By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

No. 68: April 3, 2013 – The Sabres trade Jason Pominville to Minnesota for Johan Larsson, Matt Hackett, a first-round draft choice in 2013 (Nikita Zadorov) and a second-round draft choice in 2014 (Vaclav Karabacek).

The Minnesota Wild needed some help if it wanted to reach the postseason in 2013. The Sabres probably weren’t going to be in the playoffs no matter how much help it received at the trade deadline. That made the two teams possible trading partners.

When negotiations were over, left winger Jason Pominville was a member of the Wild. The Sabres received a good-sized package of young talent in the swap. Larsson became part of the roster later in his career, and Zadorov was sent to Colorado in the Ryan O’Reilly deal.

Pominville had 30 goals in his first full season in Minnesota, and played three more seasons after that. But after a successful run of almost eight years in Buffalo, the Sabres couldn’t resist bringing him back for an encore in 2017.

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

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