Zach Benson: The Sabres will have to make a move to avoid a hostile takeover

DansLesCoulisses.com
Zach Benson: The Sabres will have to make a move to avoid a hostile takeover
Credit: Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images

After a superb season that ended a long streak of poor results, the Sabres now find themselves in a tough spot once again.

The problem for top-tier teams is often retaining their best players while staying under the NHL salary cap. Well, they're in for quite a challenge this summer due to the contracts of Alex Tuch and Zach Benson.

Nicolas Cloutier of TVA Sports analyzed the situation on Tuesday and realized that Buffalo will have to do some maneuvering to prevent another team from making a hostile offer for Zach Benson.

As Nicolas Cloutier explained, the Sabres will have just over $12 million in cap space this summer. The problem is that they need to sign free agents Alex Tuch (no compensation), Zach Benson (with compensation), and Peyton Krebs (with compensation).

If rumors are to be believed that Tuch will get a contract worth around $10 million per season, that would leave only $2 million for Benson and Krebs. It's impossible to sign all these players without making a trade.

If Buffalo finds itself in this situation, that's when Nicolas Cloutier would see another team make a hostile offer for Zach Benson. After the playoffs he just had, believe me, every NHL team would love to have a guy like Benson on their roster.

The Sabres will therefore be forced to make a move and perhaps even weaken their team by shedding some of their bigger contracts.

Let's say the Sabres want to keep Tuch and Benson on their roster; they'd have to find a way to get rid of a player like Josh Norris, Jordan Greenway, Jason Zucker, or even a defenseman like Bowen Byram. That would really hurt them.

The other option for the Sabres would be to completely abandon the Tuch project and let him test the free-agent market.

That could be an option, especially considering that he didn't play very well in the playoffs against the Canadiens, failing to score a single point in the series.

So here's a huge dilemma for the Sabres organization ahead of the free-agent market opening. After tasting success, they now have to deal with the consequences of that very success.


In a nutshell

– You can't blame the fans for being excited.

– Jakub Dobes is truly part of Canadiens history.

– Good news for Devils head coach Sheldon Keefe.

– The Mavericks have fired their head coach, Jason Kidd.

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