Buffalo Sabres Should View Mikkel Boedker As An Option, But Only If The Price Is Right (Fat Chance)
The Buffalo Sabres need scoring on the left wing, but there are serious concerns over this young UFA.
The Buffalo Sabres head into the 2016 NHL Entry Draft and the summer of free agency with two pressings needs: the team needs at least one more top-4 defenseman, and it needs another top 6 forward to play left wing.
While the “Should they or should they not pursue Steven Stamkos?’ talk is fine and dandy – hey: we Sabres fans have to spend the playoffs doing SOMETHING! – the fact of the matter is that Stamkos is going to be highly sought after, and highly paid – probably not by the Buffalo Sabres.
Once the fallout of Stammer signing elsewhere has lessened, Buffalo will need to look at improving scoring from the left side of the ice, and that is where Mikkel Boedker comes into play.
Sort of.
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Let’s start by looking at the positives when it comes to Boedker. For starters, he’s young and fast. Boedker is a bolt of lightning, and since he is only 26 the Buffalo Sabres can count on him terrifying the opposition for many years. Pair him up with the young guns named Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart, and holy **** you have a line that can terrify goaltenders.
Boedker also seems to be hitting his prime: he has scored 51 points in two of his last three seasons, and was on pace to score exactly that many during the 2014-15 season, in which he only played 45 games. A line of Boedker-Eichel-Reinhart could give you 150 points alone.
Let that sink in before we move on to the cons.
Oaky – so you’re drooling at the idea of adding a 26 year-old left winger who could help take Eichel and Reinhart to a scary-good level. What could possibly deter you from wanting to add Boedker to this team? Well, when it comes to Boedker there’s this pesky little thing called 5v5 scoring. According to hockeybuzz.com, Boedker has averaged 1.42 per 60 minutes during 5v5 situations, which puts him squarely in 207th place in the NHL among all forwards – yeah!
It would be one thing if his low scoring was just a one-year thing, but seeing him struggle to score at even strength three seasons in a row tends to make you think this is just who Boedker is. In this respect, he is just a fast third-line forward, but since that is not what the Buffalo Sabres are necessarily looking for, and since he will be asking for top-6 money, it is a concern the Sabres front office has to keep in mind if Boedker is on the team’s radar.
Something else to keep in mind is that Boedker’s teams tend to get outshot when he is on the ice – and I’m not talking about a handful of SOG by season’s end. We’re talking about buckets and buckets full of rubber pucks being hurled at Boedker’s goalie, compared to when he is off the ice. Check out this handy visual tools I had created over at War on Ice:
What those graphs are showing you is that when Boedker’s team is playing 5v5, they are routinely outshot by the opposition when he is on the ice. Obviously you cannot blame that entirely on Boedker – it’s not like Arizona or Colorado are elite squads – but again, the numbers show a trend that you cannot ignore.
Boedker scored 17 goals last season as a member of the Arizona Coyotes and the Colorado Avalanche, finished the year at -33, and had a FF (Fenwick For) of 752, versus his FA (Fenwick Against) of 903. What that amounts to is that his opponents shots the puck toward Boedker’s net 151 more times over the course of the season than his team shot at the opposing goaltender while he was on the ice. Add him to a line with Eichel (FF=837 FA=949) and you have a line that might score a lot, but that will also make life miserable for the Sabres blueliners and goaltenders. A defensive line, this will not be.
(Reinhart, by the way? FF=774 FA=748 You go, Sam!)
Next: Sabres Draft Options: Jakob Chychrun
Mikkel Boedker is going to ask for top-6 money, and there is no doubt that his speed can create matchup problems for opposing teams. He may not put the puck in the back of the net as much as you would like, but he does create opportunities for his teammates, and we all know that Eichel and Reinhart can finish. If the Buffalo Sabres are interested in Boedker, they better hope they can sign him for between $4-5 million a year. It’s what he is worth, but the fact that he turned down a contract that was reportedly worth $5-5.5 million with the Arizona Coyotes means he is probably going to be overpaid by someone. Let’s just hope it’s not the Sabres.