Man, Buffalo is really the Edmonton Oilers East - but less embarrassing and will be a budget team.
I took a look at their capfriendly page - currently signed forwards for next season are Eichel, Skinner, Okposo, Staal and Lazar. Olafsson and Reinhart are both RFAs and will be getting a bump. Dahlin is a really nice piece, however.
I think that is one team that just needs to be patient and stay the course - stop dipping into the UFA pool and having to constantly overpay (Skinner and Okposo).
If I am Buffalo right now, I think I am just going to round-out my roster with low-cost UFAs, graduate whomever is ready (Cozens) into the NHL, and try to grow from within. I imagine there are a tonne of players with Buffalo on their NTC lists, not many players are actually willing to go there, and their prospect pool is not as good as it should be considering how much they bottomed-out (Marina Trench levels of bottoming out).
It will be interesting to see what the heck they do to try and appease Eichel over the next couple of seasons, then his NMC kicks-in. Now that would be a terrible time for him to suddenly ask for a trade, while limiting the options.
They better hope their young players take big steps quickly. Some nice pieces for sure, but if I am their GM, I think that I am going to try and hang-onto them for dear life, or start trading them for impact players now to make Eichel happy. Gaudreau would fit into that 'window' I guess with 2 years left (before Eichel's NMC kicks-in), and if it doesn't work, perhaps Buffalo can turn around and sell at that time.
That fanbase would probably riot if Buffalo traded Eichel and started over. That's a long stretch now of being terrible.
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