This last year was the first year where it wasn't a developmental year, so spending should have been at a minimum. They have paid for Hall, Johnson and Clifton so spending money isn't the problem especially since two of the three didn't even last the season. They handed out deals to Cozens, Thompson, Dahlin, Power and Samuelsson. Them being bottom three in payroll has to do more with ElC's and future cap than lack of want to spend.
They shouldn't have had as many ELCs, that was part of the problem. The Sabres should have surrounded their good young players with quality vets. They treated the Buffalo roster as a developmental one, even though there is an entire team dedicated to that in Rochester. They came out with the selling point of 'not blocking the kids' but the reality was 'not paying for vets'. Sure, its not like UFAs were lining up to come here, but plenty of opportunity to supplement the team with better vets than Hinostroza, Jost, Pysyk, Butcher, and Bjork.
The fact that they had to use the LTIR loophole to get to the floor shows you they were actively looking to not spend.
I wouldn't retain on salaries either, we have a glut of prospects with not a lot of wholes to fill. Why add mid round picks and burn through real money and developmental resources for said mid round picks. Now if someone was offering a 1st or 2nd to retain, then we can talk.
Because you can use those mid round picks for other assets later. You can use them to move up, you can use them to sweeten deals. Draft picks are capital. Cap Space is capital. You are essentially trading one for the other in some deals. The problem is that the team was unwilling to spend the real dollars behind the cap space.
Cutting operations is fine if you can sustain the same level of quality and your not burning out. Scouting department still seems to be getting it done. This off-season is seeing Adams first draft review and so far, he has done well with Quinn and JJ. Costantini was a long play pick that seems to be doing well at WMU. The two seventh rounds didn't pan out.
It's far too early to make any prognacations on the drafting of the 'efficient, effective' model. However, I will say whatever grading they are using is heavily favoring undersized skilled forwards to the point where it seems that is the massive majority of our prospect pool. The ratios of forward to d-men before last years draft was stupidly high.
They should be spending to the cap this season just based on the contracts they already have, they should have about 18 million to fill 8 spots.
We shall see. I'm realistically expecting them to add 2 forwards (a 4th line center and a middle six forward) and have 2 more ELC contracts to fill out the roster. I could easily see them coming into cap 8M under the cap again. Like I said, we'll see.
There is a lot of context and planning that go into the "spend" and if Pegula didn't want to spend money then we would have had a another Drury/Briere last off-season with Cozens and Thompson.
That is just silly. No one was ever suggesting they go out and spend to the cap. Nearish the midpoint is more typical for rebuilding teams, and avoiding long term entaglements. The idea if we would have added 1 quality vet per summer from 2021-2024 it would have caused any cap issues is silly.
It's just a weird notion to think Pegula isn't spending when we can clearly see it is happening. /Rant
They spent 8M under the cap this year. If you are seeing 2 years of sub cap floor spending and 1 year where they were at the bottom of the league in spending and you think the Pegula is financially committed to winning, I'm not sure there is any convincing you otherwise. It's clearly he's pulled back resources from the team, and in one case (22-23) it directly led to them missing the playoffs after a dozen year playoff drought.
