Sabres fail to complete trade due to mess on NHL system!

Buffalo Sabres general manager Jason Botterhill has been quite blunt about what he wants to do to help his team get back on track. For weeks now, we’ve been hearing in trade chatter that a move could be coming to the Sabres to bolster their offence on the trade front.

However, it seems like a trade could have taken place if it weren’t for the National Hockey League’s “gummed up system.” Here is how Darren Dreger explained it on Thursday night’s edition of Insider Trading on TSN: 

“It’s a moving target. Jason Botterill, the general manager of the Buffalo Sabres, has, in fact, made offers on forwards but the system is gummed up a little bit. The financial system of the National Hockey League. There are so many teams, 10-plus teams, who are working with LTIR players and that can get very, very problematic.

There are some out there that believe that Botterill is feeling a sense of urgency and he’d like to make at least one, maybe even two, trades in the next week to two weeks. But he’s got to find the right fit and the right match.”

It appears that the Sabres will have to keep working hard at finding a trade partner that can offer what Buffalo needs and that can make it work with numbers. The Sabres have been looking to add up front ever since forward Vladimir Sobotka got injured during the Global Series. 

Several other teams around the NHL have been said to be looking to make adjustments on their respective roster, but simply can’t become of the financial barriers restricting them. That’s why so many clubs are looking for help within their system in the meantime. 

Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope to see the system unclogging in the coming weeks…