Making a solid addition to the team’s bottom six — Chris Johnston of TSN reports the Buffalo Sabres are expected to sign forward Sam Lafferty. Per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the contract will be a two-year, $4MM contract between Lafferty and Buffalo.
Buffalo has also signed forward Joshua Dunne to a two-year contract, per Andy Strickland (Twitter link). Strickland adds that the deal will be one-way in the second year. They’ve also added goalie Felix Sandström on a two-way deal, per TSN’s Darren Dreger.
Heading into the offseason, the Sabres were looking to upgrade the team’s bottom-six and the signing of Lafferty does just that. Lafferty followed up a 2022-23 season split between the Chicago Blackhawks and Toronto Maple Leafs which saw him score 12 goals and 27 points in 70 games with 13 goals and 24 points in 79 games with the Vancouver Canucks this past season. On the defensive side of the puck, Lafferty has put up 92.9% and 91.3% on-ice save percentages in the last two years, respectively. The only criticism of Lafferty’s game may be his work in the dot as he only mustered 150 faceoff wins in 356 attempts for the Canucks last year.
Aside from Lafferty, Dunne and Sandstrom will likely start the year for the Sabres AHL affiliate, the Rochester Americans. Dunne is coming off a disappointing regular season with the Cleveland Monsters of the AHL as he scored two goals and seven points in 25 games. While finding consistency after an injury is always difficult, Dunne performed well for the Monsters in the 2024 Calder Cup playoffs scoring seven goals and 11 points in 14 postseason contests.
Sandstrom represents a solid addition to organizational depth at the goaltender position. Although Buffalo will hope Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Devon Levi will receive the majority of starts next season, Sandstrom has plenty of experience as a backup at the NHL level. Two years ago, Sandstrom spent the year as a backup for the Philadelphia Flyers as he posted a 3-12-3 record in 18 starts while earning a .880 save percentage and 3.72 goals against average.
Lafferty would have been a nice bottom 6 addition and depth piece for the Hawks. But you can’t have everything I guess. Good for Sam. He’s under rated all the time.
We need top six and while Lafferty is a good fourth liner we have plenty of those. Toffoli signs with San Jose over Buffalo should tell you all you need to know about really good players coming to the Sabres. San Jose is horrible.
Adams has made the Sabres into the place players go to end their careers.
He’s also fantastic on the PK.
Whatever. Sabres will surprise people this upcoming season.
Lmfao! This whole thing has blown up in Adam’s face and this HAS TO BE THE FINAL NAIL in the coffin for him! He gotta go!
And replace him with who exactly? Not only do players not want to come here, it sure seems like execs and coaches are hesitant as well. We’ve been riding this train for a decade and a half, let’s stick with one conductor until they either derail or arrive. We clearly aren’t at either point yet.
Oh please. With Lafferty, Zucker & the forward from Washington Buffalo has improved their bottom 6 for next season. All for under $10 million.
It’s not flashy so gmka won’t get any flowers but they are certainly good moves
Good moves for the bottom six and Rochester and I have always liked Zucker and Lafferty. But having said that, the fact is that this team will not make the playoffs unless they add to the top six. I hope KA is going to make a trade or two because this free agency period is obviously being used to address the bottom half of the roster.
Top 6?
Already in the top 6 are Tage, Cozens, Tuch, Quinn & Peterka.
Benson, Kulich & Rosen are 3 younger players on the team or in the system. Adding Lafferty & Zucker adds to the 3rd line.
I agree that Tage, Cousins, Tuch, Quinn and Peterka can and should play top six minutes. Having said that why not use our surplus of young forwards excluding: Benson and acquire a proven veteran top six forward? Our young defense if fine and with Ruff in charge I expect for physicality. Drafting young players serves two purposes: building a team and trade material. I will say this the Sabres are going to be much harder to play against with these signings they all like to body check something we lacked recently.
What if Benson scores 20+ & the veteran gets hurt? Also if the veteran is signed beyond next season at a cap hit of $4+mil per the team is stuck with a higher priced asset with lower trade value.
Dahlin, Byrum & Power all can score double-digit in goals (I expect all 3 to total 40+ next season).