{"id":24963,"date":"2025-07-21T01:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T01:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/24963\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T01:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T01:04:07","slug":"bowen-byram-sees-upside-in-staying-with-buffalo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/24963\/","title":{"rendered":"Bowen Byram Sees Upside In Staying With Buffalo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Buffalo Sabres recently reached a deal<\/a> with restricted free agent Bowen Byram<\/a> ahead of arbitration, putting an end to months of trade speculation and talks of a potential split. With the dust now settled following his two-year contract worth $6.25 million per season, Byram admits that re-signing with the Sabres made sense on several levels, including the opportunity it offers for a bigger role, per NHL.com\u2019s Justin Alpert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, I\u2019ve been pretty happy with my time in Buffalo,\u201d he said. \u201cI think I\u2019ve mentioned it before that I\u2019ve got an opportunity to play a bigger role and play more minutes, whether it\u2019s the offensive side, power play, penalty kill. So, I\u2019m happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that point, Byram averaged a career-high 22:42 of ice time last season, largely playing alongside all-star Rasmus Dahlin<\/a>. Byram, selected fourth overall in the 2019 draft, is also coming off his best statistical season (38 points), and perhaps most importantly, the often-injured defenseman appeared in all 82 games. And at just 24 years old, it\u2019s reasonable to anticipate continued growth.<\/p>\n

Speaking about the opportunity to play with Dahlin, Byram said it supports his development, specifically defensively, calling Dahlin, \u201cone of the best defensemen in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m playing with him, I just try to take care of the defensive side of the puck, make sure that I\u2019m hanging back and giving him the freedom to get up ice and join the play and do his thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As Alpert points out, Byram and Dahlin tied for the league lead with a plus-20 goal differential at five-on-five, matching the mark set by what many consider the NHL\u2019s top defensive pairing \u2014 Colorado\u2019s Cale Makar<\/a> and Devon Toews<\/a>, former teammates of Byram. Byram acknowledged that Dahlin would be the Makar of their duo, but believes his abilities can mirror what Toews is capable of.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back now, I think I got to learn a lot from just watching those two,\u201d Byram said. \u201cYou have a guy like Cale Makar, very similar to Rasmus, and I hope to try to be a player of Toews\u2019 caliber. Whether it\u2019s now or down the road, that\u2019s what I look to continue to build towards,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buffalo Sabres recently reached a deal with restricted free agent Bowen Byram ahead of arbitration, putting an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[7818,10667,1809,385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-24963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-2025-free-agency","9":"tag-bowen-byram","10":"tag-buffalo-sabres","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}