Homegrown Sabres, or "buying" wins??
Posted 11:42 AM ET | Comments 1
So with the off-season signings by Buffalo, the general attacks around Hockeybuzz has been that Buffalo is going the (failed) route of the Rangers and other teams and is trying to "buy themselves a title".
I decided to look into the team to prove how inaccurate that accusation is.
Of the 20 players who have played for Buffalo this season, 14 of these players were drafted by the Sabres.
These 14 players account for 3,425 man-games played exclusively for the team.
The 6 players that have been brought in are:
Cody McCormick - 86 of 276 career games in Buffalo
Jordan Leopold - 76 of 512 career games in Buffalo
Brad Boyes - 26 of 498 career games in Buffalo
Christian Ehrhoff - 5 of 505 career games in Buffalo
Robin Regehr - 5 of 831 career games in Buffalo
Ville Leino - 5 of 154 career games in Buffalo
Of these 6 players, 3 were Free Agent signings - McCormick, Leopold and Leino. The other 3 were all acquired via trade.
Despite the "few" number of players not completely home-grown, the ratio of games played as a Sabres vs total games played is pretty close: 3628 games as Sabres, 2573 games elsewhere - a 58.5% ratio.
The ratio is skewed by the fact that Buffalo has so many youngsters on the team. Of the 14 home-grown players, 5 have played in fewer than 100 games (3 of them in less than 25 games). 4 of the non Buffalo drafted players have played in a total of 2,234 NHL games, which is more than 11 of our drafted players have combined games in their careers (plus a spare 221 games in-hand for the "outsiders"
.
In comparison, Buffalo has only 5 players who have played in 400 or more games:
Vanek - 474
Roy - 474
Pominville - 464
Gaustad - 428
Miller - 403
The 4 most experienced of the "outsiders" - Ehrhoff, Leopold, Regehr and Boyes - have combined for the 2,234 total games mentioned above (558.5 games on average).
In my opinion, I think it's pretty safe to say that we're a home-grown team that has just made some trades (for the most part) for some veterans in the last 2 seasons.
On the money side of things, the 6 non-drafted players account for $20.72 million in cap-hit, or 32.3% of the team's total cap-hit (an average of 5.4% per player). The "disparity" of what the home-grown players account for on the payroll is much different to what the non-drafted players account for when compared to the # of games played.
As a comparison, Vanek, Pominville and Miller combine for $18.7 million of the team's total cap-hit, bringing them to a near-even total of the "outsiders" combined cap hit.
I don't expect this to change too many opinions out there, but it seemed worthy of something to look up and...god forbid, help bring some facts to this "argument"
For other coverage of Sabres news and information, please visit my website at http://www.sabres-fans.com. I will try to write pieces on Hockeybuzz periodically, but more regular content can be found on my own site, which has it's own chat and forums as well.
Thanks!
-stashu
I decided to look into the team to prove how inaccurate that accusation is.
Of the 20 players who have played for Buffalo this season, 14 of these players were drafted by the Sabres.
These 14 players account for 3,425 man-games played exclusively for the team.
The 6 players that have been brought in are:
Cody McCormick - 86 of 276 career games in Buffalo
Jordan Leopold - 76 of 512 career games in Buffalo
Brad Boyes - 26 of 498 career games in Buffalo
Christian Ehrhoff - 5 of 505 career games in Buffalo
Robin Regehr - 5 of 831 career games in Buffalo
Ville Leino - 5 of 154 career games in Buffalo
Of these 6 players, 3 were Free Agent signings - McCormick, Leopold and Leino. The other 3 were all acquired via trade.
Despite the "few" number of players not completely home-grown, the ratio of games played as a Sabres vs total games played is pretty close: 3628 games as Sabres, 2573 games elsewhere - a 58.5% ratio.
The ratio is skewed by the fact that Buffalo has so many youngsters on the team. Of the 14 home-grown players, 5 have played in fewer than 100 games (3 of them in less than 25 games). 4 of the non Buffalo drafted players have played in a total of 2,234 NHL games, which is more than 11 of our drafted players have combined games in their careers (plus a spare 221 games in-hand for the "outsiders"
.In comparison, Buffalo has only 5 players who have played in 400 or more games:
Vanek - 474
Roy - 474
Pominville - 464
Gaustad - 428
Miller - 403
The 4 most experienced of the "outsiders" - Ehrhoff, Leopold, Regehr and Boyes - have combined for the 2,234 total games mentioned above (558.5 games on average).
In my opinion, I think it's pretty safe to say that we're a home-grown team that has just made some trades (for the most part) for some veterans in the last 2 seasons.
On the money side of things, the 6 non-drafted players account for $20.72 million in cap-hit, or 32.3% of the team's total cap-hit (an average of 5.4% per player). The "disparity" of what the home-grown players account for on the payroll is much different to what the non-drafted players account for when compared to the # of games played.
As a comparison, Vanek, Pominville and Miller combine for $18.7 million of the team's total cap-hit, bringing them to a near-even total of the "outsiders" combined cap hit.
I don't expect this to change too many opinions out there, but it seemed worthy of something to look up and...god forbid, help bring some facts to this "argument"
For other coverage of Sabres news and information, please visit my website at http://www.sabres-fans.com. I will try to write pieces on Hockeybuzz periodically, but more regular content can be found on my own site, which has it's own chat and forums as well.
Thanks!
-stashu
Nice digging Stash