BUFFALO, N.Y. — I have to admit, I was more than a little surprised that the Buffalo Sabres and their No. 1 goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen agreed to a five-year contract. I know Luukkonen likes playing in Buffalo and enjoys being with his teammates which was illustrated when he was vacationing with a bunch of them earlier this month in Switzerland.
His cap hit for $4.75 million is right around where I thought it would be, but I thought Luukkonen might want a shorter-term deal to maybe get even better and make more money. This contract ties him up until he’s 30 years old.
So where does that leave 22-year-old Devon Levi? This kid went down to Rochester last season and when he got the net, they were about to fall out of the playoff. All he did was embrace the opportunity to play and he helped get them to a first-place tie by the time he was done. Levi will be getting a new contract after next season, but where is he going to play this season? He went down to Rochester last season and worked hard to improve his game. When he came back up and played a few games, he looked like a different goalie.
He stopped 31-of-33 shots in a 3-2 loss to the Vancouver Canucks, He played 50:14 stopping 31-of-32 shots in relief of Luukkonen against the Ottawa Senators and made 28 saves on 30 shots in a 5-2 win over the New Jersey Devils. In those three games, Levi had a sparkling .947 save percentage and 1.78 goals against average. It was pretty obvious how much he had improved.
Buffalo has signed goalie James Reimer who is 36 years old, but hasn’t played in the minors since 2010-11 with the Toronto Marlies. So what is Adams thinking? Is he going to send Levi back to Rochester and keep Reimer to back up Luukkonen? How would Levi react to that?
There is a faction of fans and media that feels that Adams needs to spend every single dollar right up to the NHL’s $88 million cap, but in my mind, who cares how much they spend? For me, it’s who they spend it on.
Lindsey Moppert and I have already talked in our video podcast about the job Adams did to make the team better by making them much harder to play against. The problem in my mind is the job still isn’t done. We’re almost into August and the Buffalo Bills are on the field and that hasn’t happened. Teams have been over asking to move a top-6 forward and other teams aren’t biting on it. Adams has now been talking about how he feels the guys that are here can and will score goals.
In speaking with fans, some have told me that they don’t believe Adams ever wanted to make this type of trade and has been lying about it. I don’t believe that at all. I firmly believe that Adams made many attempts to trade this year’s first-round pick. The Carolina Hurricanes reportedly turned down the fourth overall pick from the Columbus Blue Jackets for Martin Necas, so it became obvious Buffalo wasn’t getting him for the 11th or the 14th overall pick.
There’s still time to make this kind of a trade if Carolina and the Winnipeg Jets start becoming reasonable in what they want, and it’s still my belief that despite it being extremely challenging, it’s Adams' job to find a way to get this done.
The Sabres are closer to the Cap than many thought they’d be. Buffalo still has Peyton Krebs to sign and my guess is he would be somewhere a little south of $1 million. After that signing and the 23 players I think will make the team, I have them at around $7.6 million of cap space.
I will remind everyone as I always do that next year Buffalo has to sign Levi, Jack Quinn, JJ Peterka and Bo Byram. They must leave money to do that.
May the off-season continue!
