The period with which teams are able to sign unrestricted free agents begins July 1st. ESPN put together a pretty good list of the marquee players (forwards , defensemen , goaltenders ) that are soon to become unrestricted free agents.
As for the Sabres, they have about 10.526 million dollars in cap space to work with on their 2009-2010 payroll (according to nhlnumbers.com ). Pat Kaleta, Drew Stafford, Clark MacArthur, Mark Mancari and Andrej Sekera are restricted free agents. If history is any indication, the Sabres will be offering contracts to all of them. In addition, the Sabres have to decide whether or not they want to consider resigning Jaroslav Spacek, Andrew Peters, or Chris Ellis. All of which are unrestricted and free to sign with another team in a couple of days.
Once the Sabres sort through their free agents, I think the team’s cap number will be somewhere around 51-52 million dollars with Andrew Peters being the only one of the unrestricted players resigning with the Sabres. Considering the Sabres had a 50.6 million salary cap figure in 2008-2009 and given the current economic climate, I think it’s safe to say they will be close to that figure again in 2009-2010. So that doesn’t leave a lot of flexibility for the Sabres when it comes to potentially signing an unrestricted free agent.
Given that the Sabres are not widely considered a championship caliber team, signing an average free agent doesn’t really do a whole lot for the team except cause some salary cap headaches in the future. Take Jaro, for example. I think Spacek is a decent player. He can fill a need on a contending team. You know what you’re getting with Spacek because he’s a veteran. But he made 3.3 million dollars last year and he’s probably going to command a contract that pays him somewhere around 2.5-3.0 million per season. The Sabres are foolish to pay that kind of money for an average player like Spacek but then again they continued to dish out one-year contracts for Teppo Numinen year after year. I feel that unless the UFA or potential UFA is a crucial leader or a legitimate star, he’s expendable and not a very wise player to invest in, long term.
The Sabres dirty little secret is the fact that they currently have a boat load of money committed to their best players. Heading into next year, the Sabres have seven players with salary cap numbers of 3.5 million dollars or higher. Seven!
I think it’s pretty clear that trading players is the best option for the franchise at this time. If trades are the route the Sabres take to improve their team, they can either trade players for players of equal value or trade players for draft picks with only the objective to clear cap space. Darcy Regier is one of the best in the league at trading player for player. You don’t have to take my word for it, just look at the history. I have a ton of faith in Regier in this department. But those kinds of trades have become more and more difficult to accomplish in the salary cap era.
If the Sabres should decide to just clear cap space, they fortunately have some pretty talented prospects that have the ability to fill in the void. Guys like Mike Weber and Tim Kennedy, in particular, can step in and contribute while not costing the Sabres much. If the Sabres dump salary though, it should only be done so that a target free agent can fit under the budget.
Most would agree that last years team had too much dead weight. The question is whether or not Regier is willing to move some of the veteran players for less than equal return value. Actually it’s not even a question. The Sabres, under the stewardship of Darcy Regier, have never been a team that’s known to agree to a trade in which the return is of less than equal value. The Sabres have always looked at their struggling veterans with steadfast optimism. Take Jochen Hecht, for example, who is coming off a bad year. His trade value is low. I think Regier will want to keep Hecht because odds are he’s going to have a better year than the year prior and the value they would get in return from a potential trade is too low.
It’s the same old rhetoric from the Sabres; they’ll insist that Hecht is a good player and that’s why he’s on the roster but fans don’t want to hear that. Everyone knows that by moving Hecht, they create options for bringing in players that can help the Sabres take the next step forward. The Regier is too concerned with getting value from the players they have under contract. After having a few good players leave the team during the free agency period with no value in return, that thinking seemed to have intensified. The fact that Maxim Afinogenov was on the Sabres roster in 2008-2009 is testament to that.
It’s too bad that the Sabres insist on maintaining such a conservative approach to improving their roster because they will have trouble moving in a positive direction when there are so many underachieving, expensive veterans on the roster. But more than that is the fact that those players are inhibiting the Sabres from pursuing a UFA that would add another dimension to the team. Clearly, the Sabres need more toughness and better leadership but they will not be able to add a player like that this summer unless the team decides to dump some of their players with big salary cap figures.
The Sabres should be trying to figure out who they want to go after and then take the necessary steps to make that happen. Almost everyone is expendable; the goal is making the team better. I thought Cory Sarich would have been a good fit in Buffalo when he was a free agent in the summer of ’07 and I liked Brooks Orpik as a potential signee last summer. Now, I’d be happy if the Sabres pursued Francois Beauchemin because he would make them a more balanced and competitive team.
But if I were to make a bet, I’d bet that the Sabres once again refuse to accept less than equal value for their players and consequently are unwilling to meet the financial demands of their target unrestricted free agents.