2007-08 NE Depth Charts: Buffalo Sabres

Now that a month has passed since "Black Sunday" (Captains Daniel Briere and Chris Drury left for much greener pastures) a little objectivity can set in...Buffalo is still very well-off. And although they signed Thomas Vanek (7 years, $50 million) and Derek Roy (6 years, $24 million) to more money than they would have liked, at the end of the day the Sabres have these two offensive talents locked up until they're both 30 years old.

Depth chart:

Thomas Vanek	Derek Roy	Maxim Afinogenov
Ales Kotalik	Tim Connolly	Jason Pominville
Jochen Hecht	Paul Gaustad	Drew Stafford
Dan Paille	Adam Mair
Andrew Peters	Mike Ryan
possible rookies: C – Marek Zagrapan, W - Clarke MacArthur, Patrick Kaleta, Mark Mancari.
Defence:
Henrik Tallinder	Toni Lydman
Brian Campbell	Teppo Numminen
Dmitri Kalinin	Jaroslav Spacek
Nathan Paetsch
Possible rookies: Michael Funk, Andrej Sekera, Mike Card
Goaltending:
Ryan Miller	Jocelyn Thibault

The next major front office order of business must be to lock up Ryan Miller for as long as possible. For all the press about Buffalo's new-NHL powerhouse offence, they go nowhere without Miller.

With the entire roster now signed, the Sabres' cap hit stands at just over US$45million, leaving about $5.1 million of space under the cap, giving them room to afford any sort of "rental" if they go that route this season.