This offseason, the Buffalo Sabres saw a number of key players from last season's team depart. The Sabres would trade away players like J.J. Peterka, Connor Clifton, and Sam Lafferty this summer, while Jacob Bernard-Docker would sign with the Detroit Red Wings in free agency.
While this creates holes in the lineup, it also creates opportunities for some of the younger players on the team to take on a bigger role. When looking at the current roster, these are four players who right now are in line for increased ice time compared to last season.
4 Buffalo Sabres in line for an increase in ice time this season
Zach Benson
Zach Benson has been a full-time NHL player with the Buffalo Sabres for the past two seasons and has played in 146 games over that stretch. The 13th overall pick from the 2023 NHL Draft has 58 points but could see a significant increase in ice time, which hopefully correlates to an increase in production.
Right now, the top line with Tage Thompson is a bit of an unknown in terms of who will be playing alongside him. Benson is one of the players who might be considered a favorite at this point to earn one of those two spots.
If he does, he should easily be closer to 16 or 17 minutes per game and that would be a big bump from his career average of 14:40
Jiri Kulich
Another player who should be a favorite to play on the top line is center Jiri Kulich, who saw his first extended time at the NHL level last season. After playing in only one game in 2023-24, he would play in 62 games this past season and finished with 15 goals and nine assists.
By the end of the season, Kulich and Benson were playing on the top line, and over the last roughly 20 games of the season, Kulich was averaging around 15:30 of ice time. This was almost a minute higher than his season average of 14:48.
Similar to Benson, Kulich should expect to be around 16 or 17 minutes per game this upcoming season. One area where Kulich has an advantage over Benson is on the power play, and he should be on that first power play unit next season.
Josh Doan
This is Josh Doan's first season with the Buffalo Sabres after he was traded from Utah as part of the J.J. Peterka trade. Last season, Doan played a career high 51 games for the Mammoth and had seven goals and 12 assists while averaging 13:31 minutes of ice time.
With the Mammoth, Doan was primarily a fourth-line player, but with the Sabres, the expectation should be that he moves up to the third line and has an expanded role with this team. If he does that, he could easily add a minute more per game of ice time and build off a promising season last year with Utah.
Michael Kesselring
Of the players on this list, Michael Kesselring has the best chance to increase his ice time the most, as he should be paired now with Owen Power. Kesselring was the other part of the J.J. Peterka trade that came over from Utah and has been a full-time NHL player for two seasons now, and he averaged just under 17 minutes of ice time per game.
If Kesselring is paired with Power, which absolutely should be the case, then he should be ready for over 20 minutes of ice time per game. This should help Power reach the potential many saw when the Sabres selected him first overall in 2021 and bring some balance to the blue line.