Ville Leino Is Jammin' In Buffalo To the Tune Of $27M

Sabres RW Drew Stafford put
down the guitar and put up enough
points for the Sabres to sign
him to a $4M/yr. contract extension.

Drew Stafford was a burgeoning "guitar-hero" (in his mind) for much of his short NHL career with the Buffalo Sabres. That was, up until last off-season when he finally ditched the dreams of the big stage in the pursuit of his real talent--putting up points in the National Hockey League.

The big winger with all the tools, was burdened with inconsistency for his professional career, but showed that when he put in the off-season work and put his mind to it, he'd put up some serious numbers. He was rewarded recently with a $4M/year contract from the Buffalo Sabres for his efforts.

Newly-inked Sabres forward Ville Leino is a self-taught guitar player who started getting serious about playing guitar just about the time he was beginning his NHL career. "I always wanted to do that," he stated in a philly.com bio. "I started when I was a bit younger, when I was 15 or 18 or so, but this time I bought a really good guitar. I wanted to buy a good one so that I would have to keep playing and it wouldn't just sit there."

Newly-inked forward Ville Leino is getting
paid by the Sabres to hoist a hockey stick
not a vintage guitar.

With a contract from the Sabres that will averages out to $4.5M/year, Leino can now buy himself a really, really, really good one. Maybe a 1958 Gibson Les Paul where he can pretend to be Jimmy Page. Or he could snag a vintage '58 Strat and scream out some blues like Eric Clapton.

Hell, if he wants to he could plug an SG or Flying "V" into a Marshall stack that would make Neil Young envious.

He can do all of that, but the Buffalo Sabres are paying him (like they did with Stafford) to be more like Steven Stamkos as opposed to Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Yesterday, after being shown the back of the line by the Brad Richards camp, GM Darcy Regier and Co. turned their attention to an unrestricted free agent who they "felt very strongly about." He said, "[Leino] was someone we identified early and moved him to the top of the list" while bowing out of the Richards sweepstakes.

Leino was the third player the Sabres added this off-season. He joins 11-year veteran d-man Robyn Regehr and  long-term signee, defenseman Christian Ehrhoff, as players that the team targeted, but who are somewhat unknown quantities in Buffalo.

Fans aren't overly familiar with Regehr, having played his entire career out west in Calgary.

They may have followed Ehrhoff in the Stanley Cup Finals with the Canucks, but outside of that he was probably not on anybody's radar having played out west in Vancouver.

And, as for Leino, Sabres fans did have the chance to catch him this season through a seven-game playoff series with Buffalo that saw him score the overtime game-winner in Game-6 at HSBC Arena.

Statistically speaking, his numbers don't warrant that kind of deal, although he had a banner 2010 playoffs with the Philadelphia Flyers scoring seven goals, adding 14 assists and going a plus-10 in 19 games as the team lost in the Stanley Cup Finals to Chicago.

Still, fans look at his six-year, $27M deal quizzically. Leino is a 27 year old player who played in 149 NHL games with two teams over three seasons on the wing. His early years were spent in Finland playing one professional season in the Finnish Elite League, SM-liiga, with Jokerit. He had 77 points in 55 games on the wing and was named the league's best regular season player.

And why, pray tell, would the Sabres organization add to the abundance of high-priced wingers and disregard glaring holes down the middle?

Even though Leino's entire professional career has been on the wing, in a post-signing conference call with the Buffalo media, Leino said that for him, "[center] is a more natural place to play."  He's the type of player that likes the puck on his stick and has the slipperiness to find holes in the defense, just like the overtime goal he scored in Game-6 vs. the Sabres.

Regier believes that Leino will "contribute significantly to the team, improving and driving [the] offense." Lindy Ruff echoed Leino's sentiments and went on to say that "[Leino] enjoys playing center...in fact if you study the film, a lot of times he was the guy playing down low." "I talked to him about all three positions," Ruff said "and he's comfortable about all three, but the position he likes playing most is center."

Ruff continued, "In a long conversation about how we play and with the amount the defense join the play, that second wave of attack, Ville's strength is on the puck, he can make plays in tight areas, he can look for the second wave."

So, in their eyes, the Sabres did, in fact, land a top-six center as opposed to a player that we've seen only on the wing.

Leino said that he's looking forward to being settled into a city and has said that he's excited to play for Buffalo.

Fair enough.

But, will he eschew any thoughts about being a guitar-hero, ala Stafford, and focus soley upon putting the puck in the net instead?

Hope so.

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out, but if all the things said by all parties are true, and Leino turns out to be a highly-skilled, offense-driving, top-six center, the Sabres will have done well for themselves.



Darcy Regier and Lindy Ruff talk about signing Ville Leino.