Victor Olofsson was the Buffalo Sabres breakout player following the 2022 NHL All-Star Game. Will he continue that trend in 2022-23?
By February 1st, 2022, Victor Olofsson was all but a forgotten name in the Buffalo Sabres lineup. Slated to become an RFA at the end of the season, few in the Queen City had a high opinion of the Sabres winger, who had recently entered his third straight month without scoring a goal.
Then on February 15th during a 6-3 win over the New York Islanders, Olofsson found the net twice. He later scored 13 more goals over the next 32 games, giving him a total of 20 on the season and 65% of them at even strength.
Before his breakout during the final 2.5 months of the 2021-22 season, those in Buffalo knew Olofsson as a power play scorer, mainly from the circle. During his first 116 games as a Sabre, 20 of Olofsson’s first 35 goals came on the power play. Will that narrative continue to shift in 2022-23? Here is a prediction.
Victor Olofsson will excel for the Buffalo Sabres this season
In my bold predictions article, I stated Olofsson would score 70% of his goals at even strength. So how many goals total will we see from the winger? In those final 33 games, he converted 15 of them, good for 0.454 goals per game.
I am expecting Olofsson to step up even more this season, but it’s not easy to keep up the 0.454 per game mark. I’ll project him to hold a pace at 0.354, which over an 82-game stretch equals 29 goals. However, players take games off and injuries can occur, so I’ll give the budding winger 75 games.
Sticking to the 0.354 goals per game threshold, it puts Olofsson at 26 goals on the season. Sounds bolder than the bold prediction, huh? But although we saw just a 33-game sample size regarding Olofsson’s high productivity, he also showed us what he is capable of accomplishing.
He may also see time on the first line this year in a part-time role, swapping spots with Alex Tuch. This gives Olofsson the opportunity to see more ice time with the highly productive Tage Thompson and Jeff Skinner, who combined for 60 assists last season.
Speaking of which, 59% of Olofsson’s points came on an assist in 2021-22. This year, I’m expecting more goals, so let’s take the ratio down to 45% goals, 55% assists, giving him 32 assists on the year, for a total of 58 points, nine more than last season.
Overall, the Buffalo Sabres have more chemistry playing alongside one another than any other time in recent memory. Olofsson is no exception to that, so to see his points total increase this season as the team improves is a realistic prediction.
(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)