Buffalo Sabres Once Again Struggled With Injuries
Once again, injuries were a struggle for the Buffalo Sabres.
At the end of the season, only one Buffalo Sabres player had appeared in all 82 games: defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen.
Although I will add an asterisk to that one: Jamie McGinn had appeared in all 63 games with the Buffalo Sabres prior to his trade.
Overall, 21 of 36 players for the Buffalo Sabres (goaltenders included) missed at least one game this season due to injury or illness.
Let’s look at the injury-man games lost for the Buffalo Sabres this season.
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At the top of that list is, of course, forward Cody McCormick, who was forced to sit the entire season due to blood clots. He alone accounts for 82 of the team’s combined 354 man-games lost, and has now retired with one year left on his contract.
Tyler Ennis also missed a significant portion of this season, with 59 games lost to injury/illness. He appeared in just 23 games.
And of course, there’s Robin Lehner, who missed 49 games this season due to injury, from either his injury in the season-opening game or his later relapse.
From there, it just keeps adding up. Cody Franson missed 23 games; Mark Pysyk, 21. Zach Bogosian missed 18 games, while Evander Kane missed 16.
Mike Weber missed 13 games with injuries prior to his being traded, while Ryan O’Reilly, Zemgus Girgensons and Nicolas Deslauriers each missed 11 games with injuries.
It just keeps going. Dan Catenacci – eight games. Josh Gorges, Johan Larsson, Marcus Foligno – five games missed each. Sam Reinhart and Carlo Colaiacovo each missed three games with injury. Even Jack Eichel missed one game due to illness, which is counted here.
Chad Johnson missed just one game due to injury, while Jason Kasdorf missed six. Linus Ullmark is the only goaltender who played for the Buffalo Sabres this season who didn’t miss any NHL games due to injury.
Aside from injury, obviously there were players who missed games simply due to being scratched.
Matt Moulson missed just one game all season. Jake McCabe was in the minors for two games and missed an additional three NHL games. Casey Nelson was scratched for one of the last eight games of the season.
It’s a laundry list of injuries for the Buffalo Sabres yet again at the end of the season, and there’s no doubt that’s a struggle to deal with. Obviously if you take McCormick out of the picture, since he was out all season, that lessens the amount of man-games lost, but you’re still missing some of your big players.
Your supposedly-top goalie missed more than half the season. A player who should’ve been a solid scorer was out with injury. And on, and on, and on.
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Here’s an interesting note to take away from all this: the Buffalo Sabres had fewer man-games lost this season (354) than last (368). And this was a generally recurring theme throughout the NHL. The top two teams in man-games lost at the end of the 2014-15 season were Columbus (508) and Colorado (495). This season’s top numbers were much lower – Toronto (455) and New Jersey (410).