The Buffalo Sabres are on a roll, and a lot of their recent success can be traced back to Jeff Skinner. The talented winger is on pace for 55 goals this season and is an early candidate for steal of the offseason after coming over to Buffalo for the low price of three non-first-round draft picks and prospect Cliff Pu. If the Sabres can convince Skinner to re-sign in Buffalo the trade will look even better, at least if they can get him at a reasonable cap hit. That’s what made the report earlier this month that Skinner was looking for a salary upwards of $9MM per season a little scary, given that the team may not want to commit that much cap space to a player so early into their rebuild.
As we wrote when the report surfaced, the salary figure seemed like an attempt from the Skinner camp to use their early leverage—the kind that they earned from him playing so well this season—to frame upcoming negotiations. It wasn’t clear if the two sides were even talking yet, something we were given more clarity on today. Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic tweets that the two sides haven’t discussed anything but they will get together next month to discuss where Skinner’s future lies. Obviously it’s not clear where exactly that original number came from, but you can bet that the Sabres want to get into a room with their leading goal scorer before making any judgement on whether they’ll be able to fit him in.
Skinner, 26, is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent less than two months after his 27th birthday and would be an attractive option for basically the entire league. Though he obviously wore out his welcome in some way for the Carolina Hurricanes, there was little doubt he could still be an effective scoring option in the NHL. Skinner now has 219 goals through his first 601 NHL games, a rate that puts him just a hair under 30 per season. The fact that he’s scheduled to hit the market at such a relatively young age is extremely appealing for anyone looking to invest heavily in him, hoping that they’ll have four, perhaps five seasons of very good production.
Among those teams interested though will surely be the Sabres, who are experiencing real success for the first time in years. Skinner has been a big part of that, and with other young players still on their way there is lots to look forward to in Buffalo. Jack Eichel’s $10MM cap hit already eats up a lot of their salary structure, but other than that contract they’re relatively free of long-term commitments. There’s work to be done down the road with extensions for Sam Reinhart, Rasmus Dahlin and Casey Mittelstadt, but getting Skinner under extension would give them some cost (and scoring) certainty to build around.