Well, the Sabres only made one move on deadline day. In fact, it was their only trade of the season.
They brought in Brad Boyes from St. Louis for a second-round pick. A good trade for the Sabres. They acquired a good-sized winger who has a scoring touch. Boyes also has another year on his contract which will allow the Sabres to use him as a building block for next season, and even beyond.
There were plenty of grumblings that Tim Connolly would be moved. There were even whispers that Steve Montador wouldn’t last the day. As it turned out, nothing else happened. Maybe that is actually for the best.
The bottom line is that the Sabres are painfully thin at center. Connolly is currently the top guy followed by Jochen Hecht, yikes. I might be tempted to recall Luke Adam and see how he fares with a better set of wingers. After all, either Jason Pominville, Drew Stafford or Tyler Ennis will be bumped from the top six. Adam centering Pominville/Stafford and Nathan Gerbe wouldn’t be half bad.
I make that point to show that they probably couldn’t afford to lose Connolly. Sure, they could have shipped him out and then scrambled to get in the Jason Arnott sweeps – all while trying to lock down Stephen Weiss as well. They would have to spend a lot of picks and prospects to turn that situation into a favorable one. I would have liked to see one new center brought in, that way Hecht could be removed from the top two lines. But, Darcy may still be loading up to take a big stab at a big name in the summer.
Defensively, the Sabres could have used a new face. Especially if it meant getting Andrej Sekera and Chris Butler off the ice indefinitely. However, the prospect of losing Steve Montador likely would have made the blue line weaker, not stronger. A good move by Darcy to stand pat there.
Lastly, the idea of maybe getting a real back-up appears to have been ignored. Regier confirmed the plan is to stick with the Lalime/Enroth monster that represents Ryan Miller’s back-up. I hate that they didn’t find a solution to this problem. Enroth is too valuable to sit at the end of the bench, but Lalime is too porous to trust in a game. It is a bad situation that could have been solved with a cheap rental goalie until the summer.
Overall I give Darcy a B for his efforts. He made a gutsy trade to bring in some real talent. He also was smart enough to evaluate his team and know that there were certain pieces that should have been moved (Connolly) but that he couldn’t afford to lose at this point in time.
It seems like Darcy is starting to spread his wings with the new financial freedom, hopefully those wings are really stretched out this summer.
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