Sabres Acquire & Sign NIlsson

On Saturday, the Buffalo Sabres acquired the restricted free agent rights for goaltender Anders Nilsson from the St. Louis Blues, sending a 5th round pick in next year's draft for his rights.  Shortly thereafter, Nilsson and the Sabres agreed upon a 1-year, $1 million deal and he now becomes the front-runner for the back-up job in 2017.

The most remarkable note about this move was that Nilsson finished the 2016 season with more hockey pool points than the other two goalies that Buffalo has on their roster, starter Robin Lehner and prospect Linus Ullmark.  That means the depth chart, as it is produced below, will have Nilsson as the guy on top of the depth chart, for now, up until the point projection posts come around.

Between Edmonton and St. Louis, the 26-year old Swede finished with 10 wins and 21 points in 29 appearances, good enough for 50th overall in the goalie rankings.  Potentially, this job in Buffalo could mean that many appearances at the very least and with the way the Sabres have been putting their lineup together, he could have a very solid 2017 season.

As for the team's cap situation, after two days of free agency, the Sabres have made some additions, but they haven't broken the bank just yet.  The 17 players in colour below are coming in at $58.8 million, leaving about $14.2 million in space before the ceiling.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Ryan O'Reilly	7.500	Zach Bogosian	5.143	Anders Nilsson	1.000
Kyle Okposo	6.000	Dmitry Kulikov	4.333
Evander Kane	5.250	Cody Franson	3.325
Brian Gionta	4.250
Jack Eichel	0.925
Sam Reinhart	0.894
Matt Moulson	5.000	Josh Gorges	3.900	Robin Lehner	2.225
Tyler Ennis	4.600	Jake McCabe	1.600	Linus Ullmark	0.776
Cody McCormick	1.500
Johan Larsson	0.950	Brendan Guhle	0.703
Hudson Fasching	0.925	Brycen Martin	0.685
Evan Rodrigues	0.843	Justin Falk	0.650
Nicolas Deslauriers	0.775	Brady Austin	0.627
Eric Cornel	0.718	Taylor Fedun	0.600
Nicholas Baptiste	0.710
Vaclav Karabacek	0.695
William Carrier	0.680
Justin Bailey	0.662
Jean Dupuy	0.653
Justin Kea	0.647
Cole Schneider	0.600

Pool worthy, non-pool roster players, injured/retired cap hits, in the system