon Montour among others will be heavily involved in rumors. Kevyn Adams will be on the phone frequently. Buffalo can retain cap money in two more deals. One of those appears to be an impending Taylor Hall deal.
Buffalo wants cap relief and with the next wave of trades, that relief is coming.
Vancouver Canucks and the expansion draft plus more
Harman Dayal and Thomas Drance of The Athletic: The expansion draft is literally an “asset harvest event”. For teams like the Vancouver Canucks, it is about minimizing losses. There is a noon deadline pacific time (3:00 PM ET) on July 17th that teams will have to meet. Four days later, the Seattle Kraken will reveal their roster.
George McPhee took over the market and closed the market off. That resulted in a huge collection of assets. If Vancouver plays as a safe harbor, they can take advantage of the said market.
Players like Travis Dermott, Cam Fowler, and even Ryan Graves could be available. Teams like Toronto and Colorado will have delicate operations ahead to keep players. That means players will be exposed that likely should not be. Colorado could try and convince Erik Johnson to waive his no-move clause. That would help.
Caleb Jones of the Edmonton Oilers is another cheap defenseman that is a victim of depth. Again. the amount of defensemen that will be unprotected is unprecedented. The fact that Jake Bean and Haydn Fleury could be dangled is amazing. Even Rasmus Andersson from Calgary may be available but his $4.55 million cap hit means a substantial package would be needed to pry him away.