Detroit and Buffalo Look To Make Big Roster Changes
Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period joined Sirius XM NHL Network Radio Power Play Segment with Steve Kouleas and Carter Hutton and was asked about the Buffalo Sabres and Detroit Red Wings and if major changes were coming there.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
NHL Rumors: Three Teams to Keep an Eye With Regards to a Jonathan Toews Comeback
Carter Hutton: “Staying around The East on your site here, looking at the Sabers and Red Wings, we’re talking about some trade discussions, like, where do these teams go from here, right?
(Steve) Yzerman kind of had a much longer leash, right? Like Stevie Y was coming in and was going to change things. It hasn’t gone as planned. And again, obviously a former Saber three years there, what’s gone on in Buffalo is obviously disappointing. These fan bases obviously want to get back to a winning culture.”
Dave Pagnotta: “Yeah, and they deserve to get back into that contention, and us talking about them in April for different reasons, versus how are they going to plan for the draft?
Like there’s, there’s a lot of frustration in both of those markets, certainly from a fan base perspective and within the organizations, and those two specifically, have had some discussions, not just with themselves, but with a variety of different teams out there, trying to make some but similar to the Rangers, some bigger, bolder moves.
NHL Rumors: Vancouver Canucks; Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller
Steve Yzerman talked about it after they made their coaching change bringing in Todd McLellan, that their expectations were, if everything goes right, we’re going to be competing for a wild card spot. Well, no, that’s not the case. Nothing has gone overly right for the Wings to this point. And it’s nice to see Buffalo collecting a few W’s here recently.
But both of these teams are looking to make different types of moves, bigger moves, but different types of moves. We know that teams have been poking around on a lot of Buffalo’s players. Dylan Cozens‘s, name continues to be out there. They’re poking around on guys like (JJ) Peterka and (Jack) Quinn and (Owen) Power and (Bowen) Byram and so on.
They’re not going to get rid of all of these guys, but it certainly sounds like Buffalo has an appetite to explore a big, bold hockey type of blockbuster-ish move, whether that involves Cozens and a few others, whether that’s Power, whether that’s whomever it sounds like, Kevyn Adams is exploring those options and willing to, at the very least listen on on these players to try to make something big and bold.
NHL Rumors: Minnesota Wild, and the Buffalo Sabres
From the Detroit side of things. They’re in a bit of a different type of position, to a certain extent, because of their contractual status with a lot of their guys. They signed a lot of veterans, a lot of guys with term to kind of fill out the roster, thinking that those guys were going to complement some of the younger players on their team.
It just hasn’t worked out the way that they anticipated. So they’ve got to pivot. And it sounds like they want to be somewhat, at least talking to other teams, sounds like Detroit’s been trying to be a little bit aggressive as well.”