Buffalo Sabres And The Nicolas Deslauriers Conundrum

The Buffalo Sabres still have not committed to being buyers or sellers before the trade deadline, but either way, Nicolas Deslauriers’ days in the 716 might be numbered.

I’m a fan of Nick Deslauriers. How can you dislike a guy who gives it his all one almost every shift? He’s the type of player that you know his presence when he is on the ice. If Scrappy Doo could play hockey, he would be Nick. He’s like Rob Ray 2.0 or Patrick Kaleta 2.0. If you need a guy to back you up, it would be Deslauriers. And just like Ray and Kaleta, Deslauriers has a nice set of boxing hands, but suffers from having a pair of stone hands. More often than not, Nick finds himself as a healthy scratch. His lack of scoring has hurt the team, especially during this time when the Sabres need goal scorers; it’s understandable why Coach Dan doesn’t play him.

So far this season, Deslauriers has 0 goals and 0 assists during 23 games. In his four years in Buffalo, he’s amassed 12 goals and 16 assists in 192 games (https://www.nhl.com/player/nicolas-deslauriers-8475235). It’s hard to justify holding onto a guy who literally gives you nothing on offense, those numbers make it practically impossible to unload him.

Rich here: maybe Bylsma should play Deslauriers alongside Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart so those two can feed him the puck. It worked for Cody Hodgson in Vancouver!

Nick’s contract expires in 2018. With the trade deadline just around the corner, who knows if he is on the trading block. If Deslauriers doesn’t get peddled away, I don’t see General Manager Tim Murray “saving” him for the Sabres during the expansion draft. Who knows, maybe Las Vegas needs an enforcer type player. If he does get traded or snatched up during the expansion draft, I’m sure that he would want to fight one of his former teammates. In a few months from now, we could see a Nick Deslaurier vs. Marcus Foligno fight, not at the MGM Grand or Mandalay Bay, but at T-Mobile Arena. Or could it be a fight under the lights at Madison Square Garden?

The Buffalo Sabres don’t have a lot of guys who throw their bodies around every night and are willing to drop the gloves, so you hate to lose one of the two guys on the roster who will step up and defend someone like Reinhart, Eichel or the next prospect to get the call up. Still, the days of having a zero-point guy on your team a la John Scott are gone, so you have to wonder how much longer Desluariers will be wearing a Sabres sweater.