3 major areas the Buffalo Sabres must improve for Week 2
The Buffalo Sabres played a much better game on Saturday night, and it should lead to an even stronger performance this Tuesday.
The Buffalo Sabres are off to a rough start, but the good news is that we’re only two games into the season. If you do the math, the Blue and Gold are just 2.4 percent of the way through, so they have more than enough time to improve. But that doesn’t mean we can’t nitpick and start pointing things out here in October.
Through a pair of games, the Sabres are toiling through two areas that they were strong in last season. They are having a tough time playing their usual high-octane game, and their power play has been off, both of which I’ll outline below.
The Sabres have struggled with winning faceoffs throughout the last few seasons, and 2023-24 doesn’t look to be any different. Is there a solution, or will the Blue and Gold sweat through another trying season at the faceoff dot?
3 areas the Buffalo Sabres must improve on
1 – Faceoffs
Per Lance Lysowski of Buffalo News, the Sabres are 23 for 65 at the dot, good for just a paltry 35.38 winning percentage. However, it hasn’t been all doom and gloom, with Dylan Cozens winning 14 of 27 draws so far on the season. Unfortunately, Cozens has been the only one with a respectable win percentage who is regularly taking faceoffs.
Tage Thompson sits at 12 for 36, which translates to a 33.3 percent success rate, while Casey Mittelstadt is five for 24, winning just 20 percent of his draws. The Buffalo Sabres fourth forward, Peyton Krebs, also hasn’t fared any better, winning just 30.8 percent of the time.
2 – Power play
Ironically, the Buffalo Sabres penalty kill has been magnificent, stopping six of seven attempts in the season’s early going. However, their power play has been non-existent, going 0 for 5 in two games, being one of just seven teams in the NHL yet to score on the man advantage as of Sunday morning.
When the Sabres primary scorers find their groove, the power play should improve as a unit, so this isn’t something you need to be particularly worried about yet. If it’s not looking good by the end of the month, then we can start panicking.
In the 2023-24 season’s early going, this is the complete opposite of what we saw last year, when the penalty kill was the problem and the power play was a top ten unit. Ideally, we’ll look for the PK to hold while the power play looks to find its rhythm.
3 – Playing THEIR game
This one rests with the Tage Thompson line, which has zero points over the first pair of contests. However, we saw them start to shift back to life last night, and Tage especially looked like a better player than he did on Thursday, pacing the team with four shots on goal and using his size to muscle through the Islanders.
We have, however, seen the Buffalo Sabres showing off their high-octane approach with the Mittelstadt line, where Zach Benson, Casey Mittelstadt, and Jordan Greenway have been remarkable throughout the first two contests.
Related Story. One major area of improvement the Sabres made through two games. light
While we only saw the Sabres score twice last night and three times in the first two games, they looked more like their old selves offensively against the Isles. The game was a definite building block that should lead to some improvement for the upcoming slate of games.
Source: Observations: Sabres ‘sped it up’ but comeback fell short on controversial goal by Lance Lysowski, Buffalo News
(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)