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Vegas Golden Knights: Buffalo Sabres are the ideal trading partners

By Andrew Steele-Davis

BUFFALO, NY - OCTOBER 5: Rasmus Ristolainen #55 of the Buffalo Sabres controls the pucks against Sami Vatanen #45 of the New Jersey Devils during an NHL game on October 5, 2019 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York. (Photo by Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images)
BUFFALO, NY - OCTOBER 5: Rasmus Ristolainen #55 of the Buffalo Sabres controls the pucks against Sami Vatanen #45 of the New Jersey Devils during an NHL game on October 5, 2019 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York. (Photo by Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images) /
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BUFFALO, NY – OCTOBER 5: Rasmus Ristolainen #55 of the Buffalo Sabres controls the pucks against Sami Vatanen #45 of the New Jersey Devils during an NHL game on October 5, 2019 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York. (Photo by Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images)
BUFFALO, NY – OCTOBER 5: Rasmus Ristolainen #55 of the Buffalo Sabres controls the pucks against Sami Vatanen #45 of the New Jersey Devils during an NHL game on October 5, 2019 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York. (Photo by Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images) /

It is no secret that the Vegas Golden Knights could do with sprucing up their blueline, and they could do worse than looking to make the Buffalo Sabres their trade partners.

We’re only two weeks into the 2019-20 NHL regular season but some teams will already be tempted to tweak their roster and, although the Vegas Golden Knights will probably stand pat for now, they shouldn’t.

Why do we say that? Well, the answer is simple really, the Knights boast a stacked roster but I was dubious about the blueline heading into the year and that unit hasn’t done anything through the first seven games to convince me otherwise.

Granted, Nate Schmidt will make a massive difference once he returns from being on the IR after sustaining a lower body injury in the season opener, and this is now the second consecutive season that the defenseman has missed time at the start of the year.

Schmidt’s ability to move the puck, join the rush, help with the transition game and his superb skating are valuable commodities to the Golden Knights, and ones they are missing dearly right now.

There is a lack of balance to the defensive pairings too, with the bottom pairing of veteran Deryk Engelland and rookie Nic Hague having emerged as a glaring weakness.

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If you are a genuine Stanley Cup contender, which Vegas considers themselves to be, then you need three well-balanced and capable defensive pairings and I’m not sure the Golden Knights have that at the moment.

However, there could be a solution. The Golden Knights could look to make a trade and the Buffalo Sabres would be the perfect trading partner.

How so? Well, for starters, they have a glut of defensemen including a couple of gems that would be ideal for Vegas, while they could do with clearing some cap space.

Of course, the Golden Knights are hardly plush in the cash department themselves, but we’ll get on to the logistics of any trade shortly.

First, let’s take a look at two defensemen that would be a match made in heaven and study their pros and cons…

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