3 things that are trending up for the Buffalo Sabres following win
The Buffalo Sabres still have issues to work on, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a few things going for them following last night’s win.
In their season-opener vs. the New York Rangers, the Sabres allowed a power play goal, and they have been nothing but stellar since when facing the man advantage. Last season, the Sabrehood probably uttered collective groans every time someone from the Blue and Gold entered the penalty box, but there has been a different mentality so far this season.
Following their loss to the New York Islanders, the penalty kill was one positive from Week 1 to look fondly at. But here we are just one game into Week 2, and it’s safe to say the PK was dominant once again last night. The Sabres are currently 10 for 11, good for a 90.91 PK percentage following the third game, so let’s hope that continues into tomorrow’s contest vs. Calgary before they again face the New York Islanders.
But we recently talked about the Sabres improvement at 4-on-5 earlier in the week, so let’s discuss three other areas of their game that look to be trending north.
3 things trending up for the Buffalo Sabres
1 – The Tage Thompson line
Yesterday, I asked whether the Tage Thompson line would see success vs. the Tampa Bay Lightning, and the answer was a resounding yes. While neither Tage Thompson nor Alex Tuch scored, Jeff Skinner gave the line its first of what will eventually be many goals of the season, mark me.
OWEN POWER ➡️ JEFF SKINNER pic.twitter.com/9dL13e7jc4
— The Sabre Report (@TheSabreReport) October 18, 2023
But it doesn’t mean Tage and Tuch didn’t make an impact, because per Hockey Stat Cards, only Skinner, Tyson Jost, and Zemgus Girgensons enjoyed greater impacts as far as forwards go. They both offered more than a fair amount of overall impact on offense; the duo just didn’t grace the stat sheet in the points column.
Tage was especially close to scoring, however, giving himself a few good looks in front of Lightning goaltender Jonas Johansson. This line hasn’t found its stride like it enjoyed last season just yet, but if Tuesday night’s win was an indicator, they are closer than close to a breakout game.
2 – Defensive play
While the Buffalo Sabres failed to maintain a multiple-goal lead (again) and lacked physicality, it shouldn’t take away from a pair of sound defensive efforts that started on Long Island. It’s still early, but the Sabres have allowed just five goals in their previous two games while scoring five of their own.
If this trend continues, then it shows us that the Blue and Gold won’t need to score four or more goals so much just to bail out poor defensive play, something that ultimately caught up to them last year. As this team continues to mesh and gain experience playing alongside one another with new faces like Zach Benson, Jordan Greenway (he only has 20 games with the team), Devon Levi (10 games), Conner Clifton, and Erik Johnson, it’s realistic to see the entire unit playing better defense.
So far, Benson and Greenway have made for a dynamic duo when flanking Casey Mittelstadt, while Levi has saved 47 of his past 52 shots on goal, good for a 0.903 save percentage. Once Johnson and Clifton continue to get acclimated (remember, they didn’t have much ice time in the preseason), this team may surprise onlookers when they don’t have the puck.
3 – Faceoff wins
No, one game doesn’t mean the Buffalo Sabres have solved their problems along the faceoff dot, but at least they had a few players dominate there last night. And dominate they did, because as a team, the Sabres collectively won the faceoff battle 27 to 26. But Kyle Okposo won 5 of 6, good for an 83.3 win percentage, while Tage Thompson took 9 out of 16, eeking out a 56.3 FOW%.
Peyton Krebs also won 66.7 percent of his draws, or 8 of 12, so between the trio, Buffalo won 22 of 34 draws, good for a 64.7 FOW%. The problem, however, is that the rest of the team finished just 5 for 19, so the Blue and Gold need a few more players to step up.
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Either way, it’s still a start for the Sabres, and given how badly they’ve looked at the faceoff dot over the last few years, we’ll take the narrow win. Now, can it transfer into the next two games on the slate for Week 2?
(Statistics provided by ESPN.com and Hockey-Reference)