Louis Crevier didn’t get the Sabres news in a normal way. He was in Rome when the Bowen Byram trade broke on June 23, and the timing made everything harder to sort out. The six-hour time difference had him dealing with it in the middle of the night, and his phone wasn’t much help.
“I was in Rome when the trade happened, so it was six hours difference from Buffalo. It was about 3 or 4 in the morning,” Creiver said.
He also explained that his data connection in Europe was unreliable, which kept him from getting texts or calls from his agent. The one line that did get through came from a teammate.
“When you're in Europe, my data wasn't working really well, so I couldn't get texts or calls from my agent, but I was able to text Alex Vlasic for some reason. That was the only guy I could text and he kind of gave me a heads up.”
Crevier’s arrival gives Buffalo another defenseman with a rising profile. A seventh-round pick by the Chicago Blackhawks, he kept carving out a bigger role last season, appearing in 78 games and pushing his average ice time from around 12:30 to more than 19 minutes by the end of the year.
He climbed from the third pair to the top pair in Chicago, though that kind of jump is not expected in Buffalo. Even so, he should have a real chance to help the Sabres’ blue line next season.
The most likely competition is for a spot beside Owen Power on the second pair, where he’ll battle Olen Zellweger. Zellweger is the favorite there, and if he wins that job, Crevier would slide onto the third pair with Conor Timmins.
Buffalo also spent part of last season trying to add size to the bottom pair with the Logan Stanley trade at the NHL Trade Deadline, but that move didn’t really take. Stanley is now an unrestricted free agent and is unlikely to return, which opens the door for Crevier to step in.
In that role, he may actually be a cleaner fit. He skates a little better than Stanley and brings a much better shot. Crevier may not have been the headline piece in the Byram deal, but he could wind up being the one who makes the quickest impact on Buffalo’s defense.
In Other News...
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The Sabres are still sorting through how to replace the offense they lost when Alex Tuch and Bowen Byram moved on, and the search has pushed the front office toward a familiar kind of summer dilemma: trust the kids, or add a proven scorer who can help right away. General manager Jarmo Kekalainen is reportedly weighing outside options while also keeping an eye on internal development, but the need for more production is hard to ignore for a team that wants to take a step forward.
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Sabres Suddenly Have A Colten Ellis Dilemma They Cannot Mismanage
Colten Ellis arrived in Buffalo as a waiver claim before last season, and he made the kind of early impression that forces a front office to pay attention. He got into 16 games and helped stabilize the Sabres at a time when every usable option in net mattered, which is part of why his situation has quickly become more than a depth-chart footnote.
Now Ellis is entering the final year of his contract, and Buffalo has to decide how aggressively it wants to manage his role while sorting through a crowded goalie picture. With a three-goalie rotation already in play and the possibility of adding Connor Hellebuyck hanging over the position, the Sabres have to keep Ellis on a path that protects their leverage for next summer without letting the season get away from them in the process. [Read more 🡒]