The Buffalo Sabres only made one trade yesterday on trade deadline day. Evander Kane was moved to the San Jose Sharks for a couple of draft picks and prospect Danny O’Regan.
A few Staff Writers from Die By The Blade got together to share their thoughts on the day.
Calvin
I’m not thrilled by what we got back for Kane yesterday, and how the rest of the day went, but I’m not ready to call GMBot a failure over one day either.
This team was never getting rebuilt in one season, but failing to make any moves to better the roster for at least another season or two also doesn’t really make sense.
For Botterill’s sake, he’d better have an excellent free agency because another season of this putrid hockey is going to cause large-scale rioting downtown, and not the good Philly kind either.
Until then though, let the General Manager do his job without second-, third- and fourth-guessing everything he does (and doesn’t do).
Ryan Wolfe
Jason Botterill was gifted a disaster of an organizational roster upon his hiring. Botterill knew what he got himself into at the time but this appears a little more dire than expected for the first-year general manager.
This trade deadline showed us that Botterill has his work cut out for him. I mean, who wants to acquire players who were playing poorly for a bad team? Evander Kane’s calling card to Southern California was his ability to score goals.
No general manager was kicking the door down to acquire Josh Gorges’ lack of general speed or Benoit Pouliot’s disappearing act. While some of the blame falls on Botterill, patience, unfortunately, is still necessary.
Melissa Burgess
The Sabres’ trade deadline day fell below my expectations, but… it’s not the end of the world. The market dropped on Kane and honestly, I’m just glad Botterill was able to get SOMETHING for him rather than let him walk at the end of the season and have nothing to show for it.
I really thought some other pieces would get moved – Pouliot, Gorges, maybe even Lehner – but it’s not fatal. It’s not as if moving those pieces now would save the Sabres’ season, and yes, it stinks to lose them in July for nothing, but it is what it is.
People will blame GMJB, but there’s only so much he can do… if the market isn’t biting, he isn’t going to make a trade JUST to make a trade. You’ll see folks chewing him out for not trading these guys, but then if he did trade them for pennies (picks, non-roster players, etc)., they’d complain too. You can’t win. That being said, he’s got a lot of work to do in the offseason to get this team even close to being a contender.
Chad DeDominicis
I won’t get into it again if you read my article last night. I’ll just post a link here if you haven’t and you can catch my thoughts on the day there.