GM Kevyn Adams said he was willing to weaponize cap space, but not for a low-round pick
The Buffalo Sabres made a pair of deals on Trade Deadline Day, sending veteran defenseman Erik Johnson to the Philadelphia Flyers for a 2024 fourth-round pick and team captain Kyle Okposo to the Florida Panthers for minor league defenseman Calle Sjalin and a 2024 seventh-round pick, but in spite of them having high salaries for depth players, the Sabres did not have to retain salary as many other sellers did.
The Sabres were a club with a large amount of available cap space and a number of contenders were seeking teams to act as a middleman to lower the cap hit on players such as Noah Hanifin, Ilya Lyubushkin, and Adam Henrique, but GM Kevyn Adams indicated that while he was open to weaponizing cap space.
"It was a little trickier this year. I had been approached on two or three occasions over the last week and I was absolutely open to doing it with the hesitation that we also knew we were going into today with unrestricted free agents and I didn't want to block ourselves from having an opportunity to move someone because I use retentions." Adams said. "The retentions, if they were going to be of enough value, it would have been absolutely something we would have been ready to do.”
The Flyers were the third party in the trade with Calgary and Vegas, and got a 2024 fifth round pick for retaining 25% of Hanifin’s $4.95 million salary, while Tampa Bay earned a 2025 fourth-rounder from Edmonton for shaving off a quarter of Henrique’s nearly $6 million cap hit. Carolina got a 2024 sixth-rounder from Toronto for eating $687,500 of Lyubushkin’s salary.
Adams said that Buffalo was open to being involved in such cap machinations, but not for a lower round draft pick.
“Organizationally, (we'd have) no problem doing it If it makes sense. A late pick…that's not what made sense for us, especially with the free agents that we had."
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