This morning the Sabres announced a rather interesting roster move, sending Luke Adam, Mark Pysyk, and Brayden McNabb back to Rocheser while calling up Kevin Porter and Chad Ruhwedel. Nolan’s impatience with the young talent of this team may show in this move although he seems to replacing youth with slightly older youth.
Adam was lighting things up with the Amerks, scoring 13 goals in 15 games, before moving up to the Sabres. At the NHL level he struggled to keep that scoring going while only registering 1 goal in a 9 game stint. It’s hard to say he wasn’t playing poorly, but more offense was expected from the once-red-hot forward.
The defensemen have equally depressing NHL stats. Pysyk has played 31 of the 33 games this season with 4 assists and a -11 rating. McNabb has only been in the lineup for 5 games and has yet to register a point although he does have an even +/-.
Nolan did say that Pysyk will be back in Buffalo once Rochester competes in the Spengler Cup, but it looks like Adam and McNabb will spend most of the rest of this season in the minors.
The call-ups have been doing well in the AHL thus far. Porter, since being assigned to Rochester back in October, has 10 points in 13 games and Ruhwedel has 14 points in 26 games. Of course, as we’ve seen before AHL talent doesn’t always equate to NHL talent.
Porter does have a decent amount of NHL experience playing in a total of 203 games with 54 points over the span of his career. This will be the first time Ruhwedel has been in a Sabres sweater this season but he did play in 7 games last year with 0 points to show for it.
Interesting moves for sure. Adam, Pysyk, and McNabb haven’t exactly been the brightest spots on a rather dim Sabres roster but it’s hard to see where Nolan is going with the new call-ups. Perhaps he is becoming a bit more flexible with the development of the younger players and looking to give a couple more young guys a shot. Either that or he is throwing darts a wall full of Sabres prospects deciding who gets to play for the big team.