{"id":512522,"date":"2026-03-03T23:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/512522\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T23:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:03:07","slug":"sabres-making-aggressive-push-for-robert-thomas-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/512522\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabres Making Aggressive Push For Robert Thomas \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sabres are a late but aggressive entrant in talks to acquire center\u00a0Robert Thomas<\/a>\u00a0from the Blues, reports Darren Dreger of TSN<\/a>. Their offer contains multiple first-round picks or equivalent pieces, Chris Johnston of TSN and The Athletic<\/a> relays. However, talks haven\u2019t progressed far enough yet for the Blues to ask Thomas to waive his no-trade clause, per Jeremy Rutherford of The Athletic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thomas is the best player still available at the deadline, both in terms of short-term and long-term impact. It was viewed as pure speculation by many that he\u2019d actually be made available amid St. Louis\u2019 retool, but the Blues have evidently received multiple offers strong enough to their liking in recent days to seriously consider pulling the trigger on a move. The Mammoth is the other club that\u2019s been consistently tied to Thomas<\/a> over the past week.<\/p>\n

Even amid something of a down season for Thomas, it\u2019s hard to imagine his trade value has taken much of a hit. He\u2019s still put up 12 goals and 35 points in 42 games. That\u2019s similar on a per-game basis to what other top options\u00a0Nazem Kadri<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Vincent Trocheck<\/a> have done this season, but Thomas is significantly younger and has consistently been one of the league\u2019s assist leaders for several years now.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old is in year three of eight on his contract, which carries a fair-value cap hit at worst of $8.125MM. He had full trade protection kick in this season \u2013 the first year he was eligible to receive it \u2013 so all of this hinges on Thomas greenlighting a move to the Sabres, who currently have an 88.6% chance of ending their playoff drought at 14 seasons, per MoneyPuck<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Buffalo doesn\u2019t have any additional first-rounders past their own, but they do have a plethora of recent first-round draft choices to leverage in trade talks. Among forwards alone who are still on entry-level deals, there\u2019s Zach Benson<\/a>,\u00a0Jiri Kulich<\/a>,\u00a0Noah Ostlund<\/a>,\u00a0Isak Rosen<\/a>, and\u00a0Konsta Helenius<\/a>. Helenius, the 14th overall pick in 2024, has shown enough at the AHL level already to paint himself as a potential long-term replacement for Thomas as St. Louis\u2019 first-line center. Whether the Sabres would be willing to leverage either\u00a0Bowen Byram<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Owen Power<\/a>\u00a0from their long list of top-four-capable left-shot defenders remains to be seen, but that shouldn\u2019t be ruled out either if they\u2019re looking to keep cap space open for looming extensions for Benson and Alex Tuch<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sabres are a late but aggressive entrant in talks to acquire center\u00a0Robert Thomas\u00a0from the Blues, reports Darren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[741,49,48,4247,72294,82,759],"class_list":["post-512522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-newsstand","tag-robert-thomas","tag-sports","tag-st-louis-blues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}