[Report] Jeff Skinner and Sabres closing in on deal

[JM_]

28 minutes ago, mll said:

 

Marner is getting ready to go offer sheet shopping - he wants a Matthews contract.

 

Gaudreau got 6.8M.  Tkachuk is going to blow that out of the water.  Media is predicting as high as 10M for Laine.  

 

I have a hard time seeing WPG paying that. 

 

This is all getting way out of hand, I don't see how this trend ends in anything but another missed year of hockey. 

[Canuck Surfer]

5 minutes ago, mll said:

 

Marner is getting ready to go offer sheet shopping - he wants a Matthews contract.

 

Gaudreau got 6.8M.  Tkachuk is going to blow that out of the water.  Media is predicting as high as 10M for Laine.  

 

Gaudreau was coming off a 78 point season when he signed his pact.

 

One problem is Canadian media and fans whip everything out of proportion.  Create pressure that helps inflate markets for free agents.

 

Laine also might have been worth $10 mill had he not appeared to lose interest this year? He was looking a 1st ballot hall of famer. Chevy has also worked hardest of Canadian GM's to control salary. Look what Ehlers & Scheifele are getting paid. Albeit not without collateral damage, see Trouba.

 

Look at what American markets paid premium RFA's over the years; Stamkos, MacKinnon, Ekman Larsson, Dylan Larkin, Kucherov bridge, Barkov, Huberdeau approaching premium, Reilly Smith, Alex Tuch, Rakell, watch what Clayton Keller gets paid next year, Landeskog, Tyson Barrie, Klingburgh, Couturiere, Ghostisbehere, I could go on?

 

Anaheim has paid a few of their guys too much, Bobby Ryan. Florida Ekblad. CBJ Rick Nash. There are exceptions. Everyone has paid their UFA's too much.

 

By and large?  The lower level of furore has seen US teams routinely sign guys at values CDC, Leaf Nation, Oiler Pride laude their GM's for. 

 

 

I don't envy Calgary with Tkachuk. His dad was synonymous for breaking teams with his salary demands. Putting himself before all others! 

[Canuck Surfer]

36 minutes ago, NewbieCanuckFan said:

Booth was turning out ‘ok’ for us until that Avs player took out his knee on a cheapshot knee-on- knee hit.

Booth was among the last of an old era. Training wise... Players who missed a memo about being professional athletes 365 days a year. Went bear hunting.

 

Never started doing aerobic, anaerobic, core and progressive training. A great natural athlete, he could arrive a week before camp and fly around the ice at age 21?

 

The same training program as Jake started with; a crash course in the weight room a few weeks before camp. Develop some power, but overtrain. Try to catch up with some of the very fit & dedicated athletes like Kesler, Bieksa, and the Twins.  He had training related injuries to start each of his years here. Overbuild on squats then do suicide drills skating the next day? A recipe for torn muscles which he experienced. I recall pulled groins, back and abdominal injuries, a ripped muscle too I think?  And never enough puff for the increasingly fast NHL. He was always frackin hurt.

 

That knee, I remember it. Brutal.  But it was far from his only problem.

[Camel Toe Drag]

4 hours ago, Elias Pettersson said:

This will become one of the worst contracts in the league in about 3 years...

Reminds me of the Cory Perry contract. That seems to be working well for the ducks now 

 

Not to mention Skinner has durability issues and also what’s Dahlin going to command after his ELC. Probably the same contract to be honest. Buffalo needs to start finding some Jay Beagles now. 

[SabreFan1]

7 hours ago, messier's_elbow said:

Buffalo has to overpay to get good players to play there. It’s an overpayment for sure, but what else is Buffalo supposed to do? 

All long-term crappy organizations have to.  We luck out occasionally and get free agents who want to move closer to home (Ontario), but nobody comes here thinking they will take less to actually win.  Those days have been gone for almost a decade now.

[Camel Toe Drag]

2 minutes ago, SabreFan1 said:

All long-term crappy organizations have to.  We luck out occasionally and get free agents who want to move closer to home (Ontario), but nobody comes here thinking they will take less to actually win.  Those days have been gone for almost a decade now.

To be fair a lot of the Ontario boys would be close to home. Buffalo is merely a skip and a hop from lovely old Onterrible. 

[SabreFan1]

2 hours ago, rekker said:

Lol. Same team that brought you Ehrhoffs contact and eventual buyout. I attached the Hoffs's buyout contract. $850,000  per year till 2025, lol. Skinner's contract is gonna look real bad sooner than later.

Ehrhoff was a compliance buyout so he counts zero against the cap.  If the Sabres are smart, they trade Skinner as soon as the team is competitive in a few years.  With that contract term and the fact that he'll be 30-31, they'll get a bag of pucks for him, but as long as he's still producing, they'll still be able to move him.

[hammertime]

15 hours ago, billabong said:

My god...skinner is a 9 MILLION dollar winger?! 

 

Sure hes scored a couple goals but he faded away when buffalo needed him down the stretch and he’s had a concussion history

 

Kucherov is getting 9.5m (state tax is a factor) and he’s a dominant 100+ point player 

 

couture is at 8m and he’s been clutch in the ploffs 

 

Kane is at 10.5m and he’s a first ballot hall of famer, scoring titles and all the hardware. That’s only worth 1.5m than skinner at 9m? 

Kane signed that contract several years ago the salary landscape it changing.

[SabreFan1]

1 minute ago, Camel Toe Drag said:

To be fair a lot of the Ontario boys would be close to home. Buffalo is merely a skip and a hop from lovely old Onterrible. 

It's why we got Tim Horton to play here.  That and the Sabres were good back then.  He'd drive on the QEW back and forth to the games in the old Aud.  Unfortunately he did it one too many times drunk and it caught up to him.

[Alflives]

4 minutes ago, SabreFan1 said:

It's why we got Tim Horton to play here.  That and the Sabres were good back then.  He'd drive on the QEW back and forth to the games in the old Aud.  Unfortunately he did it one too many times drunk and it caught up to him.

Are there any of Tim’s restaurants in your town?  If so, are the busy with us coming south?  Just curious  

[SabreFan1]

Just now, Alflives said:

Are there any of Tim’s restaurants in your town?  If so, are the busy with us coming south?  Just curious  

Tims has been here since the 90's.  They're the dominant chain.  They drove out almost all of the Dunkin' Donuts and even kept Krispy Kreme from gaining a foothold.

 

Owning a Timmy Ho's here is like having a license to print money.  If I didn't have much easier ways to make money, I'd have opened up one or more a long time ago.

[MystifyNCrucify]

3 hours ago, DrJockitch said:

They know they are going to be building around Eichel for a long time. 

They signed Eichel to a contract he hadn't earned.

They know that Eichel and Skinner have chemistry.

They had no choice, they had to sign him and 9 mil is about the going rate.

Now you have two forwards earning about $20M that have never won anything. 

Have either of them even had a whiff of the playoffs?

I was gonna say something uncouth about dirty undergarments but im just gonna keep that to myself. 

[SabreFan1]

This contract boils down to whether the Sabres are actually going to hold onto Skinner and milk him up to his expiration date.  If so, this contract is terrible and will hurt them in the long term.

 

If the idea is to keep him as a stop-gap to buy a few years for the young players to mature then trade him for cheap while he's still producing and has value then it's a smart move.

 

The only way this haunts the team in the near future is if his play falls off of a cliff now that he has his career contract.  I don't get the sense that he's that type of person though.

[MystifyNCrucify]

24 minutes ago, SabreFan1 said:

Ehrhoff was a compliance buyout so he counts zero against the cap.  If the Sabres are smart, they trade Skinner as soon as the team is competitive in a few years.  With that contract term and the fact that he'll be 30-31, they'll get a bag of pucks for him, but as long as he's still producing, they'll still be able to move him.

Im sure benning thought the same thing when he signed eriksson. 

[oldnews]

Yikes.

 

That is a brutal deal for Buffalo imo.  I would have let him walk long before the term escalated anywhere near that point.

 

Skinner has averaged 49 pts over 9 NHL seasons - and is at his high water mark at 63.

Fairly one dimensional - aside from being a goal scorer, his next best attribute is his takeaways.

 

He's a pretty consistently poor 'possession player' - high ozone starts, fairly middling/mediocre possession numbers, year after year (not just in Buffalo).

Likewise, it follows, with his goal metrics - despite the fairly advantageous deployment.

Sure got paid for what he brings.  Ugly deal - about as bad as you'd expect in the midst of the frenzy.

 

 

[SabreFan1]

2 minutes ago, MystifyNCrucify said:

Im sure benning thought the same thing when he signed eriksson. 

 

3 minutes ago, SabreFan1 said:

The only way this haunts the team in the near future is if his play falls off of a cliff now that he has his career contract.  I don't get the sense that he's that type of person though.

 

[Camel Toe Drag]

3 minutes ago, SabreFan1 said:

This contract boils down to whether the Sabres are actually going to hold onto Skinner and milk him up to his expiration date.  If so, this contract is terrible and will hurt them in the long term.

 

If the idea is to keep him as a stop-gap to buy a few years for the young players to mature then trade him for cheap while he's still producing and has value then it's a smart move.

 

The only way this haunts the team in the near future is if his play falls off of a cliff now that he has his career contract.  I don't get the sense that he's that type of person though.

If buffalo expects to get any return after a few years this heavily relies on if he’s still producing at a decent rate nvm his injury issues. Otherwise no one touches that deal with a stick. An early retirement for bobble head skinner. 

[Camel Toe Drag]

3 minutes ago, oldnews said:

Yikes.

 

That is a brutal deal for Buffalo imo.  I would have let him walk long before the term escalated anywhere near that point.

 

Skinner has averaged 49 pts over 9 NHL seasons - and is at his high water mark at 63.

Fairly one dimensional - aside from being a goal scorer, his next best attribute is his takeaways.

 

He's a pretty consistently poor 'possession player' - high ozone starts, fairly middling/mediocre possession numbers, year after year (not just in Buffalo).

Likewise, it follows, with his goal metrics - despite the fairly advantageous deployment.

Sure got paid for what he brings.  Ugly deal - about as bad as you'd expect in the midst of the frenzy.

 

 

The only plus side I can see from those stats is he basically had to be “the guy” on the Canes. At least here on the Sabres he slides into more of a supportive “pass me the puck” role. 

[Elias Pettersson]

42 minutes ago, Camel Toe Drag said:

Reminds me of the Cory Perry contract. That seems to be working well for the ducks now 

 

Not to mention Skinner has durability issues and also what’s Dahlin going to command after his ELC. Probably the same contract to be honest. Buffalo needs to start finding some Jay Beagles now. 

Buffalo has only 6 players under contract for 2020-2021.  Dahlin will command a huge salary, probably similar to what Petey is going to get.  Not sure how they are going to manage their cap moving forward but the $9 million to Skinner definitely won't help.

[SabreFan1]

2 minutes ago, oldnews said:

Yikes.

 

That is a brutal deal for Buffalo imo.  I would have let him walk long before the term escalated anywhere near that point.

 

Skinner has averaged 49 pts over 9 NHL seasons - and is at his high water mark at 63.

Fairly one dimensional - aside from being a goal scorer, his next best attribute is his takeaways.

 

He's a pretty consistently poor 'possession player' - high ozone starts, fairly middling/mediocre possession numbers, year after year (not just in Buffalo).

Likewise, it follows, with his goal metrics - despite the fairly advantageous deployment.

Sure got paid for what he brings.  Ugly deal - about as bad as you'd expect in the midst of the frenzy.

If he hits a wall at 30 like a good number of snipers do at 30, the Sabres are screwed.  If he's still producing good scoring numbers, they'll likely find a Cup competitive team to take the last half of his contract.

 

It all boils down to Skinner's offensive output in a few years.  It's a gamble that could come back and kill the Sabres or could end up becoming a shrewd move. 

 

Personally, if I were a GM, I would have let him walk his happy arse to another team, but I understand why Botterill did what he did in signing him to this contract.