With the big trade out of the way, Murray sits on his assets

Last Friday, Sabres GM Tim Murray got the big deal done.

By sending Ryan Miller and Steve Ott to St. Louis for a real solid bounty, Murray took the pressure off of himself and the Sabres at his first trade deadline.

Since then Murray has afforded himself the opportunity to lay in wait for the right offer as other GM's play a bit of catch-up.


And when it came to goalies, those GM's did a lot of catching up yesterday.

In what was said to be a thin goalie market, a number of netminders traded teams yesterday:

• Vancouver sent Roberto Luongo to Florida for young goalie Jacob Markstrom
• The Minnesota Wild (said to be interested in Jaroslav Halak) picked up Ilya Bryzgalov from Edmonton
• The Oilers, in turn, picked up Viktor Fasth from Anaheim

The recently acquired Halak, along with Florida's Tim Thomas and possibly New Jersey's Martin Brodeur may still be in play.

Granted, none of these are, or will be earth-shattering (save for the movement of long-time Devil and future Hall of Famer, Brodeur.) None of the goalies on the move yesterday went to Cup contenders and any of the remaining may only end up in a back-up role.

As today unfolds, Murray has sniper Matt Moulson in his pocket. He might be considered the second most coveted winger for a Cup contender behind Thomas Vanek.

Although it's not a 100% given that Moulson will be moved, most feel that he will be traded by 3pm today. The return should be significant and one wouldn't be surprised if Murray's waiting it out for a team to get desperate. An upper level prospect and a first-rounder might not be out of the question.

The only other piece that may fetch that big of a return is recently acquired winger Chris Stewart. Size and skill are his attributes, inconsistencies are his negatives, but teams look at his package and drool over having a player with that size having that much skill.

It would be safe to assume that the Sabres would be seriously interested in keeping Stewart for those reasons.

Stewart still has term on his present contract and Murray could wait until next year's deadline before the big winger hits free agency.

Other names being thrown around are Christian Ehrhoff, Hank Tallinder, Tyler Myers and Drew Stafford.

Of those names, only Tallinder will be unrestricted at season's end.

Ehrhoff is signed through 2021 at a $4m cap-hit, Myers through 2019 at a $5.5m cap-hit while Stafford still has one more year left at $4m.

Unless there's an offer that knocks Murray's socks off he really doesn't need to move any of these players and he'll probably get a better return in the off-season or at next year's trade deadline.

Plus, as of right now the Sabres are about $21m under the cap floor for next season. They have 11 players signed with Ville Leino as the highest paid forward (shudders) at a cap-hit of $4.5m.

They will need salary next season. And if they want to buy out Leino, they'll nee all of these players and then some.

All-in-all, Sabres fans have to love the position Murray put himself in at this year's deadline. He beat the rest of the GM's to the punch and moved the player that he had to move.

As for the rest he can take a somewhat "wait and see" approach.

At least for the next six hours.