Buffalo Sabres: Top 3 defining moves of Jason Botterill’s tenure as GM

1. The O’Reilly Trade

Jason Botterill will forever be remembered in Buffalo as the guy who traded Ryan O’Reilly for a weak return. After the 2017-18 season, O’Reilly was pissed off about losing and made some comments about losing his love for hockey. Instead of trying to work things out, Botterill sent him to the St. Louis Blues for a first-round pick (which they traded for Brandon Montour), a 2021 second-round pick, Tage Thompson, Patrik Berglund, and Vladimir Sobotka.

That might be a lot of quantity, but they didn’t get much quality. Combined, Montour, Thompson, Berglund, and Sobotka have 60 points through their first two seasons with the Sabres. Meanwhile, O’Reilly has 138 points in 153 regular season games in St. Louis. That doesn’t include the 2018-19 postseason, during which O’Reilly had 23 points in 26 games.

Trading O’Reilly never made sense, especially not for the weak return the Sabres got for him. What’s worse is what Botterill did to replace O’Reilly – absolutely nothing. He gave up his second best center and did nothing to replace him. Instead, Botterill pretty much handed the second-line center job to Casey Mittelstadt, who didn’t do well.

This trade sums up what Botterill did in Buffalo. He was terrible at asset management and the Sabres should have seen red flags the moment this trade was made. It was a bad trade then, and it is somehow even worse now.