Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) - The NHL Trade Deadline came and went this past Friday, and saw the Buffalo Sabres make a number of moves involving team leaders and a centerpiece of the lineup.
Ahead of the 3 p.m. EST deadline on Friday, the Sabres moved a couple of different types of leaders, sending defenseman Erik Johnson to the Philadelphia Flyers and team captain Kyle Okposo to the Florida Panthers.
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Changes at any point in the season can drastically affect teams in different ways, but the NHL Trade Deadline can have big impacts on the mentality of players in the league. One way teams are affected is when leaders are moved away from younger groups.
"There's hierarchies in every line of work, and sometimes you don't feel it's your right to speak up or your moment to speak up," said Sabres head coach Don Granato during his weekly appearance on Tuesday during the "Jeremy and Joe Show" on WGR. "We've seen it, heard it already; just on the bench, in the locker room, in-between periods. That's a good thing, guys taking more initiative than maybe they would have."
One other trade the Sabres made on Wednesday leading up to the deadline was sending former first-round pick in 2017, Casey Mittelstadt, to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for defensemen Bowen Byram.
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Mittelstadt was a big piece of the Sabres over the last several years, and had risen to become one of Buffalo's top scorers in the last two seasons.
"Usually the path is a lot of maturing, physical growth, strength, elevated compete, before you even see their skills come back at this level. Casey put in lots of time, and I enjoyed putting the time in with him," Granato said with Jeremy White and Joe DiBiase. "Then to see him rise to the point where he was our leading scorer this season, and obviously able to get a player like Bo Byram for him is a testament of how far he's come."
As for Byram, he was drafted fourth overall in the 2019 NHL Draft and has had success since entering the league. He won the Stanley Cup during his rookie year, and has recorded career 41 points in 148 NHL games.
Granato says that experience already gained as a 22-year-old is already significant.
"As a perspective, we're still talking about a very young player, and obviously a very talented player. But when you look around the league and when you have defenseman in hockey, especially guys that can skate like Byram and [Rasmus] Dahlin, you can control the game," Granato explained. "You exit your zone easier, you kill plays in your zone easier, you get through the neutral zone easier when there's passes and plays low-to-high in the offensive zone. They get through to the net, shots get through. Every facet of the game works better with, obviously, more skill on the back end, and we've seen that already."
Hear more from Granato's appearance during the "Jeremy and Joe Show" available in the player below:
