It really isn't. Especially in 2 summers when Dahlin gets his new deal.
So in 2021 you are telling me we will be fine having
Eichel - 10
Skinner - 8-9
RoR - 7.5
Okposo - 6
Reinhart - ~5
Mittelstadt- ~4
40 mil just in 6 forwards. Then Risto at 5.4. Over 50% of the cap (46+ mil) tied up in just 7 players and that is counting zero goalies.
And now our superstar Dman is coming off his ELC. There will be no bridge. If he is what we think he is he is getting 11-12 mil.
So in 2021 we will have
Dahlin- 12
Eichel - 10
Skinner - 8.5
RoR- 7.5
Okposo - 6
Risto - 5.4
Reinhart - 5
Mitts - 4
Over 58 mil tied up in 3 centers, 3 wingers, 2 dmen and zero goalies. The cap will not be more then 92-95 mil in 2021. So somehow we can build and maintain a deep team even though we have less then 40 mil to add another 6 forwards, 4 dmen, 2 goalies and 3 extras. 15 more players needed to be factored in with only 40 or so mil to do it. It cannot work. It's all moot because RoR is not here. Skinner is and is making a far better impact. Good for RoR but short and long term the Buffalo Sabres are better and will be better then St.Louis. Pietrangelo is getting closer to 30 and they have no goaltending. Tarasenko has never taken that next step to super stardom and they have committed $$ to guys like Bozak.
I dont care how bad your goaltending is. If you have a guy on pace for 100 points you should not be the 2nd worst team in the league. Allen is not some atrocious Bob Essensa type. Underachievement follows RoR everywhere the last 5 years.
RoR is a good person and I wish him some modicum of success (after we get our first of course)
Ror is a legit 1C. But he is more in the 15-25 range. A team with RoR as its 1C is not winning a cup plain and simple. He is nearing 30 and he is not someone whose skating is even all that good at 27, so I am curious to see if he can stay producing as a 1C.
Back to somehow fitting RoR and Skinner. Is it technically possible? Sure, there is maybe a way to do it. But you will be relying on other teams to either take Okposo off our hands or us just filling half the roster with ELCs and vet minumums.
I prefer the current makeup. I prefer having a Conor Sheary as my LW2. Having a vet like Berglund on my 3rd line. Having good forwards on all 4 lines.
The current Sabres squad is becoming like 05-06. ROR just cannot mesh with Jack. We had 3 years. It's not a coincidence that once 90 was moved this became Jack's team 100% and he developed into a 2 way star captain. It's just weird how April 2018 player are all gloomy and RoR makes his comments and fast forward 7 months and the entire team is smiling ear to ear saying how they are a family that they look forward to coming to the rink and that they will fight for each other. If there was a locker room split I am glad it's gone and that hopefully the players causing any issues are all gone.
Outside of the O’Reilly nonsense. Yes. That is what I’m telling you.
That’s why math is comforting for some. You can actually plug in the numbers and really get the answers to the questions you ask.
And yes, you can afford to have a moderately top heavy roster, just like many other cup winning teams since the cap, Washington, Pittsburgh to name just the last three winners.
Just like you can afford to still have Sheary level players as your 2lw. All for the difference in value between Sobotka and an elc player, like Erod.
Because here’s the thing, if we trust Botts so much and we love Rochester’s youngsters, then we should trust Botts to fill in a couple spots when his top 9 is filthy at every position.
The cap will be conservatively around 85 in 2021. If at that point players have overachieved a ton, trades could be made then, after clustering as much talent as possible, with only a couple years of O’Reilly to go.
And as you can see with our trade to acquire Sheary, there are always teams willing to take on your meh contracts, for a mid level prospect or player. They just don’t want your huge term, free agent busts.
Now if you want to pretend that RoR stopped Eichel from being a lot better, which he hasn’t been much at all, by playing almost never together except the pp, which was generally pretty good as a unit, then all the power to you, but I’ll stick with adding half a dozen better players to replace some of the bums Botts brought in last year and some well deserved good luck, might have more to do with them winning than the non coincidence of O’Reilly getting dumped by Pegula.
It’s also completely okay to say that Botts did enough and got amazing luck to snag Dahlin to improve the team even with the loss of O’Reilly for quantity.
But if Thompson plays like he did tonight, I might be ready to say the trade worked out better than hoped for initially just on him.
