Brad Boyes, Robyn Regehr, Christian Ehrhoff and Ville Lieno.
Four players who joined the Buffalo Sabres within the last five months and represent a definitive, and expensive, break from the past.
The team is markedly different from the 2007/08, post-Chris Drury/Daniel Briere edition which saw the Sabres miss the playoffs in 2008 and 2009 while getting knocked out in the first round of the 2010 and 2011 playoffs.
Or is it?
With Ryan Miller in goal, the biggest change for the Sabres was on the back-end.
Gone from that '07/8 team are top-five d-men Hank Tallinder, Toni Lydman, Brian Campbell, Jaro Spacek and Dmitri Kalinin. Also gone are Teppo Numminen and Nathan Paetsch.
They have been replaced, during this four-year process by Tyler Myers, Robyn Regehr, Jordan Leopold and Christian Ehrhoff as well as (for now, anyway) Shaone Morrisonn.
Three Sabres d-men from that '07/8 team will go from rookie/bottom-pairing/reserve roles to more prominent roles on the back-end: (recently re-signed) Andej Sekera and Mike Weber as well as RFA Marc-Andre Gragnani.
That, my friends, constitutes a complete overhaul.
Much has been made concerning new owner Terry Pegula and his fiscal unchaining of GM Darcy Regier.
But, as of right now, the Sabres draft-picks up-front that have lead this team to mediocrity over the last four seasons--aka, the core--remain on the team.
Thomas Vanek, Derek Roy, Jason Pominville and Drew Stafford will all occupy top-six roles on the team, just like they did (or in Stafford's case, tried to do) four years ago.
Sabres draftees Paul Gaustad and Patrick Kaleta also remain on the team as well Jochen Hecht.
Gone are Maxim Afinogenov, Tim Connolly , Adam Mair, Daniel Paille and Clark MacArthur as well as Andrew Peters and Michael Ryan.
Sabres GM Darcy Regier, despite all the financial wherewithal, still seems to be enamored with his core players up-front. Because of this devotion to the core, we may need to invoke the Albert Einstein definition of insanity here--doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
The only player from outside the organization to be brought in up-front was Lieno. He's expected to replace Connolly.
Tyler Ennis should have a spot in the top-six which means, as opposed to a 100% top-four turnover on defense, there will be a 33% top-six turnover up-front.
With the Sabres over the NHL salary-cap with two prominent RFA's--Jhonas Enroth and Gragnani--still to sign, it's possible that the team will end up being over the cap by $5M this summer. Which is OK until they need to be cap-compliant by opening day.
Something's got to give.
Ales Kotalik (also a part of that '07/8 team) and Morrisonn have a combined salary-cap hit of just over $5M.
Even if the team jettisons their cap-hit in one way or another, the team will be at the cap-ceiling with no wiggle room.
Regier will need to do something, although what that will be remains to be seen.
Forward Brad Boyes was Regier's big trade deadline acquisition this past season, and in the playoffs vs. Philadelphia, Boyes produced just like core players Roy and Connolly the year before--nothing (unless you count the meaningless goal he scored with Game-7 out of reach.)
Boyes ended up being a "core-like player," soft-but-skilled, good when it's easy a failure when it's tough.
Let's reiterate--2/3 of the top-six core up-front remains intact, despite a history of mediocrity and Darcy Regier's new-found freedom to do whatever is necessary to bring the Cup to Buffalo.
Should we expect Regier to disrupt his core this off-season?
Although based upon his track record it's not wise to hold your breath, odds are that there may be a shake-up.
We'll see.
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