The vibes in upstate New York are impeccable. The Buffalo Sabres are off to a strong start and are playing an entertaining brand of hockey. It’s a big change since my last check-in on the Sabres in late August. They had a relatively quiet offseason and looked set to occupy a spot at the bottom of the Atlantic Division once again this season. Let’s take a look at how the vibes have done a 180 over the first month of the season.
2022-2023 Season Performance
Team Performance
The Sabres have jumped out to a 7-5-0 record to start the season and sit just one point out of a playoff position in the current standings. They looked impressive as they steamrolled their way through Western Canada and have looked like a team on the rise. A 12 game sample is still quite small, however, and we’re left wondering if the Sabres can maintain this level of performance for the full season.
A look at some key team metrics gives us some insight. The first thing to note is that, while the Sabres have been winning, they’ve been doing it while posting a 5v5 expected goal share below 50%. This is one of the best indicators of long term sustainability and the fact that the Sabres are struggling here is concerning. They’re not far from 50%, though, so there may be room to improve and help buoy their longer term fortunes.
What the Sabres have given up in expected goal share, they’ve made up for with strong finishing and goaltending so far this season. Those are both more likely to trend toward average over the long term, which is another concerning sign for their long term success. It wouldn’t be surprising to see their results taper off as the season wears on and percentage luck evens out.
Top Performers
Tage Thompson signed a long term extension late in the offseason that will see his cap hit jump to $7.1M starting next season. There was plenty of speculation at the time that he wouldn’t be able to repeat his success from last season given a scorching hot shooting percentage behind it. He’s been excellent offensively to start the season, though, which is great news for the Sabres. What might be concerning is Thompson’s poor defensive impact this season, which sits among the bottom quartile for NHL forwards. The season is still young and sample sizes are small, so it’s fair to give this more time before sounding alarm bells.
Rookie Owen Power has stepped into the NHL with a strong contribution to Buffalo’s early season success. He’s playing top four minutes and putting up strong impacts and, with his 5v5 minutes now over 200, we have a first projection for him from the model. Given the limitations the model has with rookies, more important than the projected numbers is the direction and magnitude of change in his impact projection. It’s trending up and it’s a sizeable adjustment, which is a great sign. If he continues his strong performance as the season goes on, we’ll see that trend continue as the model weights this year’s data more heavily.
The Sabres added Eric Comrie in the offseason. Previously a career backup, he’s had a chance to get into more games this season in a tandem with 41 year old Craig Anderson. His projection coming into the season suggested he could be a starting NHL goaltender. We’ve seen a small adjustment downward to this point, but he’s been solid so far. He’s been a factor in the Sabres’ early success and good enough to earn more playing time.
2022 Offseason Moves – Hindsight Edition
We’ve already touched on a couple of the Sabres more significant offseason moves above. Tage Thompson’s extension will help define the Sabres for years and the addition of Comrie in goal appears to be paying off.
Another offseason addition was Ilya Lyubushkin. His defensive presence was expected to help stabilize the Sabres blueline. Unfortunately, Lyubushkin has missed some time with an injury and we’re still learning how he fits in.
Buffalo also signed Mattias Samuelsson to a long term extension at the end of training camp. A age 22, Samuelsson still has plenty of opportunity to develop and his defensive presence should complement the more offensively inclined young defensemen the Sabres have in Power and Rasmus Dahlin. Samuelsson suffered a knee injury early in the season so we don’t have enough 22/23 data to go on to update his projection yet.
2022-2023 Roster Profile Updates
In my late offseason check-in, the Sabres were rated as the worst team in the league. That’s no longer the case, however, as they’ve seen some improvement since then. Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power now have enough ice time this season to update their projections and both are trending upward. That’s helped the Sabres’ Dmen Impact and ES Defense improved as a result.
Atlantic Division Landscape
The Atlantic Division appears to be a difficult place to break through as a new playoff team. The four incumbent playoff teams all look good again and the Red Wings look ready to mount a serious challenge for a playoff spot. While the Sabres are off to a great start, they still sit well behind the playoff teams given some of the underlying issues we saw in their 22/23 performance metrics.
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Historical player data from Natural Stat Trick. Contract data from CapFriendly.
