If Sabres Are Going To Trade Tuch, Rangers Star Forward Should Be Their Target

The Buffalo Sabres are pushing to be a Stanley Cup playoff team this season. But they’ve also got to deal with their financial realities. And one of those realities is the looming UFA status of star winger Alex Tuch. The 29-year-old has yet to sign a contract extension, and with the March 6 NHL trade deadline now less than two months away, new Sabres GM has to be weighing the cost of trading Tuch for players who will help Buffalo’s playoff push.

We think we’ve found one such player you could trade Tuch for: New York Rangers center Vincent Trocheck. 

Tuch makes $4.75 million this year, while Trocheck earns $5.625-million. But Tuch is reportedly looking for double his current salary, and Sabres management may not be willing to pay that amount.

That said, Buffalo has the cap space to absorb the raise Trocheck would bring with him to the Sabres. The problem, of course, is that Trocheck has a 12-team no-trade list, and it’s very possible the Sabres could be on it. But if the Rangers continue taking up space near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, Rangers GM Chris Drury could choose to shake up his team. And if Rangers star forward Artemi Panarin moves on from the Blueshirts when he becomes a UFA this summer, why wouldn’t they move to acquire Tuch now and sign him to a lucrative extension before he hits the open market?

This is where Sabres GM Jarmo Kekalainen has to be demanding, and tell Drury the cost for Tuch is Trocheck. And we can see Drury paying that price. If the Rangers are going to underperform, someone of consequence has to go. And if that means moving Trocheck instead of other, younger Rangers, Drury should be prepared to pay that price.

It’s true Trocheck is having a bit of a down year, with 10 goals in 30 games. But it’s his hard-nosed approach that not only makes him valuable to the Rangers, but to Team U.S.A. at last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off and at the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympics. And that’s why Kekalainen has to drive a hard bargain to acquire Trocheck. If the Rangers want something of quality in Tuch, they have to pay something of quality in Trocheck. And if Drury doesn’t want to pay that price, Kekalainen can shop Tuch to some other team – maybe one of the Rangers’ Metropolitan Division rivals.

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Of course, the Sabres would have to convince Trocheck to waive any no-trade protection that would prevent a deal from going down, but that’s Kekalainen’s job as a GM – he needs to be a salesman and let Trocheck know he could play a crucial role in ending Buffalo’s playoff drought. That could be preferable to Trocheck rather than spending the rest of his career on a Rangers team that’s no longer a lock to be a playoff team. 

Trocheck has another three years remaining on his current contract. At 32 years old, he’s a physically-engaging player who can give you 25 goals and 60 points with consistency. And that’s a solid replacement for Tuch if he’s pricing himself out of Buffalo’s market.

In the end, if we had to choose between Tuch and Trocheck, we’d go with Tuch for his higher scoring upside. But Trocheck’s numbers aren’t that far from Tuch’s, and Trocheck has some great playoff experience that would be extremely valuable to the Sabres and where they are in their development.

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If Kekalainen can’t get Tuch re-signed, and the Rangers don’t rebound, we can definitely see Drury making Trocheck available to swap him for Tuch. It’s a trade that could help both teams, and those are the type of deals that get made in the modern-day NHL.

So if Trocheck does become a Sabre, don’t say nobody saw it coming. There’s a fit for him in Buffalo, and as Kekalainen tries getting his team into the post-season, Trocheck could help him get there.