Today was the deadline for the Buffalo Sabres to hand out qualifying offers to their restricted free agents, and all but two players were given offers.

Defensemen Mike Kostka and Matt Generous were not qualified by the Sabres and as a result will become unrestricted free agents on July 1.

Sabres GM Darcy Regier was traveling today and unavailable for comment according to Mike Gilbert, Sabres Director of Public Relations.

Kostka was signed by the Sabres has a free agent out of college following the 2008 season where he spent four seasons with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

In Kostka two years with the Portland Pirates, he played 156 games including all 80 games in 2008-’09, scoring 6 goals, 51 assists for 57 points with a plus-12 rating.

In the 2010 playoff run, Kostka struggled going pointless with a minus-3 rating.

Generous was drafted by the Sabres in the seventh round (#208 overall) in the 2005 NHL Entry Draft and was signed to a two-year entry level following his four year run at St. Lawrence University. He played four games with the Pirates in 2008-’09 and a full season in 2009-’10 where he scored two goals 11 assists for 13 points with a plus-2 rating.

It’s entirely not a complete shock that Buffalo opted not to qualify either Kostka or Generous based on the Sabres past with not qualifying players like Mike Funk, Mike Card or Dylan Hunter. Also, the Sabres have a large amount of depth at defense with recent signings of Alex Biega, Nick Crawford as well as the recent draft picks of Sabres in the 2010 draft that saw them take three defenseman in the Sabres first four picks.

Pirates who did receive qualifying offers were Marc-Andre Gragnani, Mike Weber, Mark Mancari, Derek Whitmore and JP Lamoureux.

If a player should accept their qualifying offer they will recieve a one year contract with a 10 percent raise based on their 2009-’10 salary.