3 trades the Buffalo Sabres need to make this offseason

Here are 3 trades the Buffalo Sabres should make this offseason to become playoff contenders.

The Buffalo Sabres missed out on the NHL’s 24-team playoff expansion, and pushed their playoff drought to a ninth consecutive season, the longest in the league. The great Sabres fanbase, and more importantly Jack Eichel, are getting sick of the constant losing. Something needs to be done to get this team back to the postseason, and there’s no better time than this offseason to build a team that can get back there.

The Sabres are in quite a bizarre spot entering next season. The team is a complete mess, and poor management has made it even worse recently. They have their franchise cornerstones in place with Eichel entering his prime and Rasmus Dahlin still on his rookie contract, so tearing it down isn’t necessary. Their prospect pool is weak for a team that’s had high draft picks for nine straight years, but they still have some pieces to work with.

Even though Jason Botterill has inexplicably been brought back to clean up his own mess in Buffalo, there is still room for optimism amidst all the negativity surrounding the team, because there is an opportunity here for some significant changes to the roster should they elect to take it.

The Sabres have 15 contracts on the main roster expiring this offseason. That not only clears up several roster spots, but they’ll also have a ton of salary cap space while a lot of other teams will be struggling with having their plans upended by a potentially flat salary cap due to the season pause. They have the space and leverage to do just about anything they want on both the trade market and free agency. Whether they choose to build for the future or for now, the Sabres need to pick a path and commit to it.

After nine years of coming nowhere close to the playoffs, the focus should be on building a team around Eichel and Dahlin that can get there soon. Here are three trades that the Sabres should make this offseason in order to make progress towards no longer being the laughing stock of the NHL and finally being a real threat for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

Buffalo Sabres: Trade away Rasmus Ristolainen

Trading Rasmus Ristolainen is long overdue for the Sabres, both for the teams sake and his own. He’s asked for a trade several times in the past, and it’s time for the Sabres to grant him that wish and move on.

Ristolainen was drafted eighth overall by the Sabres in the 2013 NHL Draft, and made his debut the following season as an 18-year-old. By 20, Ristolainen was already a 40-point defenseman and billed as a future core player for the Sabres. His underlying defensive analytics were horrific and among some of the worst in the league, but as long as he continued to develop, the best was still to come. Five years later however, that growth has still not come to pass.

Ristolainen has always been able to put up steady point production, but his defensive play and consistency is all over the place. His defensive analytics are consistently the worst on not just the team, but in the entire league. Among all defensemen since 2018, Ristolainen has been 11th worst in shots against, 17th worst in Corsi against, and 4th worst in expected goals percentage, according to Natural Stat Trick. For an supposed offensive defenseman, his offensive analytics are even worse. He ranks worst in the league in expected goals for, second worst in Corsi for, and bottom ten in every other measurable offensive metric.

At 25-years-old now, Ristolainen still has some room to grow but at this point the Sabres know exactly what kind of player he is after having him for almost seven years. Continuing to jam the square peg in the round hole is not going to suddenly start working, and it’s unreasonable to expect him to suddenly fit into the role that was forced upon him years ago.

Moving Ristolainen opens up space on the right defense for the Sabres, as well allow them to play everybody on their proper sides and run a right side of Brandon Montour, Colin Miller, and Henri Jokiharju. With the additional cap space that would be freed up, there would be no issue for Buffalo to dip into the free agent/trade market and acquire a solid left handed shot to play beneath Dahlin and Jake McCabe.

It’s not fair to just rip on Ristolainen for his situation, because it’s not entirely his fault. Ever since being drafted, he’s been surrounded by nothing but failure with the Sabres and had unrealistic expectations placed upon him by being given the responsibilities of a top defenseman. It’s just not the right role for him to lead a team in ice time and play 22 minutes a game. At very least he needs another defenseman that can take the pressure off him, but Buffalo has never provided him anything close to that in his entire tenure.

Ristolainen has recently expressed his discontent with constantly losing, stating in his end of season press conference that “I’ve been in Buffalo for seven years, and I’ve been losing every single year. It’s tough, and I hope we’re done.” He also stated that if changes are made to the team, he knows he’ll one of the first ones to be traded.

This is a player that needs a change of scenery, badly. Putting Ristolainen on a team where he doesn’t have to play over 20 minutes a game and hasn’t been mired in losing for the past decade could probably do wonders for his confidence by allowing him to play to his strengths and thrive.

Despite Botterill and head coach Ralph Krueger expressing that they feel Ristolainen is still a “core player” it really is time for both sides to move on. Ristolainen is not a top pair defenseman, and it’s not going to get better the more they keep trying to force him to be. The only way to make this work is to acquire another defenseman that can push Ristolainen down the lineup, or move on from him while he still has some value.