Last summer when Jason Botterill traded Ryan O’Reilly to the Blues and got Patrick Berglund and Vladimir Sobotka, among others in return, the Sabres looked pretty good down the middle. The plan was to have either Sobotka or Berglund center the second line and move Casey Mittelstadt down to the third line to give him time to adjust to the speed of the game and length of the NHL season.
Here we are now almost half-way through the season and we see that this plan clearly didn’t work out. Berglund is gone, Sobotka is useless as an offensive center and Casey is over matched as a second line guy. The results have been astounding. Our second line wingers (pick any two), Okposo, Thompson, Sheary, Pominville, Sheary, and whomever else has played in that spot have been awful. Pominville doesn’t score unless he’s with Eichel. Okposo hasnt scored in a month or more. Sheary is a great forchecker but other than empty net goals he doesn’t contribute offensively. All of these guys were projected to be 15+ goals/year guys before this season. None will get there. Most won’t come close.
My opinion is that this lack of secondary scoring falls squarely on the fact that they don’t have a true second line center. If you did then Casey moves to the third line where he can nmatch up better with other teams third lines. Larsson/Rodrigues, Sobotka all are fourth line guys at best. Girgenson is a fourth liner. Elie is a fourth liner at best also. That’s five guys playing three spots in the line up. Obviously we lack the depth we need to score.
Some people might say let’s be patient. Let’s see what the young guys can do. The problem with that is we have no young guys who are centers in our organization with whom to rely upon in the future. Nylander, Oloffson, Smith and the other guys scoring in Rochester are all wingers. We don’t have anyone in this organization who even projects to be a second line center. A solution might be to move Reinhart back to centering the second line and moving Okposo up to play with two guys with speed like Jack and Skinner but we’ve seen how Reinhart’s lack of speed causes huge issues in the defensive zone as a center.
What should the Sabres do? My solution is to trade for one. Charlie Coyle in Minnesota is a perfect fit. 6’ 3” 200 lb center who can absolutely fly. He had 56 points last year and is having an off year this year. We have four first round picks over the next two years as well as guys like Guhle, Nelson, Nylander, Asplund, Oloffson and the like who are young guys with potential. Minnesota is in 11th place in their conference and in need of a rebuild. Put a package together of some youth and throw in Scandella or even Bogo to give Minny some veteran depth at defense.
Another solution would be to pick up a rental like Matt Duchene, Brock Nelson, Marcus Johansson or Kevin Hayes to get them through this season and see if they could sign them next summer when some salaries come off the books.
Botterill needs to do something to give this team some secondary scoring. Keeping the status quo just isn’t going to cut it, especially with no one down on the farm to look forward to in the future.