WGR 550: Darren Dreger on The Instigators radio show on Friday on what he’s hearing involving the Buffalo Sabres and if things are quiet.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
“Yeah, it’s not quiet, but I don’t want to either deflate the hopes or raise the hopes of those who are hoping there is going to be a tremendous amount of activity. I think it’s a safe prediction that Kevyn Adams and the Buffalo Sabres are going to make aggressive moves.
Is it one big one involving the captain Jack Eichel? Probably not. There’s probably a couple of players who are going to be involved. But there is also no definitive timeline. We look at the draft as a trigger date, July 23rd – 24th. Historically speaking that is a breading ground for the bigger type of trades.
The Stanley Cup have been awarded, through the July 21st expansion draft. You’ve got free agency looming on July 28th. So there is a lot of reasons why general managers and clubs have more flexibility even though next year will again be a flat cap.
But I feel like Kevyn Adams has had the majority of his conversations. He doesn’t need to talk to another general manager to explore the interest in Jack Eichel. The teams with interest have expressed their interest, and now you’re at that stage where it’s probably working towards a framework of what a trade would look like, and the elements of that the Buffalo Sabres need to come back.
I don’t know if you’d get into the deep specifics where I need player ‘x’ and I need this, and I need this. I mean it’s going to be fairly obvious, isn’t it? I mean the Sabres have the first pick overall. So they are going to be looking for at least another first-round draft pick, and if a team doesn’t possess a high first-round draft pick, then your prospect gets juicier. The young roster player that’s coming back the other way as part of the package gets increasingly interesting as well.
So what you’ve got to be careful here Petey, and you and I swapped a text earlier this morning about this, is there is so much speculation around the stories of the Buffalo Sabres because of the players involved. When you’re talking about a star player like Jack Eichel, regardless of the injury situation and all that that hasn’t been completely ironed out, every media member in their market is going to devise a plan or an idea as to why their team should go after Jack Eichel.
So you have to be careful in separating fact from fiction. And we talked about the idea of the Columbus Blue Jackets are out of it. Right. They are no longer in on Jack Eichel. I don’t buy it. To be fair, I don’t buy it. The reason I don’t buy it is it’s so early and that’s not the MO of Jarmo Kekalainen. He may not like what Kevyn Adams is telling him right now. Whatever the pieces that could or would have to be included in making a deal very soon, Jarmo may not like. But he needs a center, right? He told Patrik Laine before the end of the season that top priority was to get Patrik Laine a top center. Well, there aren’t that many available I can assure you of that, and there are none available that as good, as capable as a healthy Jack Eichel. How can you be out at this stage?”
Martin Biron brings up teams that need a center. Columbus does but maybe they don’t have the pieces, maybe they can make it work. The Vegas Golden Knights are a team that needs a center, they don’t have a top center. Biron asks Dreger’s thoughts about Vegas.
“I would be surprised if McCrimmon, Kelly McCrimmon the general manager of the Golden Knights hasn’t already had a conversation with Kevyn. If Vegas had won and forcing a Game 7, that’s just part of doing your due diligence and doing your job as a general manager and Kelly is a smart guy. He sees the same things as the rest of us see, and when you look at the Vegas Golden Knights up the middle, you’ve identified their cast of center and it’s not strong enough. It’s not strong enough.
You know Chandler Stephenson is probably underrated by those who don’t watch the Vegas Golden Knights closely, and we had Max Pacioretty on the podcast maybe six weeks or so ago, and he openly talked about how good Chandler Stephenson is. But, is he a two or three on a really good team? A team that has depth at center? Probably, he’s not likely a No. 1 with all due respect.
So I can’t imagine that McCrimmon and the Vegas Golden Knights won’t explore this because they look at everything. The reason they acquired Robin Lehner in the first place was because they had long-term concerns about the wear and tear on the toll that would take on Marc-Andre Fleury. They didn’t want to get to a Stanley Cup Final and have Fleury run out of gas or to be injured. So they acquire Robin Lehner and you’ve got the 1 and the 1A, and we can debate the 1 is and who the 1A is just depending on how things go. But that is just my example of an organization that has identified a weakness or need or an opportunity right?
Alex Pietrangelo was an opportunity for the Vegas Golden Knights. He wasn’t a necessity. They just felt like, if we can bolster our blue line, why wouldn’t be go after the most coveted unrestricted free agent defenseman available, and they acquired that piece.
So I get it. I can see what ‘Ribs’ in on and it makes a lot of sense to me. Marty, you’re bang on. I mean the Vegas Golden Knights have the pieces to make something like that to happen. And Bill Foley, the owner of the Vegas Golden Knights is an impatient dude. I mean he’s in his mid-70’s. He wants to win a Stanley Cup as much or more than most of the owners across the National Hockey League who haven’t had the luxury of doing so.
So Vegas for sure needs to be in that conversation regardless of somebody coming out and saying, ‘source says this.’ I mean common sense tells us Vegas will make that call.”