{"id":30479,"date":"2025-07-01T18:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T18:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/30479\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T18:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T18:03:09","slug":"blackhawks-acquire-sam-lafferty-from-sabres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/30479\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackhawks Acquire Sam Lafferty From Sabres"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Blackhawks have acquired forward\u00a0Sam Lafferty<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>from the Sabres in exchange for their 2026 sixth-round pick, the team announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The move begins the 30-year-old\u2019s second tenure in Chicago. The Hawks previously acquired him from the Penguins for\u00a0Alexander Nylander<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>in January 2022. He spent parts of two seasons with the club before getting dealt to the Maple Leafs in the 2023\u00a0Jake McCabe<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>deal. He suited up 97 times in that span, posting 15 goals and 32 points \u2013 the most offensive he\u2019s provided for any of his five NHL teams \u2013 and averaged nearly 15 minutes per game.<\/p>\n

Chicago had Lafferty back in the organization for a few days last year, acquiring him from the Canucks in the trade that brought\u00a0Ilya Mikheyev<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>to the Hawks. He was a pending UFA, though, and instead decided to test the open market. He promptly signed<\/a> a two-year, $4MM deal with the Sabres.<\/p>\n

After scoring 13 goals and 24 points with Vancouver last year, it seemed like a worthy bet on Buffalo\u2019s part. Instead, Lafferty struggled to be effective even in a fourth-line role. He averaged just 9:53 per game, making 60 appearances and scoring seven points with a -15 rating. Needless to say, both Lafferty and the Sabres likely preferred a move this summer if possible.<\/p>\n

Lafferty now gets to return to the environment where he\u2019s had the most success in Chicago, while the Sabres open up a roster spot and $2MM in cap space. He\u2019ll look to compete for a spot in Chicago\u2019s bottom six with young forwards like\u00a0Oliver Moore<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Landon Slaggert<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As for the Sabres, who hope to be more aggressive in free agency than Chicago today, they now have nearly $23MM in space with a roster size of 17, per PuckPedia<\/a>. In addition to freeing up a space for a young player like\u00a0Noah Ostlund<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>or\u00a0Isak Rosen<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>to make the team out of training camp, they open up even more spending flexibility and shed an undesirable salary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blackhawks have acquired forward\u00a0Sam Lafferty\u00a0from the Sabres in exchange for their 2026 sixth-round pick, the team announced.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[1720,291,293,25992,62,1650,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-30479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-buffalo-sabres","9":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sam-lafferty","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-transactions","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114779298623236850","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}