BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — General manager Kevyn Adams set high a standard of success for the Sabres as training camp opened: “When I think about playoffs, our expectation of course is there. But honestly, our expectation is to win the Stanley Cup,” he said. “I think our window’s open right now and our goal is to be giving ourselves a chance every single year.”
For the 13th year in a row, the Sabres won’t be competing for a Stanley Cup. Extending the longest playoff drought in NHL history, and equaling the longest current absence from postseason play in North American professional sports, Buffalo remains on the outside looking in the window to championship contention.
How did a season that began with so much hope and up like all the others?
Stagnant summer
Buffalo’s disappointing 2023-24 campaign started with a lackluster offseason.
Coming within one victory of ending the drought a year ago, Adams and coach Don Granato believed the NHL’s youngest lineup would grow into a playoff form. In their season-ending remarks, each spoke “with absolute conviction” as if progression to the postseason was fated.
The Sabres added defensemen Connor Clifton and Erik Johnson in free agency, which led to modest improvement on the blue line. But finishing fourth in scoring last season, they did not make any changes to the forward group, or the leadership core, re-signing veterans Kyle Okposo, Zemgus Girgensons and Tyson Jost to one-year deals.
Adams mined a gem in the draft, nabbing Zach Benson with the 13th overall pick, and the 18-year-old was one of only four players in his class to make the NHL. Benson tallied 11 goals and 30 points, displaying grit beyond his years. But his presence only made the Sabres more youthful, and he could not provide the necessary roughness that the Sabres seemed to need in order to reach the next level.
Declining to add an established goaltender after Craig Anderson’s retirement, Buffalo banked on rookie Devon Levi at the start, and were late to recognize Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen as their best option in the crease. Eric Comrie won the backup job in preseason, and it took months before the Sabres stopped trying to juggle three goalies and gave the net to UPL.
The lack of aggression and desperation to win now continued into the season. The Sabres were unable to convince South Buffalonian Patrick Kane to make a playoff run in his hometown. They never utilized more than $6 million in cap space left over from a frugal free agency approach.
When the trade deadline arrived, the Sabres sent away their top point producer in Casey Mittelstadt, and let captain Okposo and Cup-winner Johnson go to teams that were closer to contention. Defenseman Bowen Byram, acquired in the MIttelstadt deal, fills a long-term need for a top four D-man, but did little for the team’s in-season fortunes.
Star power outage
Buffalo’s plus-2 scoring differential was a modest improvement from last season (minus-4). But the Sabres did that while netting 50 fewer goals, squandering the club’s best goaltending in over a decade.
After four players surpassed 30 goals in ’22-23, and five tallied more than 60 points, none reached those marks this year.
The biggest letdowns came from Buffalo’s top two centers, both entering the first year of contract extensions paying them more than $7 million annually. Tage Thompson dropped from 47 to 29 goals, with injuries limiting him to seven fewer games. Dylan Cozens lost confidence early on and slipped from 31 to 18 goals.
While JJ Peterka doubled his scoring from 14 to 28 goals in his third NHL season, that was offset by Victor Olofsson’s slide. After setting a career-best with 28 goals in his fifth season, Olofsson was scratched 31 times in a contract year, and slumped to just eight goals.
Buffalo’s scoring dip was most evident on the power play, which produced 27 fewer goals and ranked among the league’s bottom five with a 17% conversion rate. Last season the Sabres were in the top nine at 23%. That regression could cost assistant coach Matt Ellis his spot behind the bench.
Slow starts
With unreliable goaltending and an offensive attack struggling to find its rhythm, the Sabres lost their first two games and sputtered below .500 for much of the early going. They were 15-19-4 by the end of December, skidding out of the playoff race before midseason.
Finishing 24-18-2, a wild-card worthy 93-point pace since Jan. 1, wasn’t enough to keep Buffalo from being eliminated before the season’s final week.
Falling behind early was a season-long trend. The Sabres allowed the first goal in 46 of their 82 games, and came back to win only 14. They allowed more first period goals (97) than any other team, and had the NHL’s second-worst scoring margin in the opening period (minus-30).
In 29 games, more than a third of the season, Buffalo gave up two or more goals in the first period, often before the 10-minute mark. They had a 7-21-1 record on such occasions.
Injuries
The Sabres were not hurt enough to make excuses, coming in around league average. But the timing of injuries to top forwards did contribute to the poor start.
Jack Quinn missed the first 32 games following offseason surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon, and another 23 games with a lower-body injury sustained in January. The winger’s absence affected Cozens and prevented the Sabres from solidifying a second scoring line. Cozens was further hampered by an upper-body injury he got in an early season fight, never adjusting to the protective shield he wore for several games afterward.
Buffalo’s top line of Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch and Jeff Skinner combined to miss half of the first 40 games and never found the consistency it had a year ago. Thompson and Tuch were both slowed by their injuries until midseason.
The Sabres struggled last year whenever Mattias Samuelsson was out of the lineup. He was less impactful when healthy this year, but missing another 41 games stressed Buffalo’s blue-line depth. With Bowen joining the core, the Sabres need each of their top four D-men dressed and thriving in order to reach their full potential as a team.
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Jonah Bronstein joined the WIVB squad in 2022 as a digital sports reporter. The Buffalonian has covered the Bills, Sabres, Bandits, Bisons, colleges, high schools and other notable sporting events in Western New York since 2005, for publications including The Associated Press, The Buffalo News, and Niagara Gazette. Read more of his work here.