The 08-09 Sabres showed they were a decent club. But outside of a great season by Thomas Vanek, and decent ones by Derek Roy, Drew Stafford and Tim Connolly(stayed healthy) and a breakout year from Clarke MacArthur, the Sabres lacked depth in the scoring department.

Where did they go?

First, the main issues have been with Jason Pominville and Jochen Hecht. Pominville, now in his 4th full season in the NHL has 17 goals and may finish with his career low. In 2005-2006, his rookie year, he played in 57 games and scored 18 goals. In 2006-2007 he was instrumental in the Sabres' depth as he lit the lamp 34 times. He does lead the team in assists with 44, but after his promising first seasons as a goal scorer Pominville has unquestionably been a disappointment.

The second guy that comes to mind in terms of disappointment is Jochen Hecht. The 9-year veteran was once one of the Sabres best all-around players, passing, forechecking and scoring the timely goal. Now Hecht is 31, but last year he scored 22 goals and was just shy of 50 points. This season, in a few less games, Hecht barely has scraped double digits in goals and has dished out a mere 15 assists. Never an elite goal scorer, 2008-2009 will prove to be Hecht's worst season to date. His usual consistency has been greatly missed. 

Whether these men had better seasons because of playing with the likes of Chris Drury, JP Dumont, and Danny Briere may seem likely, but isn't definite. They had their chances as role players and did not step up into center roles this season.

Good, but good enough?

On the bright side, the aforementioned Derek Roy, Thomas Vanek, Tim Connolly, and Clarke MacArthur have performed well for the Buffalo Sabres.

Roy has 27 goals with nearly 70 points, but his end of season number will still probably fall short of his 32 goal, 81 point total last year. A player who may have been the most consistent all season, Roy's numbers have dropped off a bit, though not dramatically. Oh yea, he's only 25.

Vanek, once the leagues top goal scorer has done wonders for Buffalo in the scoring department. His 19 power play goals are tied for the league lead, and his 37 goals in 70 games played are just 6 shy of his remarkable '06-'07 campaign where he found the back of the net 43 times and played in every contest. Vanek has been everything the Sabres could have hoped for this season, though at times I'd like to see the sniper in him show up a bit more.

Connolly, historically a fixture on the injured list, only played in 45 games this year, which for him is a lot. In those games he's shown what he can do, scoring 17 goals and being the centerpiece on the powerplay along with Vanek. Still not a ton of production for your supposed 1b scorer. He's only 27.

MacArthur, at the ripe age of 24 has lit the lamp 17 times in his first full season with the Sabres. He has shown abilities on both ends of the ice, and shines a glimmer of hope for years to come.

Stafford, who was brought up because of past Connolly injury, has been the mark of health and consistent play. He's played in 76 games and scored 20 goals, a career high. Has the ability to become an above-average goal scorer in this league, but he's only 23 years of age.

Now that I have outlined the top scorers of the Sabres, here's a comparison to the  scorers on some of the teams above Buffalo in the standings

Florida Panthers:

David Booth leads the team with 28 tallies, but similar to a Sabres team of old, they have 8 other players with 14 or more goals. Talk about depth.

New York Rangers:

Not very stellar, as Zherdev and Naslund lead the team with 23 goals a piece, the Rangers boast 5 players with 16 or more goals. Decently deep.

Montreal Canadiens:

Kovalev leads the team with 25 goals, Kostitsyn and Plekanec have 20+, which is the same amount of 20+ goal scorers as the Sabres, but outside of those guys, they have 5 scorers with more than 14 goals compared to the Sabres 3. 

These numbers don't jump out and say that the Sabres are very inept at scoring compared to the Eastern Conference playoff teams, but outside the of the top line, the Sabres don't stack up. If Pominville and Hecht had even average seasons, we may be preparing for the playoffs right now. The reason the Sabres were outstanding in 05-06 and 06-07 was because they were deep, outside of Drury and Briere. Whether it's in free agency, via a trade, or in hope of the young guys like Roy, Stafford, Gerbe and Kennedy, the Sabres must make their top scorers, "top" and add more firepower to the team, in order to bring back the hockey tradition to the City of Buffalo.

The Packers signed C Duke Preston tonight.

I feel that collectively this one doesn't hurt our fan base all that much, but does leave us with more of a reason to add more offensive line depth via the draft. I myself, am not worried he's gone, because there are some good lineman in the draft that now seem like more of a possibility. Will his departure matter this year with the gelling of our new lineman?

"We are aware that there is interest in expanding the Bills in Toronto Series by an additional regular season game in the future. We're also aware that our hosts have conducted a survey as part of their internal process of evaluating whether to propose an expansion of the series. We have an agreement to play one regular season game for the next four seasons. We have no agreement, nor has there ever been one, to play an additional regular season game in Toronto. Any such future agreement would require consultation and the approvals of Erie County, Empire State Development Corporation and the NFL owners."

BuffaloBills.com

I'm sure everyone on here checks the official site, but I wanted to put this up so we all can breathe a collective sigh of relief.

I'll try to update this as often as possible but guys that could possibly be on the Bills FA radar:

WR
Jets WR Laveranues Coles
Raiders WR Ronald Curry
Carolina WR DJ Hackett
Bucs WR Joey Galloway
Bucs WR Ike Hilliard
Patriots WR Kelley Washington
Steelers WR Nate Washington

RB
Bucs RB Warrick Dunn
Jags RB Fred Taylor
Saints RB Deuce McAllister

LB
Bucs LB Cato June
Bucs LB Derrick Brooks ( who may retire )
Redskins LB Marcus Washington

S
Houston S Will Demps
Raiders S Gabril Wilson

DE
Texans DE Anthony Weaver
Raiders DE Kalimba Edwards