Chicago Gets Bowen Byram from Buffalo4 of 4<\/p>\n
Chicago receives: Bowen Byram, Jordan Greenway<\/p>\n
Buffalo receives: 2026 first-round pick (No. 4 overall), 2026 second-round pick (No. 45 overall), Louis Crevier<\/p>\n
This is difficult to grasp. Everything about it is difficult to grasp.<\/p>\n
What in the world are the Chicago Blackhawks doing? What is Kyle Davidson thinking?<\/p>\n
Chicago may have had the right idea by moving picks, including the No. 4 overall pick, to get somebody who can help make a difference on the NHL roster right now. They have already wasted the first three years of Connor Bedard’s career and are only marginally better, if at all, than they were in the year they tanked to get him.<\/p>\n
It’s a team that is still a LONG way from competing.<\/p>\n
They also desperately needed more help on defense.<\/p>\n
But did they get the right player for the price they paid? <\/p>\n
Byram is still only 25 years old and a productive point producer from the back end, but he is not a lockdown defender and is far from a true No. 1. <\/p>\n
He is a good player who has shown flashes of being an impact player. <\/p>\n
But he is not consistently an impact player. <\/p>\n
He is also going to cost an outrageous amount in a contract extension, given that he is an unrestricted free agent after this season. <\/p>\n
Is that really the best use of a No. 4 and No. 45 overall pick (plus a prospect)? <\/p>\n
Is that really the best use of that future salary cap space, even if you have a lot of it to use?<\/p>\n
It is the first time in nearly two decades that a top-five pick was traded when both teams involved in the trade knew where the pick would be, and it happens for Bowen Byram?<\/p>\n
They need Byram not only to be good, but also to be a superstar to justify this cost, and the cost it will require to extend him. If he were going to be a superstar, you would have hoped he would have shown more signs of it by now in his career. <\/p>\n
Good player. But probably the wrong player at the wrong price.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to turn down the value here. <\/p>\n
The Sabres already have some cornerstone players on defense in Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power, and it really wouldn’t have made sense to potentially pay Byram in the same ballpark as them after this season. Especially when they are both better and will be playing bigger roles. <\/p>\n
Byram’s name had been mentioned in trade rumors for a while now, but nobody in upstate New York could have possibly dreamed they would get the No. 4 overall pick, a mid-second-round pick, and a prospect for him. <\/p>\n
Not only do they not have to pay him what could potentially be a bloated salary beyond this season, but they also have a couple more assets that could potentially be used in further trades.<\/p>\n
They have two of the top-27 picks and three of the first 45 picks in this year’s draft, while also having a pretty strong farm system at their disposal. <\/p>\n
Could this put them in a position to swing another blockbuster trade in the coming days?<\/p>\n
Could a goalie be on their radar?<\/p>\n
Another star-level forward?<\/p>\n
They have the pieces. This could be an exciting offseason for the Sabres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chicago Gets Bowen Byram from Buffalo4 of 4 Chicago receives: Bowen Byram, Jordan Greenway Buffalo receives: 2026 first-round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-722537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722537","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=722537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}