Looking at the defense crunch for the Sabres

Even though the Buffalo Sabres signed some much-needed defensemen as the offseason started, they now face a problem: having too many of them. With the signings of Erik Johnson and Connor Clifton, they now have nine defensemen on their active roster and 24 players.

Those two signings make sense, as the team has struggled with defense depth for some time. However, Don Granato and the coaching staff have a few hard decisions to make as the new season approaches. There are a few reasonable options to send down to the AHL or trade entirely. One of them is an obvious choice, as the Buffalo News’ Lance Lysowski commented on earlier in the week.

Jacob Bryson played 59 games last year, most of those paired with Ilya Lyubushkin. He missed six games with injuries and was healthy scratched for 17 throughout the year. His stats don’t make his case any better. In the games he did play, his advanced metrics are not the best. In addition to being scratched a lot, Bryson averaged less than 15 minutes a night – weak minutes, even for a bottom-pairing defender. On a team that needed the defense to step up, Granato didn’t seem too impressed with the 25-year-old, and neither were most Sabres fans.

When compared with his fellow defensemen, it becomes clear that Bryson is the best option to leave out. Mattias Samuelsson will be healthy to start the year, Clifton and Johnson were signed to help in the back end, Own Power and Rasmus Dahlin are set to take another step forward, and there isn’t much space to be average among a quickly growing Sabres core.

Another player the Sabres could consider sending down or trying to trade is Henri Jokiharju, who also didn’t have a great season in 2022-23. His advanced metrics were slightly better than Bryson’s, and Granato played him in the top four with Power for the majority of the season. The pairing didn’t pass with flying colors, though, and it’s likely a driving reason why the Sabres signed Clifton. With that said, Jokiharju did play over 20 minutes a night – something Clifton hasn’t done to date with the Bruins, and there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to replicate his strong play from last year with increased responsibility.

The team could also look to waive Riley Stillman, who has one year left at a $1.35M cap hit and is, from a financial standpoint, the easiest player to cut ties with. His cap hit is just $200K over the buriable threshold, which is what he would cost against the cap if assigned to the minors. The team parted with a quality prospect in Josh Bloom to acquire him from the Vancouver Canucks last season, however, and he did hold his own defensively in Buffalo’s environment. He does carry a rather limited offensive upside, but he may be a more ideal seventh (or eighth) defenseman candidate than others mentioned in this piece.

With last season’s arrival of Power and the signing of Lyubushkin, Bryson needed to impress to keep his job, and he failed to do so. Now, the team has signed substitutes for him, and he has become replaceable. Likely, the stars need to align for him to get a spot on the team when the new season starts.