BUFFALO – In taking a big swing earlier this week and reportedly trying to land St. Louis Blue defenseman Colton Parayko, Sabres general manager Jarmo Kekalainen illustrated he would aggressively add assets to the NHL’s hottest team before Friday’s trade deadline.
After the potential Parayko deal fell through – he refused to waive his no-trade clause, according to multiple reports – Kekalainen kept pursuing trades.
By Friday, he had made three of them, showing his strong belief in the Sabres by adding four veterans to beef up one of the league’s deepest and most talented lineups.
The Sabres, whose NHL-record playoff drought will almost certainly be ending, regularly sold off talent before the deadline and looked to the future during their stunning run of futility.
But having won 26 of their last 33 games entering Saturday afternoon’s home game against the Nashville Predators and grabbed a piece of first place in the Atlantic Division, Kekalainen knew he had to address the present.
That, of course, is significant.
“We have a lot of faith in this group,” Kekalainen said Friday in KeyBank Center following the 3 p.m. deadline. “The way they’ve been playing, the way they’re competing, the way they’re having fun, so we wanted to reward the group as well, to show them that we have that faith and we want to help them and bring in some players in different areas that we needed.
“I think we addressed those needs, and we’re a stronger team because of it.”
Kekalainen started by acquiring center Connor Carrick from the New York Rangers. Defensemen Luke Schenn and Logan Stanley arrived later from the Winnipeg Jets. Winger Tanner Pearson also came from Winnipeg in a separate deal.
“It just shows that he’s here to make a difference,” Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin said of Kekalainen’s moves. “That makes us super excited. He wants to win as much as we do in this locker room. So we’re all in this together.”
The newcomers can boost the Sabres’ depth down the stretch as they play almost every other day while also offering size and muscle.
“Players are going to get banged up, and it’s very, very important in my mind to have depth,” Kekalainen said. “Especially on the D side – that’s probably the most crucial position to have depth in – but also on the forward side.”
The four acquisitions have combined to play 2,533 NHL games and win three Stanley Cups. Schenn has lifted the trophy over his head twice.
They understand the rigors of playoff hockey, and for a group with minimal experience, that’s huge.
“You can look at the way most playoffs start, sometimes it doesn’t look like there’s a puck on the ice,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “It gets physical and it gets hard. Unless you’ve lived it and been there, it’s hard to explain to a lot of players what it’s really like.”
The moves appear to have further energized a team – “The players look at it from the standpoint of we got better,” Ruff said – that has been having a heck of a lot of fun.
Dahlin said he has waited eight seasons to play for a team that loaded up for playoff run.
“It’s a new thing for me,” he said. “It feels like back in the days of Frolunda time (in Sweden). I mean, this is why you play hockey. This is what it should feel like. This is the beginning for something great. I’m happy we’re finally here.”
Ruff said Kekalainen’s moves send the message “we think we can do some damage.”
“We’ve proven in these last 40 games that we can play with the best, how we can play good, consistent, winning hockey and just keep trying to get better game to game,” he said.
As the deadline approached, there was a belief Kekalainen, who replaced Kevyn Adams on Dec. 15, shouldn’t tinker much with the team’s chemistry. The Sabres have a good thing going, so why mess with it?
“I think that ties up with the faith we have in the group,” Kekalainen said. “We don’t want to disrupt something that’s going really well – the chemistry, they have fun together, they believe in each other, they trust each other. And you can see that they’re just having the time of their lives. …
“But they’ve also put the work in. I think they’re all realizing it’s been paying off, so it’s been fun for us, too.”