Speculation: Is Bowen Byram available? or will be? Lots of speculation about him from the "insiders"

[Goptor]

Adams doesn't see a difference between LHD and RHD.
To him, Byram is a valuable top4 Dman on a team with 3 top4 Dmen.

You'll have to wait until Adams is fired for Byram to become available.

 

[Albatros]

All our top 4 D are left-handed now, but they play well. Dahlin is more comfortable on the right-side, Byram plays with him in the first pair and so far it works.

No matter how comfortable they are with the position personally, their handedness will still go against a lot of plays and the opponent can count on that when their only RHD options are the rather limited Jokiharju and Clifton. I find it would be very helpful to have at least one to be able to mix it up when needed, even if Dahlin would still play the bigger minutes on the right.

 

[johnnybbadd]

For the 1000th time Dahlin is very comfortable playing on the right side. They could use another right shot D because Jokiharju is the one that is not good enough to be in the top 4. Byram is fine and has a future in the Sabres top 4 for the foreseeable future.

 

[Fjordy]

No matter how comfortable they are with the position personally, their handedness will still go against a lot of plays and the opponent can count on that when their only RHD options are the rather limited Jokiharju and Clifton. I find it would be very helpful to have at least one to be able to mix it up when needed, even if Dahlin would still play the bigger minutes on the right.

I agree with this, at least one top 4 RD would be useful to us, who is good at defense and at PK, but in general Dahlin himself said that it is more convenient for him to play on RD, and he had his best season when he mainly played on RD.

Byram - Dahlin
Power - xxxx

Right now Bryson is playing with Power, Power has no chemistry with Jokiharju, we don't know what Bryson will look like with a bigger sample. Someone like Murphy/Manson (defender type) would probably be good for us to play with Power.

 

[TageGod]

In short, not yet.

 

[tsujimoto74]

No matter how comfortable they are with the position personally, their handedness will still go against a lot of plays and the opponent can count on that when their only RHD options are the rather limited Jokiharju and Clifton. I find it would be very helpful to have at least one to be able to mix it up when needed, even if Dahlin would still play the bigger minutes on the right.

The entire team is better when Dahlin is on the right. I would like a better RHD than Clifton somewhere in the line-up, but 3/4 of the Sabres top 4 are going to be lefties as long as Dahlin is on the team (presuming whoever’s coaching them is trying to win games).

 

[McJedi]

Byram had a great last night. +4 game score, by far best on the team.

HockeyStatCards.com

3G and 6 apples in 14 games. .64 PPG with zero PP points. He's a +6. Averaging 21 minutes a game this year.

Corsi (flat relative), PDO (104) and possession quality paint a lesser picture of Byram than his above raw stats, which are pretty good.

Avs won the trade IMO, but Byram will fetch something decent in a player for player swap due to the raw numbers. Kid can score goals without special teams. He's too sloppy with the puck in his own zone though.

I thought he'd develop into a #2, but he's more of a #3 still.

 

[PAZ]

Not to derail the topic too much, but I still feel like Byram will be a better player and have a better career than Mittlestadt. Don't get me wrong Casey fits the Avs perfectly, but most top 6 players see a bump in production when they move to the Avs.

From a pure value standpoint Buffalo did well, but that's kind of been their entire MO when it comes to drafting/trades... get the BPA and hope the rest follows.

 

[Team_Spirit]

One of the few Sabres with grit

Grave mistake to move him imo they need more like him

 

[Barsky]

Well he's not going to be 35 anytime soon, plus like I said he's injury-free, even if his last few years of his contract aren't great. Buffalo needs to win here and now, and our defense needs a player like him.

Ya, the cap hit is fine for now, it just lasts too long, but he's still great for now and thanks to his bad contract, it makes him all the more attainable value wise

 

[Fjordy]

Ya, the cap hit is fine for now, it just lasts too long, but he's still great for now and thanks to his bad contract, it makes him all the more attainable value wise

And everyone there has such contracts (Parayko, Pulock, and there are other players).

 

[Petes2424]

Once again, fans and low end media types over-valuing what handed a dman is, more than GMs or coaches ever do.

Almost every LHD in the NHL, played the right side, probably more than he did the left, his entire minor career, as coaches will almost always use their best LHD on the right side, because of the pure numbers compared to RHD. Add in the amount of roller hockey most these young dmen played these days, most actually like playing their off-hand more.

25 years ago, most teams, from atom to NHL teams had 5-6 LHD as well. This has only become a new phenomenon over the last 20 years because so many non-traditional market kids, or kids starting in roller, had their parent hand them a RH stick, thinking it was like baseball.

Something that’s about to come full circle btw. If you look at minor hockey today, it’s much more like it was 25-40 years ago, as those non-traditional markets, are now handing their kids the proper stick.

So while having 3 and 3 allows a coach to even things out more defensively, it really isn’t the big deal a lot of fans on this site make it. Especially with how good stick-handling and hand eye coordination is these days. This is the first year of his career, Shea Theodore is playing the left side.

Byrum had his issues in Colorado too. Issues that he’ll clean up over the years through maturity and experience. He’s always gonna be the Dman speculated on with the Sabres though, because they have Dahlin and Power. If there’s ever a hockey trade to be made, they’ll probably include him.. Until then, they’ll make it work with him. You don’t downgrade talent for handedness.