3 players the Buffalo Sabres have seen enough to know it's time to trade

Every time the Buffalo Sabres give fans some hope, like winning four games out of five, they have frustrating losses like the one they had on Wednesday night against the Pittsburgh Penguins. For a team that has not made the playoffs in 14 seasons, there is certainly a concern of being too reactionary. When trying to rebuild, it's essential to respect the process and let players develop.

However, there is a point that teams need to know that as much as they would like something to work out, it just isn't going to. It might be the player, the team, or a combination of both.

For the Buffalo Sabres, they have reached that point with a few players and the focus needs to shift from trying to figure out how to fit them into the team to finding a move that can help improve the roster by trading them away.

3 players the Buffalo Sabres have seen enough to know it's time to trade

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen

The Buffalo Sabres have three goalies on the roster, and the rotation has seemingly been decided by the team going with the hot hand. Last week, it was Colten Ellis, and over the past three games, it has been Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen.

While he did win against the Chicago Blackhawks and Carolina Hurricanes, he was far from dominant in the game against the Blackhawks when he gave up three goals. The win over the Hurricanes was certainly his best start of the three, but he seemed to regress to bad habits of letting in bad goals at inopportune times against the Penguins.

In that game, the Sabres would tie it up at one but they quickly fell behind with the Penguins scoring just over 30 seconds later. The inconsistency in net, combined with the injury concerns, should be enough for the Sabres to want to move him.

However, David Pagnotta was on The FAN Hockey Show recently and said the Sabres would need to be blown away with an offer to move Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. This frankly is a surprise and doesn't make much sense when considering Alex Lyon and Colten Ellis have outplayed Luukkonen this season, and Devon Levi is supposed to be the goalie of the future.

There is a market for goalies as a number of teams need help at the position, like Edmonton, Montreal, and St. Louis. This seems like an easy deal to get done and elevates a roster jam at the position. The recent report, though, sheds light on why a deal hasn't been done but also shows why the Sabres have struggled under Kevyn Adams, who seemingly always overplays his hand.

Owen Power

The Buffalo Sabres drafted Owen Power with the first overall pick in the 2021 NHL Draft and one year later was a full-time player at the NHL level. He has appeared in 264 games now in his career with 118 points and the Sabres saw enough after one season to sign him to a seven-year extension with an AAV of $8.35 million.

However, the problem is that Power doesn't play like a player who has the second-highest AAV on the team. He has not developed into a player that the team realistically can rely on to deliver consistently, and in fact has lapses during a game that teams usually capitalize on.

That happened again on Wednesday night against the Penguins when Kevin Hayes is able to sneak in behind Power for the goal. It would push the Penguins' lead to two and essentially end any chance of the Sabres coming back.

Power undoubtedly is a talented player in the offensive zone and he has improved in that regard season over season to a career-high of 40 this past season. However, the lapses on the defensive end are too much to overcome, and it's time for Buffalo to move on.

Bowen Byram

Bowen Byram is another Top 5 draft pick that hasn't developed into the player the Buffalo Sabres were hoping for. The difference with Byram is that they didn't draft him but rather added him by trading Casey Middlestadt to the Colorado Avalanche.

This past summer, there were questions of whether or not he would even be on the team as he was looking for a new contract and the topic of trade rumors. The Sabres would end up agreeing to a two-year deal but similar to Power, his performance so far has been underwhelming.

He began the season with Rasmus Dahlin as part of the Sabres' top defensive pair, but with Mattias Samuelsson playing better, Byram has lost that spot. It wouldn't be surprising to see the Sabres decide to cut their losses and see what might be out there if they were to move him.