Buffalo Sabres

Buffalo Sabres coverage. Related to the Sabres, their prospects and the minors.

Digging in to Buffalo’s Power Play Woes

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It’s been hard to find many silver linings in the Sabres season thus far. A seemingly unending drip of injuries has kept the team’s lineup in flux for virtually the entire season and their inability to sting wins together has been fueled by a maddening pattern of inconsistent play. 

It feels like another season is circling the drain and while goaltending was one of the primary reasons the 2022-23 season ended without a playoff berth, special teams is making a strong push as the chief antagonist of the 23-24 edition of the Buffalo Sabres. 

Buffalo’s penalty kill had some flashes early in the season and had the look of a unit that was galvanized by personnel changes and tweaks to their strategy. But time has not been kind to the penalty kill unit (nor have injuries) and the Sabres have slid to the bottom half of the league in penalty kill percentage with a 78.5% success rate at the time of this posting. 

But it’s been the power play that’s been especially ineffective. The Sabres’ 14.2% power play is better than only five other teams and only three teams have scored fewer than Buffalo’s 17 power play goals this year. Buffalo’s extra man unit isn’t immune to any ailment either. Their zone entries are erratic, they regularly turn the puck over in-zone due to sloppy passing and their lack of in-zone movement makes life exceptionally easy for the opposing penalty kill. Though, these issues aren’t unique to this season. In fact, it’s an issue that chased Buffalo’s power play for much of last season as well, they were just lucky enough to have such an impressive finishing rate. 

Lance Lysowski recently pointed out that the Sabres power play was 29th in the NHL dating back to the 22-23 season, so any notion that the team’s extra man unit only tailed off at the very end of last year is misguided. 

Just looking at the raw goal scoring paints a pretty ominous picture for the Sabres. Of their 63 power play goals scored last season, they scored 33 before December 13. The Sabres scored three goals against the Kings that evening, bringing their power play goal total to 33 in just 29 games. They only went more than one game without a power play goal on three occasions during that stretch, each time enduring a two-game drought. Over the following 53 games? The Sabres scored 30 more power play goals with eight separate stretches of two or more games without scoring on the man advantage. 

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The Instigator Podcast 12.20 – Some Thoughts on Buffalo’s Direction in Goal

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The Sabres aren’t in a great place when it comes to goaltending. It may not be their biggest issue, but it’s a problem that could have the most long term impact on the club. I string together some rambling thoughts on the performances of Devon Levi and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, how the Sabres are handling Levi and what they can do to ensure Levi’s ongoing growth. Perhaps it’s time to make a sizeable investment in a goaltender outside the organization. Is the risk worth the reward and if a new face allows Levi to grow in the AHL, does that increase the return for the Sabres?

The Instigator Podcast 12.19 – New Year’s Resolutions for the Sabres

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The Sabres have plenty of issues to work on and we thought there would be no better way to fix them than by suggesting some New Year’s resolutions for the club. We each run through a pair of resolutions for the Sabres, focusing on special teams, Dylan Cozens, goaltending and the front office. And we wrap up with one last brief suggestion for good measure. Whether or not these resolutions can be kept is an entirely different question for a Sabres team desperately in need of a winning streak.

Warpath #1: The Founding

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The founding of the Buffalo Sabres is an interesting tale of dogged hard work by the Knox brothers mixed with a bit of vintage NHL chicanery. Follow the path the Knoxes took from prospective NHL owners, through their dalliance with the Oakland Seals and, finally, to the succwssful end of their pursuit of bringing NHL hockey to Buffalo.

The Instigator Podcast 12.12 – Lacking Depth

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The Sabres tough Saturday carried to Tuesday and it got worse with Tage Thompson’s injury. We discuss how Buffalo’s injury woes at forward have thinned their lines, and Thompson’s injury exacerbates the problems. We talk about the holes in Buffalo’s lineup and how it’s past time for Jiri Kulich and other high-end prospects to get a look. We wrap up this week’s episode with a brief conversation on the team’s struggling power play and a few adjustments we’d make to clean it up.

The Instigator Podcast 12.11 – Calling for Kulich

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Alarm bells are going off in Edmonton and we start this week’s show talking about everything that seems to be ailing the Oilers. We also tie in our Oilers discussion, and their need to stay competitive with the push the Sabres will start to feel when it comes to making a big trade of their own.

We also talk about Buffalo’s young stars, namely Matthew Savoie and Jiri Kulich. Savoie has arrived after his two week conditioning assignment and will likely slot into the lineup this week. But even though Kulich has been scoring at a torrid pace, he hasn’t earned a call up just yet. We talk about where in the lineup he could fit and how much longer the Sabres can realistically wait before bringing him up.

The Instigator Podcast 12.10 – Neck Guard Adoption and Listener Questions

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We took listener questions and ran through topics like the Shane Wright plan, expectations for Devon Levi, how Peyton Krebs and Casey Mittelstadt should be handled and line juggling as the team finds the right fit for their forwards. We open the show with a discussion on the adoption of neck guards, what might be preventing early adoption for NHL players and how a grandfathered requirement could come into play.

Don’t Forget the Summer Goalie Market When Questioning the Sabres Moves

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The season may only be four games old, but the Sabres’ 1-3 start has put some of the fans’ biggest offseason concerns in the spotlight.

Buffalo’s decision to leave the roster largely untouched and lean on their unproven trio of goaltenders was chief among the offseason debate in Sabres circles. Leaning on a roster that made the Sabres the third highest scoring team in the NHL wasn’t a terrible choice when you dig into the data. Kevyn Adams has continued to lock up the core of his roster and it was those players – most notably Tage Thompson (47 goals), Dylan Cozens (31 goals) and Rasmus Dahlin (73 points) – who pushed the Sabres to the top of the league’s scoring race. The choices in goal were a greater gamble. 

Eric Comrie and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen’s struggles last season underscored the position that likely kept the Sabres out of the playoffs. While Devon Levi has shown promise (and was stout in Tuesday’s win over Tampa), handing the keys to a 21-year old with seven games of NHL experience is unprecedented. If there was one position where fans would have agreed with more tangible reinforcement, it would have been in net. The league’s goalie market from the summer made that proposition much harder to accomplish than maybe some assume. 

Connor Hellebuyck was far and away the best goaltender available over the summer. There were widespread reports that the Jets were shopping the former Vezina winner, though a deal never materialized. Hellebuyck’s contract status almost certainly played a role in the lack of a trade. While Hellebuyck was a goaltender I felt could push the Sabres to a playoff berth, I would not have pursued him with a lengthy contract extension attached. Now that he’s signed a seven-year, $59.5 million extension, it would be hard to see the logic in acquiring that sort of player given the faith the organization has in Levi. 

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Sabres Trade Tiers

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Going back to the spring, many Sabres fans have been waiting on a trade that hasn’t come. 

As Buffalo morphed into a playoff contender, there was a growing expectation that Kevyn Adams would make some deals to round out his roster. But his action at the deadline was more measured than some may have guessed, and he completed the offseason without any notable deals being made (save for dealing Ilya Lyubushkin to alleviate a numbers crunch on the blueline). Victor Olofsson is on record saying he was prepared to be moved, but no deal materialized for him, a goaltender or any other position which could have helped the Sabres take the next step to the playoffs. 

It’s understandable that Adams hasn’t been in a rush to shake up his group. The forward group is brimming with young talent while a pair of first overall picks anchor the blueline. Buffalo boasts a core many teams can only dream of. The need to materially alter this group is reserved to maybe two or three spots across the entire roster. Unlike previous years during this decade-long rebuild, the team isn’t in a position where they’re lacking depth on the NHL roster or in their pipeline. It’s a luxury which will put them in a position of strength when the time comes to take a big swing. 

And that time is approaching. 

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The Instigator Podcast 12.7 – Start of Season Mailbag

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Let’s kick off the opening week of the NHL season with a listener mailbag. On this episode we’ll tackle Owen Power’s contract, how the Sabres should handle Matt Savoie, what a successful start to the year looks like for Zach Benson and more.