Sabres land promising dman Michael Stone

It's no secret that the Sabres had been shopping for a dman for a while now.  GM Blanchard was planning to use the available cap space to land a player that would be an upgrade over Ryan Ellis as the 6th dman and help the team for the second half of the season or at least get a guy that would be able to help out in case of injury.

The initial plan was to use a big part of the $4.13M available cap space to try to get an experienced dman, but after trade talks with a few teams, GM Blanchard decided to go in another direction.

On Thursday night, the Sabres traded young centerman Brendan Gaunce to the Montreal Canadiens for young dman Michael Stone.  Stone is just a slight upgrade over Ellis defensively but he is a great upgrade on checking, which is an area the Sabres were trying to improve on defense, and has a very friendly cap hit for two years.

Ellis has rejected all three offers made by the Sabres earlier this season and should test the market next offseason unless the Sabres decide to move him before the deadline so Stone becomes a very good insurance in case the Sabres would decide not to match any offer made to Ellis.

Since Stone only carries a cap hit of 644k, there is still plenty of cap room for the Sabres to try to make other moves to improve the team for this year.