The Sabres made their last moves on Wednesday, as the rosters had to be finalized by this afternoon. The 24-man roster, including Paul Gaustad (who is on the IR), is listed below.The team also announced on Wednesday that Craig Rivet would take over the duties of team captain for the 2009 season. Rivet leads the blueline with experience and good offensive talents. The blueline will also mark the return of Teppo Numminen, who missed all but the last regular season game after open heart surgery.
Offense will be handled again by a good bunch of young talent. Derek Roy, Jason Pominville and Thomas Vanek will lead the charge for the Sabres, a trio that managed 95 goals between them.
Buffalo proved to be a wealth of pool scoring talent last season and look to be the same again this season. The combined points total of the 24 players below for last season is 782 points, second only to the 863 points of the current Red Wings roster.
| Forwards | Defense | Goaltenders |
| Thomas Vanek | Craig Rivet | Ryan Miller |
| Derek Roy | Jaroslav Spacek | Patrick Lalime |
| Maxim Afinogenov | Toni Lydman | |
| Tim Connolly | Henrik Tallinder | |
| Ales Kotalik | Nathan Paetsch | |
| Jochen Hecht | Teppo Numminen | |
| Drew Stafford | Andrej Sekera | |
| Dan Paille | ||
| Paul Gaustad | ||
| Jason Pominville | ||
| Dan Paille | ||
| Adam Mair | ||
| Matt Ellis | ||
| Clarke MacArthur | ||
| Patrik Kaleta | ||
| Andrew Peters |
The 24-man roster, including Gaustad, does come with a cap hit of $51.3 million (approx.), which is a bargain price for so much offense. The team's goal this season will be to help Ryan Miller stop more pucks or see less pucks, whichever way you would like to look at it. If the team is successful at that one goal, their offense should be enough to see Miller's win total skyrocket through the roof.
No comments:
Post a Comment