I’ve been a huge proponent of the Sabres’ aggressive rebuilding plans and a huge fan of Tim Murray. But it’s easy to feel good about a team that’s lying in wait. It’s like cutting back on your expenses and watching your bank account grow: a little painful, maybe, but the future becomes full of possibility.
Maybe we’ll trade for a stud goalie. Maybe we’ll put together a package for Ryan O’Reilly. Maybe we’ll stun a cap-strapped team with an offer sheet. Maybe we’ll draft ALL THE PROSPECTS and start our own league.
Once you’ve saved up enough to make a big purchase, however, you have to confront the possibility of buyer’s remorse. What if I buy the wrong thing? Once you make the move, that intoxicating potential starts to evaporate and you’re left with a human being. It can be a shocking come-down, and I think a lot of Sabres fans are dealing with that deflated feeling in the aftermath of this morning’s trade. The 21st pick – not a person but an asset – was shipped out to Ottawa in exchange for the Senators’ 23 year-old goaltender Robin Lehner, and veteran center David Legwand (included as a salary dump.)
I was not happy with this trade when I heard about it. I was stunned, to be honest. There are a lot of goalies on the market, including free agents, and the Sabres’ experience going from Miller to Enroth to Neuvirth to Lindback with little change in result (ok, Lindback was noticeably worse) soured me on the idea that goalies matter, outside of the very best and worst in the league. If the Sabres drafted a goalie in the first round, I wouldn’t be happy. Trading the 21st pick for an unproven goalie is basically the same thing.
Some writers scoffed at Sabres’ fans negative reaction, noting that Lehner is a potential stud and that Buffalo is stocked with draft picks anyway. And criticism of Lehner’s NHL stats is probably overblown because he’s so young. It’s common for goalies to spend years in the AHL before making the jump to a back-up role in the NHL, but Lehner’s AHL tenure included frequent call-ups to the NHL and ultimately saw him play in fewer than 100 AHL games (and win the AHL playoff MVP award in 2011) before joining the Senators full-time in 2013-2014. ESPN’s Pierre LeBrun wrote then, “There are some around the NHL that think Lehner is already starter material. Some also believe he’s franchise-goalie material in the not-too-distant future.”
Lehner may not have lived up to the hype immediately – he posted season save percentages of .913 and .905 in 2014 and 2015, respectively – but reporters again voiced their expectation that he would soon win the starting job when Lehner signed a three-year extension in Ottawa after the 2014 season. It was seen as only a matter of time.
Sabres fans should keep that in mind when evaluating the deal. It’s easy to project unlimited potential onto draft picks you haven’t used yet, or 18 year-olds that haven’t played a minute in the pros. I’m guilty of it myself. When you compare a player with NHL experience to a pure hypothetical, you’ll often like the pure hypothetical better.
Whether you like this particular deal or not, we should come to expect some groaning from fans every time our imagination about what the team could become is constricted by moves that more clearly define what it is. That’s why I suspect Murray’s popularity with fans will take a serious hit as the Sabres start to improve. It isn’t fair, but it might be inevitable.
But hey: who cares about any of that right now? It’s Jack Eichel Day!!!!! See you all on Twitter at 7 PM.
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