NHL rumor mill: Elliotte Friedman on Sportsnet on Buffalo Sabers pending UFA forward Alex Tuch: “They weren’t anywhere near where Tuch was looking at his market value – about $10.5M; Adams feels that if he goes that far, it will prevent him from doing other things; I believe two of those things were (Zach) Benson and (Josh) Doan’s extensions.”
The Daily Faceoff: David Pagnotta to the Buffalo Sabres, and how aggressive will newly named GM Jarmo Kekalainen be?
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Carter Hutton: “And I think about that with the Buffalo Sabers and Jarmo Kekalainen. He’s been around enough to get a feel for who these players are and what he’s got. How long will it take us to see him get to know him, like, what’s his first step in Buffalo here as he takes over?”
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Pagnotta: “Yeah, you know what? That’s a good point, because this is not a guy who’s coming in fresh. He came in, in the summer. He’s already adapted. He’s learned well within the organization, the roster, the prospect pool, the (AHL) everything they have in the system, and the staff off the ice.
So this is not a matter of him coming in and now he has to spend whatever the next, six, eight weeks to evaluate his team. He has done that. He lived on the ground floor, and he was crossing the league. I’ve seen him in Toronto in the crowd. He went through different parts of the conference, trying to get a good handle on what the other teams there looked like. Not just from, from an evaluation point of view, per se, but also to see what options might be available to him later.
It sounds like the first number one is Alex Tuch. Find out what this runway looks like. Is there a way to an agreement? And by all accounts, and we touched on this earlier in the season, I mean, my indication was that you’re looking at eight figures in AAV. So somewhere in that $10 million to $11 million range. Is Buffalo comfortable doing that?
It doesn’t sound like that was the case when Kevyn Adams led those conversations. Has anything changed, and has anything changed with Jarmo? That’s what he and Brian Bartlett, Alex Tuch’s agent, will have to find out. And then, once that’s determined one way or the other, then it moves on to, you know, the kind of boxes that they’re going to have to check. And he said that in his introductory press conference.
Scoring, you want to get down to two once (Colton) Ellis is healthy. They should understand that. Are there other areas of his team that other teams have had conversations with Adams before, about guys like Bowen Byron, Owen Power, other players on the team, Jordan Greenway, etc. Will those now be governed differently with Jarmo leading those, those discussions?
So there is a lot to cover here. But you know, based on what he said, he wants to get things moving quickly. The first is to consider Alex Tuch and from there check some of those boxes. But this is expected to be an aggressive approach.
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I know there is a lot of speculation about Lindy Ruff’s future. He is in the final year of his contract. He is the only head coach, as far as I know, with an expiring contract. They don’t have to make that kind of move in the season. They can wait things out and just see how the season plays out as Jarmo makes those roster changes.
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