kingcong39

albany, NY • United States •

Yet Another Tyler Myers Blog Staring Nikita Zadorov

Admittedly, the title of this blog was meant to mislead.

There have been more words wasted on the idea of trading Tyler Myers from a range of a bag of pucks that Sabres fans should be happy to get for him to nothing less than the three best players on the opposing team.

There is one, and only one, way in which you trade Tyler Myers if you are the Buffalo Sabres.

That is if the return is a true top ling scoring winger, preferably LW (hello Taylor Hall).

There is no need or reasonable thought that could make sense of trading Myers for a collection of prospects, picks, or 2nd line players. The Sabres are literally littered with all of the above, and you could easily say that the best they have in their entire prospect pool, at either LW or RW, are 2nd line, potentially fringe first line, players. Sure, you could make the argument that any one of Armia, Compher, Hurley, Bailey, Fasching, Baptiste, or even Karabacek, could be first line material on a line with two other top end players. Expecting that, however, is another idea entirely.

If you are moving Myers for that true top line wing scorer, you would need to likely include someone like Grigorenko, and one of the 7 players mentioned above in the deal to get that player (Hall, etc.). You might even need to include a pick as well (no 1st's if you are including that much quality in terms of prospects).

With all that said, perhaps there is a more cagey move to be made to acquire that top end winger. Perhaps the Sabres fans are targeting the wrong defenseman to be using as trade bait. Maybe Nikita Zadorov is that defenseman?

I fully expect the answer to be Zadorov by a landslide if a poll was posted right now asking which defenseman you would rather keep (Zadorov or Myers).

At this point, Myers is who he is, so to speak. He should and would easily produce more points were he on a team with even a modest collection of productive forwards.

Zadorov, on the other hand, is a total unknown. Sure, he looks like a shiny new toy on defense now, but Sabres fans have seen this before with other young defensemen they have had (Sekera, Weber!, Butler, etc.). Trading Zadorov now, while he is seen as limitless, would bring an optimal return (top line wing), along with one or two other pieces. It would also simply be a hockey trade, where one team has a need at defense and another has a need at wing.

Ah, but maybe that is just silly talk where I'm having just a bit of fun with the Sabres fans, and fans of other teams.

The reality is the intelligent play would be to hold on to both Myers & Zadorov, along with Ristolainen, keep all three 1st round draft picks for 2015, and target an impact player via the UFA pool either this offseason or next. They do have a ton of cap room to use, but what fun is it being prudent?