Defenseman Nikita Zadorov was returned to the London Knights and defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen and center Johan Larsson have been assigned to the Sabres' AHL affiliate Rochester Americans.
Also, Mikhail Grigorenko is on conditioning assignment for the Amerks. He will be there a maximum of 14 days. Grigorenko will be able to play in six games through Nov. 30 with the Amerks.
There was a point in time when the NHL teams could skirt rules in terms of conditioning assignments. The New Jersey Devils, a long time ago, assigned Vlastimil Kroupa assigned on conditioning for the first four months of the 97-98 season.
But enough about the conditioning assignments and assignments and whatever. The point is, these guys will not be in the NHL for some time to come. In the meantime, no call-ups have been announced but we can expect that they will be coming.
The problem is the next team coming in is the red-hot St. Louis Blues. The people coming up, however, will join the game against the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday night.
I'll be short with my opinion on this one because I just picked this out of a hat. The Sabres couldn't afford to keep all these rookies up in the NHL. Some of them weren't ready and the others were not exactly part of the team yet. The Sabres are in a rebuilding mode, but bringing rookies up too early constitutes some problems, especially for the rookies who are not conditioned for the NHL yet. So these kind of moves make sense. I would expect Grigorenko to keep playing with the Sabres after his conditioning assignment. He has been productive on his line and I'd be surprised if they send him back down after conditioning. In the meantime, the Sabres have to do what they have to do to play by the rules, as well as rebuild their badly-damaged team.
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