It’s long past overdue for Buffalo Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams to start making some serious moves and to even take a few counterintuitive steps to do all he can to ensure the Blue and Gold are in position to leapfrog someone like Toronto, Detroit, Florida, Boston, or Tampa Bay.
He needs to assume none of the above are going away this season and the only way to get the best of them is to put a better team onto the ice. Luckily, Adams has cap space and assets to land more established talent this offseason and acquire some names you wouldn’t ordinarily think of.
Below, we’re talking about five moves that, if Adams made them, may look unreasonable on the surface but would actually make sense if he pulled them off, starting with trading away a rather high-end future asset or two.
Trading high-end prospects for established talents
There are a couple of routes the Sabres can take to acquire established talent, and not all of what would make sense in this article will happen. This is just one of two avenues they can take in the trade realm, and for teams looking for high-end prospects over draft picks, it’s the ideal road the organization must take.
We already know that the Sabres are facing a good problem - several elite prospects, but not all of them will ever realistically fit into the lineup. This means Kevyn Adams must move at least one if not more prospects at some point, either this summer or, and this would be welcoming to all Sabres fans, at March’s trade deadline in 2025.
But assuming Adams is looking to put together a strong unit months before the season begins, it makes far more sense to move assets around this summer to land either a top-six winger or a center that will make them deep at the position.
Later in this piece, I’ll list a few trade candidates, different from the ones I’ve discussed in previous articles, who would fit well on the Blue and Gold if and when Adams decides to trade some high-end names like Jiri Kulich, Isak Rosen, Matt Savoie, or even a high-potential name, or high-end draft picks for a player who has already established himself in the NHL.