Brandon Montour Traded to Buffalo Sabres

In the early evening on Sunday, defenseman Brandon Montour was traded to the Buffalo Sabres. The details of the trade are Montour going to Buffalo for a first-round pick and prospect Brendan Guhle going to the Anaheim Ducks.

There's been a trade.@brandon_montour is off to the @BuffaloSabres, while @guhles_ heads to the @AnaheimDucks along with a first-round pick. ➡ https://t.co/MdBROXMTAS #NHLTradeDeadline pic.twitter.com/2uMitCdCm4

— NHL (@NHL) February 25, 2019

While not a huge name potentially on the move at this year’s trade deadline, there were teams interested in Montour. Among them were the Pittsburgh Penguins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers, and New York Rangers. Buffalo emerged last minute and added a right-handed d-man to stabilize their blue line for this and next season. He has one final season after this one with a $3.387 million cap hit and so far this season, Montour had posted 25 points in 62 games for the Ducks.

Elliotte Friedman first reported the potential move and Pierre LeBrun of TSN was soon to follow. Finally, TSN’s Frank Seravalli posted that the first round pick is San Jose’s, but Anaheim has the option to select the first-rounder of St. Louis instead if that selection falls between 20 and 31.

The Return for the Ducks

Outside of the first-round pick, the Ducks also get defensive prospect Brendan Guhle. Reports on him are mixed. He was outplayed by Lawrence Pilut and wasn’t seeing NHL duty but others were calling him the Sabres next-best defensive prospect to Rasmus Dahlin.

With this move, it appears the Ducks are going full-on rebuild and if they can, they’ll try to move more pieces by Monday’s deadline. Wishful thinking would be that they could rid themselves of some costly veteran contracts. That’s not likely. But there might be other pieces on the move. One example was Brian Gibbons. He was traded later on Sunday evening to the Ottawa Senators for Patrick Sieloff.

#TradeCentre UPDATE: The #Ducks have traded forward Brian Gibbons to the #Senators in exchange for defenceman Patrick Sieloff. https://t.co/dD11Xkkp5h #TSNHockey #NHL @GolfTown pic.twitter.com/p057ymsBKS

— TSN (@TSN_Sports) February 25, 2019

It should be an interesting few hours for the Ducks who have a coach and GM in Bob Murray running the show. Being that close to the players and seeing the situation first hand, there are bound to be some surprising moves.