Should the Buffalo Sabres really trade for John Gibson?

The Hockey Writers believe the Buffalo Sabres could be a franchise the star-crossed John Gibson can resurrect his career with. 

While it is true that the Buffalo Sabres desperately need a goaltender, pulling off a trade for the underperforming John Gibson is not in the team’s best interests. General manager Kevyn Adams is intent on one of his three young goaltenders in the system (Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Devon Levi, or Erik Portillo) taking the job, and trading for Gibson would contradict that notion.

Plus, Gibson and the Anaheim Ducks have struggled lately. So we need to ask ourselves how much of this is on Gibson and how much of it is on Anaheim.

Gibson has allowed an average of three goals or more in two of the past three seasons. His save percentage is also nothing special, sitting at 0.904, 0.903, and 0.904 since 2019-20. By contrast, Craig Anderson and Dustin Tokarski’s percentages last season sat at 0.897 and 0.899 respectively.

Why trading for John Gibson would be a mistake for the Buffalo Sabres

Gibson is due to earn $6.4 million per season through 2026-27. This isn’t an ideal number for a Buffalo Sabres team looking to simply hit the cap floor this season in preparation for negotiating long-term deals with star players like Tage Thompson.

So what makes The Hockey Writers believe Gibson is a good fit for the Sabres? They say that for one, the Sabres, because of their draft capital and cap space, can easily afford Gibson, which is true. But unless Kevyn Adams is throwing a smokescreen here, he’s practically implied that he’s not giving away the team’s assets.

Instead, Adams is taking the conservative route with a goaltender, with many signs pointing to a Braden Holtby signing. Given the Sabres conservative approach, trading for Gibson poses too much of a risk at what the Ducks asking price would be.

The Hockey Writers may describe Gibson as mighty, but they gave no supporting information other than his career statistics: 0.915 save percentage, 2.67 GAA. But again, that’s substantially higher than his previous three seasons: 0.903 save percentage, 3.05 GAA.

So for this one, let’s be smart and not trade for a goaltender that, although he had his moments, struggled in recent memory. Gibson would also need to wave his no-trade clause for any deal to occur.

(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)