Since the Buffalo Sabres are out of the playoff hunt, it’s time to assess what they need to do so they can break the seemingly neverending drought.
The Buffalo Sabres are in that odd stage of development. In one aspect, missing the playoffs is definitely, and should be, a letdown. If this team, who struggled extensively over three different stretches this season, saw just a few of those losses flip over into the win column, we’d be having a different conversation.
But that’s not the reality of the situation, and the Sabres will need to wait another 12 months to break the threshold. The good news? They’ve come closer than they have in a dozen seasons, so that’s some serious progress.
So now it’s time to ask ourselves, what must the Sabres do to punch their ticket into the postseason? Here are three areas of the game the Blue and Gold must get better in.
Buffalo Sabres must improve these 3 key areas
1 – Improve defensive play
The defense, at multiple times this season, was just flatout terrible. I couldn’t tell you how many times the likes of Henri Jokiharju and Jacob Bryson, among others, were caught out of position.
Losing Mattias Samuelsson and Ilya Lyubushkin for extended periods didn’t help, and of course, Owen Power predictably had his fair share of ups and downs. If the Sabres want to reach the next level, they need to play better defense.
It starts in the transition, and yes, taking better care of the puck in the offensive zone would also help. But too often this team allowed preventable breakaways and odd-man rushes. They need to dwindle to a minimum in 2023-24.
2 – Simplify game when times get tough
Across an 82-game season, you’re going to suffer through slumps. They’re part of the game, but for the Buffalo Sabres, they slogged through three major stretches this season, once from November 4th-19th, again between January 1st-17th, and finally, March 2nd to March 21st.
During those respective stretches, the Sabres went 5-20-3 (13 points). Compared with the rest of the season, Buffalo was 35-13-4 (74 points).
When things got rough, we saw a lot of bad hockey where Buffalo tried to overcompliate things, and many times, the result was a blowout loss. In fact, 11 of those losses were by three goals or more, with the most notorious coming on March 9th.
The remedy? Just play a simpler hockey game when things aren’t going well. Imagine if the Sabres did that this season, and their 5-20-3 record was instead 10-15-3, or even 8-17-3. Again, we’d be having a dramatically different conversation here.
Next season, they will hit the same walls. But they need to break them down faster. This team plays well when they keep things simple, and simplicity is the perfect remedy here.
3 – Improve special teams
For most of the season, the Buffalo Sabres had a top five power play, which has now dropped into barely top 10 territory. Their penalty kill got better over the past few weeks, but they otherwise struggled, and it was one of the few key areas of their game to regress from last season.
If the power play remained in the league’s top tier, they may have won more in those stretches of poor play listed above. Ditto for the penalty kill.
Once opponents realized how valuable Tage Thompson was to Buffalo when the power play unit hit the ice, it regressed. For 2023-24, they need to find multiple hot hands to keep opposing PK units guessing.
(Statistics and data provided by Hockey-Reference)