Can the Wild Find Goals from the Buffalo Sabres roster?
The Minnesota Wild are looking for goals or, more to the point, players who score goals. We already covered the Wild’s roster in the first part of this 31-part series! You can see other parts here: Chasing Goals on…
Minnesota Wild | Anaheim Ducks | Arizona Coyotes | Boston Bruins
Buffalo Sabres | Calgary Flames | Carolina Hurricanes | Chicago Blackhawks
Colorado Avalanche | Columbus Blue Jackets Dallas Stars | Detroit Red Wings
Edmonton Oilers | Florida Panthers | Los Angeles Kings | Montreal Canadiens
Nashville Predators | New Jersey Devils | New York Islanders | New York Rangers
Ottawa Senators | Philadelphia Flyers | Pittsburgh Penguins | San Jose Sharks
St. Louis Blues | Tampa Bay Lightning | Toronto Maple Leafs | Vancouver Canucks
Vegas Golden Knights | Washington Capitals | Winnipeg Jets
One of the problems with “Chasing Goals” is every team is trying to do the same thing. No team wants to give up a goal-scorer when they find one so this is no easy task for the Minnesota Wild and General Manager Paul Fenton. That being said, we are going to point out some options available to the Wild on each NHL team and the only limit we’re going to put on those options is they have to be able to help the Wild score goals next season so they have to already be playing or, at least, played some games in the NHL.
We may point out some prospects that look like they could help but it’s very difficult to judge what a player can do in the NHL based on stats from even the AHL let alone NCAA Hockey & the Canadian Junior Hockey Leagues. The Foreign leagues are usually even more difficult to judge because they are top professional leagues and the prospects are usually not playing top line minutes so their stats reflect that.
Next up is….the Buffalo Sabres.
The Buffalo Sabres are coming off a weird season. They went 11-3-1 in the month of November and that included a stretch where they went 11-1 in 12 consecutive games. They were 17-6-2 after the first 25 games on the season but they went 16-33-8 in their final 57 games and missed the playoffs. Phil Housley was fired as the head coach after the season.
Here’s a team that’s built through the draft and they’ve been blessed with some high picks in F Jack Eichel and D Rasmus Dahlin but they haven’t been able to break through to the postseason and go on a run. They’ll add another high pick (7th) in the coming NHL Draft. They also have St. Louis’ first-round pick (#30/31) from the Ryan O’Reilly trade.
It makes you wonder what they could’ve done had they not traded F Ryan O’Reilly who is currently set to play for the Cup in Game 7 on Wednesday night and who has also been a huge reason why the St. Louis Blues have had such success this season.
It’s obvious the Sabres have some talent but it’s also quite obvious that the talent they have is likely not going anywhere anytime soon but let’s see if we can find some hidden gems that might interest the Wild on the roster of the Buffalo Sabres.
The Chase
Victor Olofsson: 23-yrs-old; Contract: 1 year, $767,500 Cap Hit (RFA)
2019 Stats: 2 goals, 2 assists in 6 games; Power Play: 2 G, 0 A
NHL Totals: 2 goals, 2 assists in 6 games; Power Play: 2 G, 0 A
Highlights
- AHL (Rochester): 30 goals, 33 assists in 66 games last season
- SHL (Frolunda HC): 27 goals, 16 assists in 50 games in 2017-18 as a 22-year-old
- Shot the puck 21 times in 6 NHL games & was put on the Power Play right away. That’s 3.5 per game and we like that!
- Hard to see Buffalo giving up this kid because he looks to have a very bright future. Picked in the 7th round in 2014.
CJ Smith: 24-yrs-old; Contract: (RFA)
2019 Stats: 2 goals, 0 assists in 11 games; Power Play: 0 G, 0 A
NHL Totals: 2 goals, 1 assists in 13 games; Power Play: 0 G, 0 A
Highlights
- 45 Goals in 119 AHL games; 17 in 57 games in 1st season, 28 in 62 games in 2nd season
- 43 Goals in 113 NAHL games; 13 in 53 games in 1st season, 30 in 60 games in 2nd season
- 27 Goals in 59 USHL games; 4 in 13 games for Muskegon; 23 in 46 games for Chicago
- 56 Goals in 120 NCAA games at UMass-Lowell; season progression, 16 (39 gms), 17 (40 gms) & 23 (41 gms)
- Undrafted; Played at the Academy of Holy Angels as a 16-yr-old then left to play Jrs for the next 3 seasons.
- It’s very cool to see players progressions from season to season and you can see that CJ gets better everywhere he goes and he has a history of scoring goals.
- CJ is a Restricted Free Agent so the only way the Wild could obtain him would be through a trade to obtain his rights or through an offer sheet and since he’s only played 13 NHL games, they might be able to offer him a contract in the $1M/year range for 2 years and there wouldn’t be any compensation needed. I doubt the Wild would go that route, though.
Some other names we found intriguing are Taylor Leier and Danny O’Regan.
Not much to find from the Buffalo roster so we’ll move on to the Calgary Flames next.
Let us know what you think in the comments or on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) &…ALWAYS…
