Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – Just when Alex Tuch’s childhood team got good, he decided to take the money and leave as the Buffalo Sabres reportedly have signed the winger to an eight-year, $84 million contract and then traded him to the Washington Capitals for a third-round draft pick.

Sources say the team upped it’s offer to Tuch, but it is believed to be still under $10 million per season. Jarmo Kekalainen was refreshingly candid talking to the media on Wednesday. He said,

“I don’t think that we’ve come to any point in our talks that would indicate that he would want to sign with us, so I think he’s moving on and going to free agency as we used him as a rental for our own team.”

“We made it clear to him that we wanted to sign him, he was an important player for us and a good leader, but sometimes when the players have the power to choose, they choose differently.”

There were factors for Kekalainen that made him feel that it wouldn’t be good business to meet Tuch’s price,

“One thing that I’ve always said, is it depends on the contract, obviously with a 30-year-old player, there’s risk involved if you want to go eight years, then there’s the money and we’re tight on cap this summer because because we have that Skinner buyout counting $6.5 million against our cap ($6.44 million) and then we’ll get into a lot better situation a year from now and what we needed to consider is if we sign him to a certain number, does this now mean that we have to take two or three maybe four players off our roster to make it work cap-wise, so that was a balancing act with our take on things, so he’s a good player, but we have a lot of faith in our group, he’s going to be missed, but we’ll be fine,

“Nothing disrespectful to Alex Tuch, he’s been a great player for us, but we have a lot of good players in our lineup and if you look at the number of players that we have that played really well this year in the NHL, it’s almost like I don’t know where we’re going to fit them all into a 23 man roster.

“If we get Jiri Kulich back like we expect, Helenius came in in the playoffs and played like he had played five years in the NHL, and has two full season under his belt in the American League, Ostlund played really well for us this year, we have a very positive problem of we don’t know where to put every player, we have a good plan on how to replace Alex Tuch, but we’ll look at every option whether it’s free agency or trade, but we have a lot of internal options.”

This was also our first chance to speak with the Sabres GM about his trade that sent Bo Byram to the Chicago Blackhawks. He said,

“We liked Bowen Byram a lot, we wanted to re-sign him, but that wasn’t going to happen, so we had to make a decision and the deal we had in front of us was too good to pass on and now we have some draft capital to improve our team.

“He didn’t want to negotiate, he wasn’t going to sign with us so it didn’t leave us an option to do anything else.

“We tried to convince Bowen to stay, that was the first priority, I was working on that the whole year because I thought his role was big on the team, but he wanted the chance to be a No. 1 defenseman and I respect that.

Kekalainen said Chicago wanted to know if they could get him signed before they made this trade

The Sabres first trade was sending Michael Kesselring to the San Jose Sharks. Kesselring did not agree with how Lindy Ruff handled him, but Kekalainen said it was more than that,

“I was a bit mutual, I think we would’ve a little bit more patience probably than his camp because we still think he’s going to be a good player in this league, but he’s another player with one year left into free agency and if we couldn’t agree on a contract and he took us to arbitration, and there’s a one-year award and we can’t trade him and all those different things from the CBA that you have to weigh in when you make those decisions. so we thought it best for both sides to move on.”

There are many that feel the Sabres goaltending is very weak and needs improving. Kekalainen isn’t one of them,

“I think our goaltending was strong this year, the position is so scrutinized that you have one bad game then all of a sudden the opinion in this room and outside is that the goaltending is not good enough, but their numbers were very good. UPL had .910 for the season and that’s a very good number in today’s league, so we have a lot of faith in the group, so right now we’re thinking of doing the same thing, but it’s like any position, we’re always looking to improve.”

Round one of the NHL Draft is Friday and I’ll be at the stadium with the team while Brian Koziol, Brayton Wilson and Joe Cali will have you covered from the arena starting at 7:00.