Grading the Mittelstadt/Byram trade: Avalanche nab 2C, Sabres bet big on potential

This year’s “Trade Deadline Week” has already lived up to the hype.

Wednesday alone has been nothing short of seismic. As of this writing, we’ve already received word of a half-dozen different deals, with various other rumblings about players like Jake Guentzel and Jason Zucker.

Who knows whether those of us who cover hockey for a living will still have anything to talk about on Deadline Day itself, but at this rate, Friday could provide a much-needed respite from all the chaos.

By far the biggest deal of the bunch on Wednesday was the blockbuster swap between the Buffalo Sabres and Colorado Avalanche: Casey Mittelstadt for Bowen Byram, one-for-one. The news dropped seemingly out of nowhere, just minutes after it was initially reported that the Avalanche had traded center Ryan Johansen and a first-round pick to the Philadelphia Flyers for defenseman Sean Walker.

The deal with the Flyers opened up an obvious spot down the middle for the Avalanche to fill, and boy, did they ever. The Avs used their newfound surplus of defenders to their advantage, adding a promising center in Mittelstadt who will likely anchor their second line going forward.

Meanwhile, the Sabres shored up their paltry group of left-handed defenders that previously included the likes of … uh, Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, and Mattias Samuelsson. Hm. Well, we’ll get to that in a minute. It’s time for another edition of the Daily Faceoff Trade Grades!

COLORADO AVALANCHE

Receive:

C Casey Mittelstadt, 25 – $2.5 million cap hit, pending RFA

This side of the deal is pretty cut-and-dried. The Avs are widely considered to be one of the top Stanley Cup contenders out there — of course, they just won it all back in 2022 — but they’ve dealt with a glaring weakness all season long: their center depth.

Ryan Johansen spent much of the first half of the season occupying a middle-six center position for this Avalanche team. The Philadelphia Flyers acquired Johansen in the Sean Walker trade on Wednesday and then immediately placed him on waivers, which he’ll likely clear given his $4 million cap hit this year and next. Johansen managed just 13 goals and 23 points in 63 games with the Avs this year. That’s just not good enough.

Mittelstadt is a very solid player who could very easily become a long-term piece for these Avs. There had been some rumblings that the Sabres might not have been thrilled at the prospect of ponying up on a long-term extension for the Eden Prairie, MN product, who has arbitration rights as an RFA this coming summer. With Colorado clearing out Johansen’s dollars for next year, they can probably afford to pay Mittelstadt fair market value.

It took a while for Mittelstadt to develop into a top-six center in Buffalo. After scoring 29 goals and 106 points in 144 games over the last two seasons, it’s probably safe to say he’s now at that level. He’s a bit older than Byram, who was drafted two years later, but he fits easily into the same cohort as guys like Cale Makar (also drafted in 2017) and Mikko Rantanen (2015).

Between Mittelstadt, Ross Colton, Jonathan Drouin, Logan O’Connor, and Miles Wood, the Avs are blessed with a wide variety of versatile forward options to surround the likes of Rantanen, Nathan MacKinnon, and Valeri Nichushkin. When you’ve got two of the very best players in the league in MacKinnon and Makar, you can afford to take swings on players for the secondary areas of your lineup. Mittelstadt had only just started to blossom in Buffalo. Who’s to say what kind of level he could reach with a bit of time next to Colorado’s big horses?

It’s tough to find a downside to this deal. Yes, they lost Byram, but Walker should be able to replace him pretty seamlessly; meanwhile, Mittelstadt is a pretty significant upgrade on Johansen in so many areas at this point. The Avs did well here.

Grade: A

BUFFALO SABRES

Receive:

D Bowen Byram, 22 – $3.85 million cap hit through 2024-25

This is a bit of a puzzler. The Sabres have a ton of left-handed defenders but could use some help basically everywhere else — so, naturally, they went out on Wednesday and traded a center for yet another left-handed defenseman.

Byram is a skilled young two-way defender with a Stanley Cup ring. He has another year on his contract and won’t turn 23 until June. But while he was fantastic at both ends of the ice in 2022 during the Avs’ run to their third championship, Byram has struggled to remain healthy since and his on-ice results have suffered as a consequence.

During his first two NHL seasons, Byram dealt with three separate concussions. That’s the kind of injury history that can derail a career pretty quickly — we’ve seen it happen before, most notably to former No. 2 overall pick Nolan Patrick. While Byram has proven himself to be more than capable of logging big minutes, there’s always going to be concern about his health until he can string together a few full seasons.

In any event, it’s a bit difficult to scope out the Sabres’ long-term plan here. They now have Byram, Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, and Mattias Samuelsson on the left side. Their right side is a complete hodgepodge, albeit Dahlin has quite a bit of experience playing his off side and could theoretically slide back there. Up front, they have a young group that includes Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens, Jack Quinn, J-J Peterka, Zach Benson, and Peyton Krebs, plus a few prospects (including Matt Savoie and Jiri Kulich) and a couple of key veterans in Jeff Skinner and Alex Tuch. There are a lot of valuable players there, but who are the centerpieces of their core? Will Tage or Cozens lock down the No. 1 center role going forward? What does this team’s top pairing look like down the road? It feels like we’re still a ways away from getting answers to those questions.

Of course, not much of that pertains directly to the trade at hand here. Then again, the fact that this trade has now taken place kind of raises those other questions in a bit of a circular manner, in the sense that Buffalo adding yet another lefty on defense almost feels like a precursor to yet another move. For that reason, it’s tempting to give the Sabres an “Incomplete” grade here, but it’s probably safer to slap them with a B- for now and call it a day.

Grade: B- (Subject to change)