The Arizona Coyotes were indeed players on opening day of the free agent frenzy, as they jumped in and nabbed themselves a new back-up goalie for Mike Smith in Devan Dubnyk. The Coyotes signed the 28-year old keeper to a 1-year deal worth $800,000. Dubnyk won 11 games and earned 26 points in the pool between Edmonton and Nashville, finishing the season with Montreal's farm team after a deadline day deal. Dubnyk won't be projected for too many points, but does provide some stability in the back-up position and has more than enough starts, if Smith was to go down for any sort of extended time.
The Buffalo Sabres were definitely one of the busier teams on opening day of the frenzy, as they tried to make it up past the salary cap floor of $50 million.
The team added forwards Matt Moulson, Brian Gionta and Cody McCormick and defenseman Andrej Meszaros through free agent deals, which will cost the team over $14.5 million in cap space in the 2014 season. The team also re-signed forward Marcus Foligno to a new deal as well. Out of these deals, the notable pool players would be Moulson and Meszaros, as they each finished in the top 100 forwards and defensemen, but I would imagine that they would likely take a bit of hit going to a new team with a lot of new faces.
The Sabres also acquired defenseman Josh Gorges from the Montreal Canadiens for a 2nd round draft pick in 2016. Gorges, who finished with 14 points in 66 games last season with the Canadiens, may be deep defenseman idea in the hockey pool drafts, but it would have to be fairly deep.
This may be a slow process, but we'll get there. Sure, this one is a small update, but there will be bigger ones, I'm sure.
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