Buffalo locks up its young center
One full NHL season. Twenty-seven points. Eight years and $52.8 million.
The Sabres extended Noah Ostlund on Monday at $6.6 million per season, a deal that runs through 2034.
Ostlund is 22, coming off 27 points in 60 games with 11 goals and 16 assists. Buffalo took him 16th overall in the 2022 draft. He had appeared in eight games in 2024-2025 without registering a point, so last season was the real arrival.
Try it for $0.99.
A player the Sabres didn’t need to fix
Lindy Ruff saw this coming back in April. Buffalo’s head coach described a forward who was already polished, someone who reads the game without hand-holding.
“He’s a coach’s dream, because he’s the kind of player you really don’t have to coach,” Ruff said. “He almost always knows where he’s going to be. He’s very rarely out of position in the defensive zone.”
That awareness is a big part of the bet. Buffalo is paying for reliability in all three zones rather than chasing raw production.
A signing timed to the deadline
The timing is no accident. The deadline for eight-year contracts falls on Tuesday. After that, the new collective bargaining agreement caps the maximum term at seven years, and a handful of teams have hurried to close their business before the switch.
Ostlund becomes the 10th Sabres player tied up through at least 2029-2030. Buffalo is nailing down its core early, on a player with one full season on his résumé.
Discover the rest of the NHL news on our site and app mathodds!
in your pocket.
Real-time notifications & alerts
Leave a Reply