The Sabres are continuing their trend of signing tough guys. This morning the team announced the signings TJ Brennan and Nick Tarnasky to one year contracts. Brennan is a former 2nd round draft selection of the Sabres and Tarnasky was originally drafted by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 9th round of the 2003 draft.

Nick Tarnasky played last season in the KHL after playing parts of 5 season with the Lightning, the Nashville Predators and the Florida Panthers. In those 5 season 30 points, 297 PIM’s in 245 games. Tarnasky also appeared in 36 games while playing for Vityaz Chekov of the KHL and racked up 12 points and 173 PIM’s.

While the point total is not impressive, the tough guy mentality is something the Sabres felt they needed to acquire in bulk quantities this off season. Tarnasky joins the list of John Scott and Steve Ott as the tough guys acquired through free agency/trades. The 3 of them will join Patrick Kaleta (hopefully), Cody McCormick, Marcus Foligno and Corey Tropp. Apparently our goal this offseason was to get mean, very, very mean… Should be an interesting experiment.

Brennan is coming off his third professional season, a season in which he made his NHL debut and scored his first NHL goal. Brennan appeared in 11 games for the Sabres this season and added 1 goal and 6 PIM’s. In 52 games with Rochester, the defenseman tallied 16 goals, a career high, and 14 assists. After he was drafted back in 2007, many people had high hopes for the young defenseman, but he never really lived up to that potential. Now he has quite a fight ahead of him to even make the roster as a 7th defenseman, which is very unlikely at this point. The depth the Sabres have at defense may prove to be more of a hindrance to Brennan’s development unless the blue line is once again ravaged by injuries.

Stay tuned for more!