Which Sabres Would Look Best In A Columbus Blue Jackets Jersey?

Which Sabres Would Look Best In A Columbus Blue Jackets Jersey?

seems like basically everyone’s available from the Buffalo Sabers this off season so uh let’s go window shopping and see what we can pick up for the Blue Jackets for cheap that’s what we’re doing on today’s Locked On Blue Jackets you’re Locked on Blue Jackets your daily podcast on the Columbus Blue Jackets part of the Locked On podcast network your team every day hello and welcome to Lockdown Blue Jackets part of the Lockdown Podcast Network your team every day i am as always your host Jay Foster here to give you the good the bad and the ugly about your favorite team and mine the Columbus Blue Jackets before we get things started I want to thank everyone for making this your first listen of the day every single day lux Blue Jackets is free and available on all podcast platforms and over on YouTube before we get things started I also have to let you know that today’s episode is brought to you by Monarch Money take control of your finances with Monarch Money use code locked on NHL at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year so everything is bad in Buffalo Sabers Land again always eternally maybe um but it seems like it’s getting kind of kind of dicey over there um it seems like there are a bunch of players that they’re thinking about moving there are a bunch of players that are thinking about you know asking out or moving on um so I thought like any self-respecting NHL team uh the Blue Jackets should probably try and see what they can fleece out of the Buffalo Sabres um before someone else gets there first so that’s what we’re going to do today um we’re going to continue with our like miniish series it’s not really a minieries anymore it’s a full-blown series of like what players should the Blue Jackets be trying to acquire this summer right and we’ve looked at a bunch of UFAS so far we looked at Jason Robertson yesterday who’s an uh not an RFA sorry is um has a year left on his contract but is again maybe available and maybe not conflicting reports on that um and there’s a bunch of guys on the Buffalo Sabres that like people should or not people NHL teams should be queuing up to try and get a hold of right so we’re going to talk about a couple of defensemen there’s a couple of forwards I want to talk about there’s a goalie I want to talk about um let’s start with the forwards because they are they’re at the top of the list um and there’s two guys that I’m kind of paying attention to here in in terms of the Buffalo Sabres it’s the two guys that everyone is paying attention to um in terms of like being available um Alex Tuck is uh 29year-old uh winger/c center making 4.75 million and is a UFA next summer the other for more intriguing to me prospect is um JJ Purka is apparently not super happy in uh in Buffalo and is potentially an option to whether you offer sheet him whether you make a trade again do like a sign and trade um get a hold of his rights whatever um but apparently he is he is also an option and he’s the of the two forwards he’s the one I’m more excited about um Alex Tuck I think is a a very good player and if the Blue Jackets somehow managed to get hold of him uh you know I wouldn’t be mad about that he had 67 points in 82 games for the Sabres this season um I believe was the main piece of the Jack Eel trade back in the uh back in the day um former former first round pick um has 382 points in 536 career games um and since coming to Buffalo has been pretty good um not quite a point a game but near enough right um had 36 goals this season which would have led the Blue Jackets right um is is a a pretty a pretty fun player um comes with a year to figure it out um you know he’s he’s under contract until next summer so like if you think that you are the team that can you know sign sign him to long term if that’s what you want um then go for it my worry is and it’s kind of the worry that we’ve talked about with all of the players of a similar age right is do you want to lock Alex Tuck up for the next 8 years depending on you know what what the contract he wants is like I said he’s making just under 5 million at the minute um he’s probably going to want a raise from that um that I believe is only his second contract yeah that was the that was the contract he signed out of his out of his ELC um so what like is that is that an option the answer is yes but I think there is a better option on the Sabres and he is a guy that I know um a couple of everydayers have have shown interest in alex Tuck I mean um he’s he’s big he is like again he scores goals which like frankly is on the one hand is the most important thing on the other hand the Blue Jackets didn’t struggle to score goals this season but I’m never going to turn down a goal scorer right because who’s to say that every goal scorer won’t go cold next season you can never have enough goal scorers um that being said if there is a different forward that the Blue Jackets could acquire from the Buffalo Sabres I personally think JJ Purka is the guy that you should be calling on he had 68 points in 77 games this season is only 23 years old um 150 points in 238 games um and really kind of popped this season I thought 27 goals um which was one off his career high which he set the the previous season saw a big jump big jump in his ice time um big jump in his power play efficiency as well um 18 of those 68 points were on power play which again is not nothing um and he is an RFA who I believe does not approach UFA his UFA season is 2029 so he’s still got I believe at least four years of uh of team control um I believe he’s coming off his ELC um yeah so there’s a there’s a lot of flexibility there um and honestly it sounds like he’s kind of done with being in um being in Buffalo which I don’t know that I can that I can really blame him i know that I sit here in a glass house of underperforming you know team watching but I just there there’s something there right i think there is there is a player there um plays left wing like if you can if you can acquire him and again maybe you throw him with Fantelli and um Johnson maybe you see if he’s got what it takes to hang with the big boys in Monahan and and Marenko not that Fantelli is not a big boy yet but he’s you know he’s he’s going to be right purka is six years younger than Tuck will almost certainly be cheaper to both to pay actual money and also probably to acquire um because from the sounds of things he he wants out and if I know that then probably all of the GMs know that right um so there goes your there goes your leverage um and I think he fits in with the age of this team a little bit better than Tuck like I’m not saying that you go out and you acquire a 29year-old and like that’s you know he’s the oldest man alive and everything is you know it’s the worst thing you could do is acquire old players like you need veterans you need veteran players um and I’m again I wouldn’t be upset if the jackets went out and got Alex Tuck um I do just think that I would lean more towards Purka just because of cost because of youth um and also frankly I just think he’s really really fun to watch um I like Alex Tuck as a player clearly very accomplished um but JJ Berserker is just really fun to watch um scored a goal against the Blue Jackets um the last time these two teams faced off against each other um and if I remember rightly it was a really annoying goal that I remember being like “Man I hope I don’t have to put up with this every time we play the Sabres for the next 15 years.” and it sounds like we won’t but of all of the players that uh that I’m going to look at today I think JJ Purka might be at the top of my list um it’s going to be between him and and one other player but for my money anyway JJ Purka is a guy that you want to JJ PKA is a guy that will grow with the team tuck I think will be good now and probably start to decline in a couple of years purka ostensibly hasn’t even really hit his peak yet so it’s it’s a real kind of delayed gratification right do you want good player now or do you want better player in three years and the Blue Jackets are in a weird place at the minute where you could quite happily go either way i think ideally you want good player in one to two years but I personally think I I personally think that that JJ Purka is the move over Alex Tuck i will say the one the one knock on him is the Blue Jackets people say that the Blue Jackets need a little bit more size and I kind of go back and forth on on how much I agree with this um but obviously Alex Tuck is is big boy like 6’4 and a million pounds jj Perska 6’9 190 lb like do the Blue Jackets need another small winger possibly not but he’s not that small you know he’s not 5’9 and 160 lbs not that there’s anything wrong with that obviously but I can see where people are coming from in terms of wanting to add more size up front with um with Tuck but I still think Eileen Purka um take a quick break and then we get back there’s a couple of defensemen that I want to talk about that uh could be available and that the Blue Jackets probably should make a call about we’re going to do that in just a second here on Lock on Blue Jackets first I’m going to tell you about Monarch Money do you ever check your bank account and wonder where did all your money go between dining out online shopping entertainment it’s super easy to lose track and that’s where Monarch Money comes in they are your personal CFO giving you full visibility and control over your finances monic Money is not just a budgeting app it is a complete financial command center you can track all your accounts investments and spending in one place so you can stop managing your money and start building wealth i have been uh going to the store for little treats a lot recently and uh Monarch yelled at me about it so now I have been doing that less saving more budgeting smarter and I don’t have to juggle multiple apps previously I would have to go to my banking my banking app and then go to a budgeting app and then a spreadsheet that I built myself then back to my banking app you can do all of that in Monarch you can check your finances track spending and even plan long-term goals take control of your finances with Monarch Money use code lockdown NHL at monachmoney.com for 50% off your first year that’s monachmoney.com code lockdown NHL for 50% off your first year welcome back to Lock Blue Jackets uh we’re talking about the Buffalo Sabers today and how everyone is everyone in their mother is kind of circling them like vultures right now and I was like well why don’t I get involved in that um so we’ve talked about the forwards uh we’re going to move on and talk about a couple of defensemen now uh one of whom is a pending RFA the other uh I believe literally just got locked up last summer to an extremely expensive and long contract and apparently they regret it already which is surprising to me but let’s talk about Owen Power 22 years old former first overall pick very good friends with Kent Johnson they went to the University of Michigan together um and were basically inseparable by all accounts um Owen Power is currently on uh I think he just finished year one of a 7-year contract uh that costs $8.35 million uh right up until the age of uh right up until the year 2031 so big big contract obviously um sorry he just finished year two of that no yes yes he just finished year one of that i can read i can read just straight up I can read um that is a a big risk of a contract I think um unfortunately that does seem like how things are going these days um Owen Powell did not have a bad season u by any means um he had you know it was almost half a point a game as a defenseman um I think the main problem that Buffalo Sabers fans have with Owen Power is he’s not Rasma Darlene right um which is not his fault um and I think he probably did have a bit of a down year this year he struggled but like so did everyone on the team you know like I’m I’m looking at obviously plus minus is not the be all and end all of of this team um but when you look at Rasmos Darene and Bo Byron being plus 11 and uh Owen Power being minus 13 like I can see why fans are frustrated by that um he only scored seven goals which is a fine amount of goals for a defenseman right but I think for if you’re paying almost eight and a half million then you probably want a little bit more than that um does play a fair amount of ice time as well so you’d want to you you know you you’d want to think that what you’re getting for your ice time is worth the again almost $8.5 million that you pay for him especially considering like I don’t know that I would consider Owen Power a really offensive defenseman i wouldn’t consider him a particularly defensive guy either like he really is just kind of at his best he’s a two-way guy that doesn’t that is is good at both but doesn’t ever really like you’re never going to see like Jacob Slav numbers and you’re never going to see like Zack Winsky Kar Quinn Hughes numbers from him I don’t think right um decent on the p on the uh power play surprisingly good on the penalty kill um but at even strength really just kind of is average um grades out in uh at hockeyfizz.com as about a second pairing guy which I don’t know that I necessarily want to pay 8.5 million for a second pairing guy however I do wonder if what happens if you pair him with a guy like Mattuk um and really let one of them lean into I don’t I don’t mind which way around this goes but let one of them lean into the offense and let one of them lean into the defense i think you could see something akin to like the first couple years of of Warensky and Jones right where if one of them was was on the offense the other one was doing the defense and and vice versa right i’m a big Owen Power fan um I was surprised that the team was thinking about moving him i feel like there’ve been murmurss about this for for a while now i remember I distinctly remember talking about this around about the trade deadline is is you know Owen Power might be available should you go and get him um and I still think that like yeah probably um but that I I understand that like that is a a hefty price tag and he’s also probably going to be expensive and it falls back into well what do you do with the defense you know if you if you want to bring both Fabro and Prov back you can’t go out and pay for you know an Owen power because then you’re going to be paying Winsky nine and a half you’re still paying excuse me you’re still paying Severson like six and a half or whatever it is um Matt Taychuk’s going to be making bank in a couple of years you’ve got OM and Power making this money that’s that is a lot of big contracts on the back end right and like I get it you have to pay for good players but I don’t necessarily know that Owen Power is where the money should go even though I would very much like to have him on the team um the other problem also with with power and also with the other defenseman that we’re going to talk about is they’re both left defenseman the Blue Jackets really could do with a right defenseman you know because at the minute their their best options at right defense are pending UFA so like Fabro and like Fabro is a right defenseman he might be gone prov is a left defenseman masquerading as a right shot as a right defenseman he might also be gone right so if both of those guys walk for whatever reason you got to have to you know you can’t go into the season with Damon Severson and Erica Branson as your top right defenseman you know someone’s going to have to play on their off wing on their off side um or you can go out and get a right defenseman right own power is not that i don’t know if he can play on his uh on his off off side i haven’t like super looked into that but he is he is an option that again if the Blue Jackets went out and acquired him like price dependent I’d probably be like “Yeah sure let’s go for it.” Um the other player is someone that again has been mentioned as potentially on the move for a while now and is um someone that a lot of teams are or should be interested in um and that’s Bo Byum uh who’s coming off of a threeyear $3.85 million um contract spent the first four years of his career with the Colorado Avalanche move got traded to uh the Buffalo Sabres uh a couple of years ago um I don’t remember who for off the top of my head um he’s a pending RFA he is only 23 which um Owen Power is only 22 as well by the way so like both of these defensemen are extremely young um and also probably again haven’t even hit their prime right um Byum was uh one of the better guys for Buffalo this season i feel like um again played a ton of minutes um had 38 points in 82 games which is probably a little bit low for for a guy like Bum um something I did find interesting is um just how much hockey.com’s uh model does not like him um it basically says that he is bad offensively and worse defensively um and grades out as worse than a third pairing defenseman which I find interesting because that’s not what I’ve seen from basically anyone um so I I would love to know like the model sensibly accounts for you know quality of teammate quality of competition quality of coaching like so like if you’re playing for a bad team like it should even out a little bit but even playing for a bad team it seems like Bo Byum is uh is not not great by by this model’s standard which just happens to be the model I use and I’m not going to sit here and say that this model is the be all and end all right because there are a lot of very smart people that like Bo Byum as a defenseman a lot I think he is fine and has potential and I think he probably again it turn if if he wants out of Buffalo i think you’ll pay less for Bayroom than you will for Power you’ll have him under team control to decide a contract as well you’re not going to be you know locked into a contract like you are with Power um but again he falls into he is a left defenseman right um I don’t know if he can play on his right side but I personally would love to have at least one legitimate right defenseman instead of just having a bunch of left defenseman masquerading because the Blue Jackets have a lot of um a lot of left defensemen that just kind of play the right side um so I would be I would be happyish with either of these players i think I was trying to decide which one I would prefer and I do think I am I am higher on power as a player but I think Byron probably fits into the the plan slightly more just in terms of like cap flexibility and things like that um but I still think you want a right defenseman and both these guys are left defenseman right so while they’re both kind of intriguing um I think I’m not going to break the bank for either of these guys i don’t think um you know I’m still way more interested in Purka than I am in either of these guys so if you can you know if that’s what you get from from Buffalo if you manage to get Bobum sure but I personally would be making the call about JJ Purka um and then if that doesn’t work you know swiveing to oh well what about this guy what about this guy etc um and there’s one other guy that I want to talk about uh and that is a goalie um and I this is a goalie that I have kind of flip-flopped on in terms of is he right for Columbus um but we’re going to take a quick break and then when we get back we’re going to talk about um Deon Levi who is somehow the third string goalie in Buffalo despite being really quite good so we’ll talk about that just a second here on lock jackets welcome back to lockdown blue jackets we’re talking about the Buffalo Sabres and what we would pick from their still warm corpse if uh if the rumor isn’t true and basically everyone is available right uh we talked about forward we’ve talked about defenseman um I want to talk about a goalie now um and that is uh another pending RFA um and that’s Deon Levi who somehow managed to become the third string goalie behind Ukapan who is locked up for a crazy contract um and James Rymer who is 37 years of age now Rhymer I feel I believe Rhymer was pretty good for the Sabres um this season you know like for the Sabres you know uh and again I understand that I live in a a glass house of of goalending but like James Rama had a 911 save percentage this year you know um Levi struggled in very limited action uh started eight games for the Sabres only won two of them had an 872 save percentage and a 4.12 goals against average um I don’t know that again I don’t know that they put him in the best position to succeed because your starting goalie only has an 887 safe percentage right so something is clearly like the goalending in in Buffalo is clearly suffering I assume from the fact that the rest of the team is not very good or the the team has good individual players but just doesn’t seem to be working and I don’t know whether that’s a coaching thing or whether that’s a systems thing or like those are kind of the same thing but you know what I mean right Um it is in the AHL that Deon Levi uh really really shone this season um and I’m just pulling up the the regular season numbers at the minute um because he was one of the one of the better goalies for um for an AHL team this season um he was where is he there he is uh had a 919 save percentage was just behind uh our very own Jet Greavves uh had 25 wins 13 losses and four overtime losses and pretty like again was was was a very good goalie on a very good Rochester team in fairness you know Jack Greavves was a very good goalie on a kind of mid Monsters team deon Levi was very good uh I believe was named to the AHL Allstar game but I could be wrong about that off the top of my head um kind of struggled a little bit in um in the playoffs uh had a a quote unquote only a 910 say percentage uh went five and three um lost the the Americans I believe got swept by the Laval Rocket or No they would have I think they won no it took them to game five I think so but it wasn’t to be um I think there’s potential there i think that I definitely think there’s a goalie there and it comes back to this is not this is not really a conversation about Deon Levi himself right this is more of a conversation about what do you want the goalending to look like in Columbus this season right is your plan put Jet Greavves in go in net for 50 of those 82 games and find like an old guy to back him up right like a you know find find his James Rymer let’s say and I’m not suggesting that we’re going to sign James Rymer um but like is that what you do or do you go out and try and get someone like a Deon Levi who has that potential to be have a 1A1B situation with Columbus um and that can potentially again be really good for your AHL team if it turns out he’s not ready right like there’s nothing stopping the Blue Jackets from going out and getting more than one goalie but looking at the goalies that are available like the UFA market for goalies is abysmal the RFA market there are some guys there um like I believe Mir Le u Levi Marilinan from Ottawa is is available um and there was another guy that’s available that I don’t remember off the top of my head is is a pending RFA but again a guy that you could potentially make a make a swing on um but I think Deon Levi is uh is an interesting option for Columbus uh I don’t know if he’s still uh waivers exempt i believe he is i don’t know when he will stop being um waivers exempt because the waiverss rules are stupid um but he’s only played like less than 50 NHL games like his NHL debut was in the 22 23 season he played seven games then played 23 last year and then played nine this year right so he’s not like he’s not like completely like un untested but I would really like to see him behind a competitive team um and whether that’s the Blue Jackets or not kind of remains to be seen but he’s he’s another guy that I would probably take a flyer on like if you could like if we had to I was I wasn’t going to rank these guys but I think like if I had to rank them probably like JJ Purka and Deon Levi are at the top i still think I take Purka over Levi um but Levi to me is a really intriguing option as a guy who did very very well in like juniors i believe he was uh an NCAA kid um I will correct myself if I’m wrong um but was a um was a seventh round pick by the Panthers back in 2020 right um not the biggest guy in the world h yeah went to Nor Eastern actually um was extremely good in Northeastern uh played extremely well for Canada in the World Juniors in 2020 2021 um actually went to Canada with for the Olympics in uh the 2020 Olympics which is fun um and uh played for Canada at the World Championships a couple years ago as well and again played pretty well there in the one game that he got to play there’s something there i think it’s it’s really tough to tell when a player is really really good in the AHL but then goes to a bad NHL team and doesn’t really thrive like you’re like “Okay is it the level of competition?” Like is he having trouble stepping up to that next level of competition or is he a bad fit for this team and he’s you know suffering because of the team around him right and it’s especially tough for goalies I feel like so Dean Levi is a guy that I really really think I would be super interested to see um on literally any other NHL team because I do think that there is there is potential there um again not the biggest guy in the world only 6′ tall um you know and I don’t know whether that’s actually 6 foot or like J Greavves 6 foot but there’s there’s a goalie in there i think like I feel I feel pretty I feel pretty confident that there is a goalie in there whether he will be a goalie for the Blue Jackets or not remains to be seen but I think his time in um Buffalo is probably approaching the end if he can’t crack the lineup behind Ukapukan and J and 37y old James Rhymer like I feel like the writing might be a little bit on the wall so why not start a new wall come to Columbus it’s fun we need we need goalies right and again it really does come down to what like what does this team want from their goalending duo right do they want two young guys that can split time or do they want to put all of their eggs in the Jet Groove basket as promising as that basket is and find and find a shooter tutor for the other 35 games of the of the season right and you know the Elvis situation is still the Elvis situation but I don’t know man like Devon Levi I I kind of I looked at him a couple of months ago probably not and then I keep going back and being like you know what maybe so maybe maybe it will be we’ll find out we are getting closer and closer to uh the draft by which time we’ll figure out what the Blue Jackets are doing with those first round picks the rumors keep buzzing and uh before you know it in like 3 weeks it’s going to be free agency so we’ll uh we’ll find out what’s going on sooner rather than later it’s all going to pop off in a couple of weeks which will be very exciting um that’s kind of it from me today uh I will not be back tomorrow because it’s Friday today hooray um I’ll be back on Monday uh with another episode of Locks on Blue Jackets um and honestly we might talk and providing he doesn’t get traded uh we might talk about Marco Rossy for a little bit who is another um another very promising top six guy that is apparently potentially on the move because everyone in the central division has lost their minds this summer I guess um so we’ll talk about that on Monday thank you for listening to this episode for making it your first listen of the day every single day lots of blue jackets is free available on all podcast platforms we are over on YouTube and uh you can find me on Blue Sky Jr you can find the show at l_ljackets on Twitter and uh thank you for listening making making us your first listen of the day every single day until Monday make sure you stay locked on

Things seem to be going not great for the Sabres organisation, and there could be a handful of players who want to move on this summer. Who should the Blue Jackets target, whether it be a trade or an offersheet? We look at Alex Tuch, JJ Peterka, Bo Byram, Owen Power and Devon Levi all as potential future Blue Jackets, and try to work out who would fit in the best if they were acquired this summer!

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