Even though the Buffalo Sabres signed some much-needed defensemen as the off-season started, they now face a problem: having too many of them. With the signing of Erik Johnson and Connor Clifton, they now have nine defensemen on their active roster and twenty-four players.
Those two signings make sense, as the team has struggled with their defense depth for some time. However, Don Granato and their coaching staff have a few hard decisions to make as the new season approaches. There are a few reasonable options to send down to the AHL or trade entirely. One of them is an obvious choice, as The Buffalo News’ Lance Lysowski commented on earlier in the week.
Jacob Bryson played 59 games last year, most of those paired with Ilya Lyubushkin. He missed six games with injuries and was healthy scratched for 17 throughout the year. His stats don’t make his case any better. In the games he did play, his advanced metrics are not the best. In addition to being scratched a lot, Bryson averaged less than 15 minutes a night – weak minutes, even for a bottom-pairing defender. On a team that needed their defense to step up, Granato didn’t seem too impressed with the 25-year-old, and neither were most Sabres fans.
When compared with his fellow defensemen, it becomes clear that Bryson is the best option to leave out. Mattias Samuelsson will be healthy to start the year, Clifton and Johnson were signed to help in the back end, Power and Dahlin are set to take another step forward, and there isn’t much space to be average among a quickly growing Sabres core.
Another player that the Sabres could consider sending down or trying to trade is Henri Jokiharju, who also didn’t have a great season in 2022-23. His advanced metrics were slightly better than Bryson’s, and Granato played him in the top four with Power for the majority of the season. The pairing didn’t pass with flying colors, though, and it’s likely a driving reason why they signed Clifton. With that said, Jokiharju did play over 20 minutes a night – something Clifton hasn’t done to date with the Bruins, and there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to replicate his strong play from last year with increased responsibility.
The team could also look to waive Riley Stillman, who has one year left at a $1.35MM cap hit and is, from a financial standpoint, the easiest player to cut ties with. His cap hit is just $200K over the buriable threshold, which is what he would cost against the cap if assigned to the minors. The team parted with a quality prospect in Josh Bloom to acquire him from the Vancouver Canucks last season, however, and he did hold his own defensively in Buffalo’s environment. He does carry a rather limited offensive upside, but he may be a more ideal seventh (or eighth) defenseman candidate than others mentioned in this piece.
With last season’s arrival of Owen Power and the signing of Lyubushkin, Bryson needed to impress to keep his job, and he failed to do so. Now, the team has signed substitutes for him, and he has become replaceable. Likely, the stars need to align for him to get a spot on the team when the new season starts.
(shrugs) *I* could play twenty minutes a night in the NHL, and I’m in my sixties, and a former goaltender who hasn’t been on skates in decades.
No, of course I wouldn’t be any good, and likely I’d spend most of my time twitching feebly and wishing for death, which my incensed teammates and the fans would be eager to deal out. But these are all professional athletes in peak condition, and there is no reason under the sun why they’re incapable of playing twenty minutes a night. That Jokiharju had a strong workload says nothing more about him than that the Sabres didn’t have anyone better to put on the ice for those minutes.
Bryson is expendable and Erik Johnson won’t stay healthy, Stillman is a trainwreck, Clague is a minor leaguer, If I can figure this out in just a few minutes than certainly Sabres management can do the same, Your welcome.
Good comment, Stillman IS a train wreck. He has only played 143 games in 5 yrs before he came to the Sabres
In 2022-23 the Sabres faired very poorly defensively – based on stats – to the NHL. They were an extremely young team with gifted talent at the F ranks. Their offense – again based on a statistical focus – was borderline elite.
The easiest response is to “fix the D”. Certainly that’s part of the team’s to-do requirements. But it’s not that simple. The Sabres have supreme talent on D, with 2 #1 o/a picks and a 2nd that looks like a draft steal. D, of course, is notorious for needing a longer developmental curve compared to the F’s.
Part of the emphasis must be placed on the F’s playing a more 200 foot game. Getting the entire team in a better position to not lose turnovers will help more than any one new player plugged into the roster. Of course adding the 3rd former #1 o/a and an effective Clifton should help.
But the most important steps will be having the entire roster mature another year, and a greater emphasis on team defense.
Clifton should be on this defense core..could be a surprise if given opportunity
At the rock bottom he’s an excellent bottom pairing defenseman, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he turned out to be a capable middle-pairing shutdown guy. The Bruins are going to miss him.
He could also step in on PP if one of the stars go down…