Noah Pedrazzoli continues dissecting the Atlantic Division wild card contenders with a look at the Buffalo Sabres
The Buffalo Sabres are a franchise riddled with uncertainty. Coming off year eleven of their rebuild, fans and management are confused about the trajectory of their team. Whenever they are listed as competitors, they find a way to flop. It’s time to dig deep and provide a prognosis for the Sabres upcoming season.
Upgrades
Let’s begin with the positives. The Sabres have a young core that can only continue to improve and develop. But a core of Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens, Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, JJ Peterka, and Alex Tuch can only do so much for a team that cannot be fused together.
What this basically means is that they are only as good as the team that is built around them. After the departure of Jeff Skinner and Casey Mittlestadt, up-and-comers such as Dylan Cozens and JJ Peterka will need to prove why they belong in their new promotions to the first and second line.
In addition to this revamped second line, Jack Quinn and Zack Benson are both promising, young, first-round forwards who are finally ready to be deployed to add an injection of firepower on the Buffalo offense. Their activation demonstrates the faith general manager Kevyn Adams has in their prosperous prospect pool and its ability to finally start producing NHL-ready forwards.
The bottom-six has seen an injection of both promising young forwards as well as veteran presence. NHL journeymen Jason Zucker, Sam Lafferty, and Nicholas Aube-Kubel have all been signed to help ease the younger forwards into their roles.
A full season of Bowen Byram, acquired in a one-for-one trade with the Colorado Avalanche at the trade deadline in exchange for Casey Mittlestadt, should help fill in some defensive holes that the Sabres desperately need to improve on the backend. His two-way play will be fascinating to analyze as he will be playing alongside star defenseman Rasmus Dahlin.
“For the Sabres to have a shot at the playoffs, Dahlin will need to return to his Norris-caliber playmaking and take his place as a cornerstone of the Sabres two-way play.”
Needs & Losses
The summer of 2024 for the Buffalo Sabres was one of dysfunction. It has seen a complete upheaval of the forward core, especially the top line, where the Sabres have made some peculiar moves starting with the contract buy-out of star winger Jeff Skinner.
Skinner played on the top line with Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch where he also had a crucial role on the power play. Now that he’s an Edmonton Oiler, the Sabres will need their young forwards to step up and contribute some firepower. Tuch will also need to provide leadership to the top-six as Skinner’s departure has given him increased responsibility.
Owen Power was signed to an expensive deal straight out of his entry-level contract. Power only has 12 goals and 59 assists in his three years in the league. As the first-overall pick in 2021, Power was projected to have an immediate impact on a deprived Sabres defense and was expected to carry the defensive core with Rasmus Dahlin.
With Bowen Byram entering the frame, Power will have more leeway to pick up his game after being relatively stagnant the past three seasons. Sabres management clearly has a great deal of faith in him to potentially become a franchise defensemen by signing him to an early expensive contract, but now Power will be on the radar to deliver upon the expectations that accompany a lucrative contract.
Speaking of defense, Dahlin will need a comeback year in order for this team to compete. Just like Owen Power, the arrival of Byram is a key factor in both of their development. Byram should be able to share some of the heavy lifting placed upon the young shoulders of Dahlin and Power.
Dahlin was being viewed as a Norris candidate not too long ago so the expectations for him are clearly sky-high. For the Buffalo Sabres to have a shot at the playoffs, Dahlin will need to return to his Norris-caliber playmaking and take his place as a cornerstone of the Sabres two-way play.
In goal, Ukko-Pekka Luukonnen will need to carry the brunt of the shots faced by both him and Devon Levi. Levi is a touted goalie prospect still fresh out of his college days at Northeastern. And while he was considered a starter in the league last year, he found out the hard way that the NHL isn’t the same as college hockey and was sent to the AHL for further development.
The question surrounding Levi isn’t if he’s a starter, it’s more of if he is ready for the NHL overall. Throwing prospects into the “deep-end” usually gets them either injured or on the fast-track to becoming a bust. Therefore, it is looking far more likely that “UPL” will be the main netminder for the Sabres this upcoming season.
Now for the elephants in the room. Right before the start of free agency, the Sabers traded a second-round pick to the Washington Capitals for Beck Malenstyn. Malenstyn is a developing depth-forward who got a good amount of minutes on a playoff-bound Washington Capitals. However, it is still curious that the Sabers traded a second-round pick for a depth forward that only has 24 points to his name in his four-year career.
Another shocking move that had Sabers fans in an uproar was the trade that had a recent 9th overall pick (in 2022) Matt Savoie sent to the Edmonton Oilers for a depth center in Ryan McLeod and Tyler Tullio. While the Sabers are in need of depth at center, it’s still a mystery why the Sabers traded a premier prospect for a third-line center.
Sabres Division Outlook: 7th-8th Place
The Buffalo Sabres have dealt themselves a very self-deprecating hand. They aren’t setting up their young core for success and are instead treating this year as experimental in the sense that they are still figuring out who they are as a team. Kevyn Adams is still tinkering with the roster by letting the young guns play, but he isn’t giving his star players the chance to compete with the rest of the league.
By buying out Skinner, the Sabers were in double-digits for cap space which had fans thinking a major change was on the horizon. Instead, the Sabers mainly subtracted and are now relying on their prospects to take the next step to fill in the gaps. The return of Lindy Ruff from his stint in New Jersey could potentially provide structure to this young team and make life difficult for others in the East.
Ruff found himself in a similar situation in New Jersey and only got them as far as a second-round exit in 2022-2023. This team will need their youth to step up in order to succeed or else they will be facing another year of disappointed fans languishing for a chance at a playoff appearance. A trip to the playoffs would be a huge win for the Buffalo Sabres to end a lengthy drought. But a summer of head-scratching moves leaves that possibility in question.
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