Here are the top quotes from the presser.
On the decision to trade defenseman Bowen Byram, who was sent to Chicago on Tuesday in exchange for two 2026 draft picks (Nos. 4 and 45) and defenseman Louis Crevier:
“He didn’t want to negotiate; he wasn’t gonna sign with us. So, that didn’t leave us an option to do anything else with this.”
“We tried to convince Bo to stay. That was the first priority, and we did that. … Basically, I was working on that during the whole year, because I thought Bo was big on our team and played 22, 23 minutes. Only power-play time (was) the difference between Rasmus Dahlin, who got the most ice time on the team on D. He wanted to get the chance to be a No. 1 defenseman, I respect that. He has a year left before he gets to free agency, and that’s when the players have a lot of power, and you see that sometimes even two years left in the contract where they sort of make a power move and make it well known that they’re not signing an extension. The more term that you have left, the better value you can get for a player. In this case, we had one more year left before his free agency, and we feel like we got very good value.”
On replacing Byram, who ranked third on the Sabres in average ice time last season:
“That’s something that we’re working on. That’s definitely a focus right now. We have the fourth pick. We have the 20th pick. We have a lot of ammunition to explore if there’s another trade that we can make. Defensemen are not easy to find but we’ve had some productive talks and we’ll see where that goes.”
On options with the No. 4 pick:
“I think right now, I’ve told all the teams that have inquired about the No. 4 pick that we’re just gonna listen for now, take notes and see what they think is the value of No. 4. We value that very highly, obviously, ourselves. We know there’s a great prospect available there that’s gonna be two, three years away, maybe more, before they can make an impact on our team. We want to keep getting better as a team. We had an exciting team, but still disappointing at the end. We’ll gather that information around the league and see what the value is, and if we don’t think it’s as much as making the pick, then we make the pick.”
On Crevier, the 6-foot-8 defenseman acquired as part of the Chicago trade:
“I think he has a lot of upside. He’s 6-foot-8, right-handed defenseman. He had 25 points last year, played 17 minutes the last two years in the league. He can cover a lot of space with his length and reach.
“He’s come a long way. Actually, I love his story. He’s a seventh-round pick, and he’s made himself into an NHL player, which talks about his character and drive. We talk to people from our sources about that. It’s one thing we always take seriously is you have skill, you have ability, but do you have character? Do you have competitiveness that we’re looking for in a Buffalo Sabre?
On the future of forward Alex Tuch, who is scheduled to becoming a free agent on July 1:
“I don’t think at this point we’ve come to any points in our talks that would indicate that he would sign with us. I think he’s moving on and getting into free agency, and we now got to look at our options, whether it’s a sign and trade, or if we can recoup some value now that we used him as a rental for our own team.
“We made it clear to him that we wanted to sign him. He was an important player for us and a good leader – all those things that we talked about very many times. But sometimes when the players have the power to choose, they choose differently.”
On replacing Tuch, who scored 33 goals and 66 points last season:
“We’ll look at all the options. But I don’t know – nothing disrespectful to Alex Tuch, he’s been a great player for us, but we have a lot of good players in our lineup. But if you look at all the players we have that played pretty well this year in the NHL, it’s almost – it looks like I don’t know where we’re going to fit them all.
“It’s a 23-man roster, and if you get Jiri Kulich back healthy like we expect, (Konsta) Helenius came in in the playoffs and played like he had played five years in the NHL and had two full seasons now under his belt in the American League, over a point a game last year. (Noah) Ostlund played really well for us this year, gave us an indication he can play at center full time. We have a very positive problem; we don’t know where to put every player.
“So, we have a good plan on how to replace Alex Tuch, and we’re going to look at every option, whether it’s free agency or trade. But we also have a lot of returning options for the role of getting a little bit more ice time, more responsibility, more offensive time, all those things. So, I think we’re in really good shape.”
On last week’s trade with San Jose, which saw the Sabres move up from No. 27 to No. 20 in Round 1 of this year’s draft while sending defenseman Michael Kesselring to the Sharks:
“We believe we have a much better chance at 20 to get a certain player from a certain group than we would have had if we stayed at 27. And now we have (pick) four as well, but we’re well prepared for that.”
On extension talks with Zach Benson, who is a pending restricted free agent on July 1:
“We’ve had productive talks with him so we’re very optimistic that we’ll get something done soon.”
On a potential new contract for forward Beck Malenstyn, who is a pending unrestricted free agent:
“Those (talks) are ongoing, as well. We’ll definitely keep Beck Malenstyn.”
On the Sabres’ goaltending:
“I think our goaltending was strong this year. The goaltending position is so scrutinized that you have one bad game and all of a sudden the opinion in [the media] and outside turns into, ‘the goaltending is not good enough.’ Their numbers were very good. UPL had .910 (save percentage) for the season, that's a very good number in today’s league if you look around the save percentages around the league.
“We have a lot of faith in the group. I think we talked to all of them in the three-goalie rotation. They had no objection to it, they liked it. They felt they had a great relationship, so that's something that, right now, we're thinking of just doing the same thing. But it's like any position, whether it's D, forward, goaltenders, we're always looking to improve. If there's something that we think that can improve our goaltending, we’ll do that.”
On whether the Sabres’ success changed how Buffalo is viewed around the NHL:
“We’ve had a couple of agents tell us that players have changed their no-trade list and Buffalo’s off of it now, so that’s great news for us. I think we can be a destination. Everybody saw the passion in this hockey market last spring and in the playoffs and it was incredible. People have taken notice of that and they also see that we have a really good team. So, winning helps, I always say that. I think those couple things combined. Buffalo and the Buffalo Sabres are becoming a destination.”
