Buffalo Sabres Buy Or Sell: Jimmy Vesey Is Coming To The 716

What are the odds that the Buffalo Sabres could wind up signing the reigning Hobey Baker Memorial Award winner for the second-straight year? 

You have to love rumors, right Sabres fans?

So here is the newest one – make sure you are sitting down!

Supposedly, according to Joe Haggerty at CSN New England, there is a chance that Jimmy Vesey, the winner of the 2016 Hobey Baker Memorial Award, is interested in playing with the Buffalo Sabres alongside Jack Eichel.

Okay.

I’m not in a position to know much of anything – I’m definitely no hockey insider! – so I have to defer to Haggerty’s expertise here.  And let’s not act like this is TOO surprising – I’m sure Vesey is smart enough to see that he would be given a ton of playing time with the Buffalo Sabres, and he spent a lot of time hanging out Eichel during last year’s World Championships in Russia.  The fact that Eichel and Vesey grew up 30 miles apart in suburban Boston might not hurt, either.

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Still, there are some pretty obvious reasons why Vesey would NOT choose the Buffalo Sabres once he becomes a free agent on July 1.  For starters, his father was hired as a scout for the Toronto Maple Leafs just last summer, and his brother Nolan was drafted by the Leafs back in 2014.  Unless he doesn’t like his brother and father, it would make sense that Vesey would be all-ears when it comes to hearing what the Leafs can offer him.

And with the Leafs in a rebuild, chances are good that Vesey would be on track to receive about the same amount of playing time in Toronto as he could expect with Buffalo.   Of course, the Leafs may not have much interest in Vesey (in the sense that their AHL affiliate, the Toronto Marlies, is loaded with prospects the team could pull up in 2016-17), or may not be able to offer him much, depending on how many free agents they land during the offseason.

But even if Toronto fails to make him an offer he can’t refuse, wouldn’t it make sense for Vesey to look toward the team he grew up watching, the Boston Bruins?  Lord knows the Bruins are in need of some good young talent to make up for some of the players they inexplicably let go, such as Tyler Seguin or Dougie Hamilton.

Next: Buffalo Sabres 2015-16 Winners & Losers

All in all, I would love to see the Buffalo Sabres sign Jimmy Vesey . . . but I rank the likelihood of this happening somewhere below my chances of winning the next Powerball jackpot.

But hey – you never know.