Buffalo Sabres sign Jeff Skinner to an expensive extension

The Buffalo Sabres and Jeff Skinner have reached a deal for Skinner to stay in Buffalo for the next eight years, and while the price to keep him was steep, they didn’t really have a choice.

Buffalo Sabres fans can finally exhale, because it might finally feel like their team is taking steps towards building a core after years of endlessly rebuilding, but it came at a very expensive cost and not without a lot of risk.

The Buffalo Sabres have signed left winger Jeff Skinner to an 8 year contract extension worth $72M, with a cap hit of $9M and a full no movement clause for the entirety of the contract. Skinner was set to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

TSN Bob’s McKenzie broke the news first early Friday night, before the Sabres themselves confirmed the reports just a short time later, much to the joy of Sabres fans who have been clamoring for his extension for months.

Skinner won the Calder Trophy as the league’s best rookie in 2011 after being drafted 7th overall in 2010, and has been named an NHL All-Star twice in his career (2011, 2019).

Skinner set a career high with 40 goals this season, 32 of which came at even strength, and matched a career high with 63 points in 82 games. He was acquired by the Sabres after a trade with the Carolina Hurricanes for forward prospect Cliff Pu and three middling draft picks last offseason, and proved to be a natural fit with the team, scoring ten goals in the Sabres ten game win streak in November, but fell off towards the end of the season with one goal in 22 games.

Even with Skinner’s contributions for most of the season, the Sabres finished 13th in the Eastern Conference with just 76 points, becoming the second team in NHL history to miss the playoffs after going on a ten game winning streak. This led to the firing of head coach Phil Housley, and hiring of new head coach Ralph Krueger. Buffalo has missed the postseason for eight consecutive seasons, the longest active drought in the NHL.

With the $9M a year contract, Skinner becomes the 14th highest paid forward in the NHL, surpassing Sidney Crosby’s $8.7M. According the Capfriendly, the most similar comparables to Skinner’s contract are Tyler Seguin, Logan Couture, Jakub Voracek, and Jamie Benn.

It’s an expensive price to pay for a forward who has never hit 70 points in his career and had a career high shooting percentage of 14.9% during a contract year, but the Sabres didn’t really have a choice. If Skinner were to walk for nothing, who was the next guy going to be? What big name free agent would be willing to sign with a team in a never ending rebuild? What would the message to the fans be? The Sabres had to re-sign Skinner, because at some point, steps need to be taken to end their eight year playoff drought. Despite Skinner’s inconsistency and history of concusssions, it’s a risk the Sabres had to take.

Over the last five seasons, Jeff Skinner has been sixth in the league at even strength scoring with 105 five on five goals, ahead of Tyler Seguin and Sidney Crosby. While his two way play may leave a lot to be desired, that kind of production cannot be replaced in free agency or without paying an exorbitant cost in a trade.

Now that the deal is done, the Sabres need to keep building a team around Jack Eichel, Skinner, and Rasmus Dahlin and continue to find secondary scoring. They have their new coach in Krueger, and got Skinner locked for as long as they could. They need to make some more splash moves in either free agency or on the trade market, because it is time for them to start building a contender.

For Skinner, he needs to prove that he is worth that kind of superstar money, because this contract can go south fast if he can’t produce the way the Sabres are expecting him to alongside Eichel. Hovering around 40 goals a season is a must for Skinner as he enters his prime, and needs to find some consistency in order to make the contract worth it.

Regardless of the price tag, the important thing here is that for the first time in what feels like ages, the Buffalo Sabres are putting a core group of players together. Yes the team still has a lot of work today before they can be considered contenders, but it’s a start, and finally there’s something that they can build around. Buffalo is a fantastic hockey town, and deserves a contending team after years of waiting.