I stewed, angrily, for days before I started writing this article. To be frank, I’m surprised that I have any emotion left to give to the Buffalo Sabres. I lived through the Bills drought, but I don’t remember feeling as bad as this. Maybe it’s the volume of games that are played. Maybe it’s the fact that the football culture is just more conducive to bringing and keeping fans together when times are tough. Whatever the reasons are, it doesn’t matter. On Sunday, April 7th, the Sabres played an uninspiring game against the Detroit Red Wings for the second time in three weeks, losing 3-1. And with it, any semblance of hope left to make the playoffs was dashed. As such, the Mount Everest-sized boulder this fanbase has been chained to and forced to drag around for 12 years will remain shackled for at least one more.
But it didn’t need to be this way. Optimism about the team’s direction at the end of the 2022-23 campaign was at its highest. After missing the playoffs by a mere two points, it appeared as though the Sabres were on an upward trajectory. They were one of the highest-scoring teams in the league. Rasmus Dahlin had blossomed into the superstar that the most respected NHL prognosticators had predicted he would become. And the team’s patience with Tage Thompson paid off, as he seemingly developed into an NHL first-line center overnight. There was much in place to build on, and any competent organization serious about winning should have been able to take the next step. Unfortunately, finding competence within the Sabres’ organization proved as challenging as scouring the desert for water.
An honest evaluation of the 2022-23 campaign would have included a number of areas to be considered and targeted for improvement. The first thing that should have been obvious was that a goal-scoring regression would occur. The Sabres were one of just six NHL teams whose goals scored above expected as measured by MoneyPuck.com was ten or greater at 5-on-5. And they were one of just seven teams in the same category above six at 5-on-4. They also boasted the league’s fourth-highest shooting percentage on unblocked shots.
Some of this can be attributed to the talent level of the shooters on the team, and you can’t take that away from them. But the play style was also a large factor in their ability to produce scoring chances from dangerous places on the ice. Given that this play style resulted in the Sabres surrendering the sixth-highest expected goals against the previous season, the decision was made to adjust the system to be more defensively sound.
This decision drew criticism from pundits and fans alike as this season’s campaign wore on. Don Granato was asked directly about this change in media junkets. He reiterated that he believed the goal-scoring would come back. And to his credit, their cumulative expected goals at even strength on a per-game basis did tick up from 1.9 in October to 2.1 in January. But through the remaining stretch of the season, it remained on a flat, if not slightly downward trajectory.
Ultimately, per Money Puck’s model, the 23-24 Sabres have produced 20 fewer expected goals at 5-on-5 compared to the 22-23 squad. But this, combined with the significant drop in shooting percentage of unblocked shots and the collapse of the Power Play (more on that in a minute) led to a 23% drop in goal scoring through 80 games.
Based on what we knew at the end of last season, they should have been able to see this coming. But what does the inaction of the organization to meaningfully address scoring depth in the summer of 2023 signal about what Kevyn Adams and his staff thought about this team? Instead of trading draft picks and/or prospects to solidify the forward lineup, they handed out new deals to Kyle Okposo, Zemgus Girgensons, and even Tyson Jost, all of whom had a sub-50 % on-ice expected goals percentage at even strength.
Granted, those players weren’t all signed to be goal-scorers. And if the Sabres were going to shift to a more defensive-minded approach, perhaps they believed their numbers could improve. But why gamble on all three? And why was nothing else done to add goal-scoring to the roster? Whatever their belief was about where the team would be this year, there was no good reason why they shouldn’t have made a move for a higher caliber player – even if it was at the expense of draft picks or prospects in the system.
The second thing that should have been obvious to the Sabres is that their Special Teams needed to improve. In the 2022-23 season, the Power Play produced 11% fewer expected goals than the league average, and the penalty kill allowed 16% greater expected goals than the league average, according to HockeyViz.com’s numbers. This is where it seems as though this organization’s complacency really shows up. A professional hockey team would replace an assistant coach and bring in someone who knows how to elevate these units after a season like that. But rather than shake up any part of the organization, the Sabres elected to bring back their entire coaching staff with no changes at all. Status quo.
Instead, they went out and signed Erik Johnson, citing his penalty kill prowess as one of the main reasons they brought him into the fold. And while the Sabres’ penalty kill did improve, they still found themselves allowing 6% more expected goals against relative to the league average, and Johnson’s individual impact was below league average as well.
And the power play? Predictably, it got worse. They produced an astounding 17% fewer expected goals per 60 minutes than the league average power play, again according to HockeyViz.com. But it doesn’t take fancy stats and analytics to know that the Sabres power play has been terrible for two years. Even the most casual fans notice and comment on the lack of movement and shooting-lane-creating structure that even league-average power plays seem to be able to establish. If it weren’t for having one of the most prolific offensive defensemen in the entire league in Rasmus Dahlin walking the blue line with incredible poise, they would be far, far worse.
The third and final thing that should have been obvious was that the defense needed an upgrade. In the 2022-23 season, only Kale Clague and Dahlin had an on-ice expected goals percentage north of 50%. And as previously mentioned in this very article, the Sabres were the sixth-worst team in the league in expected goals surrendered at even strength.
To Adams’ credit, they tried to address this in their own way. In the early stages of the offseason, the Sabres wisely moved on from Ilya Lybushkin who was their second-to-last-ranked defenseman in quality share. In came Connor Clifton and Erik Johnson on free-agent deals.
Clifton as an idea was at least interesting. It’s one of the rare instances that the Sabres have brought in a player with a quality share north of 50% at 5-on-5 since Adams took over. However, he has failed to adapt to the way the Sabres play. As a whole, this has been a disaster of a signing. Clifton is ranked eighth among Sabre defensemen in quality share at 46%. He also has another two years left on his contract.
Johnson did not come in with impressive numbers at this stage of his career. But the Sabres likely didn’t sign him with the intention of playing him more than a bottom-pairing guy. But during his tenure as a Sabre, he put up numbers that more closely resembled a seventh or eighth defenseman on the depth chart. Yet he was curiously given opportunities to play ahead of other players who looked better.
In comes the discussion about Ryan Johnson. When he was given opportunities to crack the lineup, he played very well. In fact, Johnson was their second-ranked defenseman in on-ice expected goals percentage at 51.3%. He was one of just three defensemen on the roster above the 50% mark. And according to HockeyViz.com, the Sabres’ 5-on-5 defense as a whole allowed 12% fewer expected goals per 60 minutes than the average. But despite all of the information we have on this player supporting the idea that he should be playing regular minutes, he will finish the year with just over a third of the minutes that were given to Clifton, and 200 fewer minutes than Johnson has played at 5-on-5. Many nights he was relegated to the press box, and ultimately, Adams moved him down to Rochester.
