NHL halfway point wish list for the East

With the halfway point of the regular season in the rearview mirrors for most of the Eastern Conference, we have a bit more of a playoff race in the East than we did last season at this point, but it’s still not by much.

With that in mind, Tyler Yaremchuk and Mike McKenna decided to dive into their wishes for the Eastern Conference in the second half of the season.

Mike McKenna: “I’d really love to see Kevyn Adams, the GM of the Buffalo Sabres, add to what they’re doing out there in Buffalo. This team really has caught a lot of people off guard, a lot of it has been on the back of Tage Thompson, but look at the rest of the pieces surrounding him. Should we really be that surprised?

Dylan Cozens has come into his own, Jack Quinn’s played really well, Alex Tuch’s filled out the lineup nicely, and you’ve got pretty good goaltending recently from Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. There are a lot of things to like in Buffalo, I didn’t even mention Rasmus Dahlin. So, I’d love to see Adams make a play on somebody that can help that team down the road, in the next four to five years.

The Buffalo Sabres have tons and tons of cap space, so they could take on bad contracts to gain a good player. They’ve got draft picks. They have three second-rounders this year, they have all their firsts in the next coming years, seconds, thirds, you name it, they pretty much have it. Who’s to say they won’t make a play on a big player that can help that club? Even a Jakob Chychrun, I’m just throwing that out there, but that’s the type of caliber, the type of contract length I’m thinking of, that could help that club in the long run.

And I think it would be a good vote for the fans in Buffalo, who’ve been waiting so long for this moment, to have a team to root for again, to have players that they like that are somewhat homegrown, even though the Tuchs and Thompsons of the world have come somewhere else, they’ve still blossomed underneath Don Granato. So I’d love to see the Sabres add. I don’t want them to be too aggressive, but I’d like to see them set themselves up for years to come.”

Tyler Yaremchuk: “I love that point as well from the Sabres, and yesterday we talked with Frank [Seravalli] about how this could be the year of the third-party broker. If you’re Kevyn Adams, wouldn’t it be some smart GM work to go around the league and say ‘We’re open to being a third-party broker if the contract’s done after this year?’ Maybe you can scoop up a couple of third-rounders, a fourth-rounder, and maybe even a second-rounder if you take a big chunk of money from somewhere. And then you’re sitting there going ‘We got all these assets, we’ll spend them and upgrade our team this year, get some long-term pieces, and be better in the long run just for eating some late-season cap space’. I’d love to see that happen.

For me, I want to see Juraj Slafkovsky play in the AHL for his development. I love the potential of this guy. He’s 6-foot-3, 240 pounds, that’s what he’s listed as on the Canadiens' website. He has so much talent, and he can be a franchise cornerstone for them for the next decade-plus, but yet they’re running him out here for 11, 12, 13 minutes a game when he could be playing 22+ minutes in the American League, scoring a goal every other game.

The Habs are just sitting toward the bottom, they’re not making the playoffs. I don’t understand why they’d want him in the NHL so badly, especially when they have the luxury of sending him to the American League, which teams usually don’t have with their first-overall picks. So it’s a bit of a niche one, and it focuses directly on the Habs, but do the right thing for Slafkovsky, because I don’t get why they’re just running him out there as a third liner.”

Mike McKenna: “Well, he’s a big guy who’s NHL-ready size-wise, but we’ve seen some of the hits he’s taken this year, I don’t think it would hurt him to play a little bit lower. I think junior might actually be a better spot than the American League given the chaos factor at that level.

But I do agree, a little confidence wouldn’t be bad for him. The problem is that his body is beyond his years, so I know Montreal likes him where he’s at, and I guess he’s going to continue to grow in that role, and they need players in Montreal. Let’s see if we get the most out of him, but I think you make a valid point there.”