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.

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Well the awesomeness in Pegulaville just keeps on coming.  They Sabres made a splash on the first day of free agency by signing forward Ville Leino to a 6 year contract worth $27 million.  Another awesome deal, at least in my mind. Leino is still young and should have no problem adjusting to Lindy’s system and he would look mighty nice centering a line with Jason Pominville and Tyler Ennis/Drew Stafford/Thomas Vanek.  He’s big and is not afraid to play in front of the net, which is something this team has lacked outside of the services of Paul Gaustad and Vanek.  I’m looking forward to seeing how Lindy works him into the fold and cna’t wait to see that beautiful shot next season.

To keep up with some of the grit, the Sabres also re-signed forward Cody McCormick to a multi-year deal.  I love McCormick, seriously though he’s one of my favorites, and couldn’t be more excited to have him back.  The combo of McCormick, Gaustad and Kaleta makes for quite the thundering third line, with McCormick leading the way with 16 fighting majors last season.

On a side note, Tim Connolly is GONE!!!!! I don’t even care that he signed with the Maple Leafs, thats how excited the city of Buffalo is to be done with his injury riddled self.  The contract is of course absurd, I mean really, would you pay a middle of the road (at best) center, who is hurt more than he is healthy $4.75 million A YEAR… Thats $750,000 more than he was making in Buffalo.  Either way, enjoy him Toronto, that is if you ever get to see him play.

Stay tuned, because there is no way this team is finished yet. There are still 4 RFA’s (Enroth, Gragnani, Weber and Sejkera) to sign and the team has about $1.3 million left until they hit the cap ceiling.  Something’s gotta give, now its just a waiting game to see what that something is.