{"id":800793,"date":"2026-08-03T08:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T08:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/800793\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T08:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T08:23:08","slug":"inside-look-at-buffalo-sabres-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/800793\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside look at Buffalo Sabres"},"content":{"rendered":"

That starts with a group of young forwards that made a splash in their two rounds in the playoffs, including Zach Benson<\/a>, who the Sabres signed to a seven-year, $52.5 million contract ($7.5 million average annual value) on June 24, Josh Doan<\/a>, Noah Ostlund<\/a>, Konsta Helenius<\/a> and Jack Quinn<\/a>, plus Jiri Kulich<\/a>, the 22-year-old center who missed most of last season with a blood clot issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect internal growth from not only the guys like\u00a0Kulich and Helenius, who didn\u2019t play much for us last year, but Benson\u2019s going to take another step. We hope, and certainly believe, that he can do that,\u201d Flynn said. \u201cWe have so many other guys that are in that under-25 age group — Jack Quinn, Doan, Ostlund — we haven\u2019t even gotten to. They all have so much room for growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is why Buffalo felt it could move forward and move ahead, even without\u00a0Tuch or Byram, the latter of whom the Sabres felt they adequately replaced with the acquisitions of defenseman Olen Zellweger<\/a>, who came in a trade for a second-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft and prospect Anton Wahlberg<\/a>, and defenseman Louis Crevier<\/a>, who came in the Byram trade, along with the No. 4 (Daxon Rudolph<\/a>) and No. 45 (traded to Anaheim Ducks) picks in the 2026 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to balance giving those guys the opportunity and keeping your veterans in place,\u201d Flynn said. \u201cYou have a 23-man roster, you can only (play) 12 forwards, there has to be room for these guys to get their opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

This season, there will be that opportunity.<\/p>\n

Tage Thompson<\/a>, who turns 29 on Oct. 30, figures to be one of the oldest players, if not the oldest, in the team\u2019s top nine, with many in the group born in 2001 or later. That\u2019s a lot of young talent in the forward group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That starts with a group of young forwards that made a splash in their two rounds in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-800793","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\/800793","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=800793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}