Early look at Buffalo Sabres depth chart for the 2026-27 NHL season

The Buffalo Sabres made it all the way to Game 7 of the second round in the 2026 NHL Playoffs before their unexpected emergence as a possible Stanley Cup contender reached a sudden conclusion with a heartbreaking overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens.

Yet, for a franchise that endured the longest postseason drought in NHL history (14 years), it's hard to characterize the season as anything other than a smashing success. An Atlantic Division title, the league's fourth-highest point total (109) and a series victory over the Boston Bruins is an impressive list of accomplishments for a team that's only known misery for over a decade.

Now the narrative changes, though. The bar will be raised from merely making the playoffs to consistently making deep postseason runs with an eye on the organization's first championship.

If the Sabres are going to become a perennial playoff team, and possible Cup winner, some roster upgrades by general manager Jarmo Kekalainen will likely be required. They have a solid foundation in place, but some weaknesses popped up over the past month.

Given the lackluster NHL free-agent market this summer, which is headlined by Buffalo winger Alex Tuch, those improvements may have to come via high-profile trades. That could mean some members of the team's breakthrough campaign are on the move before the 2026-27 season.

So, let's take a look at how the Sabres' projected roster is shaping up as the focus quickly shifts to the offseason for Kekalainen and his front-office staff.

This exercise assumes none of the Blue and Gold's impending unrestricted free agents (Tuch, Beck Malenstyn, Logan Stanley, Luke Schenn, Josh Dunne and Tanner Pearson) return, while the three RFAs (Zach Benson, Peyton Krebs and Michael Kesselring) are retained.

Obviously, it's possible some of the UFAs, most likely Tuch and/or Malenstyn, are ultimately re-signed.

Sabres forward lines

Buffalo received some outstanding news from its season-ending press conferences as Kulich confirmed he underwent successful surgery to remove a blood clot and fully expects to resume his playing career next season. His status was previously uncertain after being sidelined since early November.

A quick glance at these roughly constructed lines shows there's a little excess, though.

The Sabres would love to move on from Greenway, and his bloated $4 million salary (thanks, Kevyn Adams), to create some much-needed flexibility under the salary cap. It also doesn't make a ton of sense to have Ostlund skate on the fourth line given how well he performed in 2025-26.

So, this is an area where Kekalainen may see an opportunity to package a few players in search of a major upgrade. Would something like Norris and Quinn, along with a sizable haul of prospects and draft picks, work as the foundation for a trade with the St. Louis Blues for center Robert Thomas?

The Sabres previously made a push to land Thomas ahead of the 2026 NHL trade deadline. Slotting him in as the club's first-line center seems like a truly perfect fit and the departure of Quinn would create a spot for Ostlund to rejoin the top-nine forward group.

It does feel like Buffalo needs one more game-changing player up front to contend with the NHL's elite, and re-signing Tuch isn't enough to accomplish that task.

Buffalo defense pairs

It'd be shocking if the Sabres made any changes to their top-four defense group, which was the driving force behind the club's turnaround this season.

Dahlin was named a Norris Trophy finalist, Samuelsson put together an astonishing breakout campaign, Power continued to make positive strides at both ends of the rink and Byram overcame a sluggish start to play a starring role during the playoff run.

The third pair will remain a talking point throughout the summer, though.

Timmins handled his penalty-killing role well, but his 5-on-5 performance was typically underwhelming. While the veteran defenseman will probably return, he'll be entering the final year of his contract.

Kesselring is the bigger question mark. A lot was expected from the 6-foot-5 blueliner when he arrived to Western New York last offseason as part of the JJ Peterka trade with the Utah Mammoth. Multiple leg injuries sapped his skating ability, however, and led to him regularly getting scratched.

Kekalainen now faces a tough decision about whether to give the 26-year-old American a chance to produce a bounce-back year, or if it's time to trade him. The latter option comes with a lot of risk, however, because it'd be an unfavorable sell-low situation.

Even if the Sabres keep both Timmins and Kesselring, it wouldn't be a surprise to see them acquire one more veteran defenseman to battle with that duo for playing time on the third pair.

Mrtka, the No. 9 overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, will likely require a full season of development with the AHL's Rochester Americans before he's ready to don the Blue and Gold.

Sabres goalies

Just when it seemed like Buffalo had finally found some reliability between the pipes, as Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Alex Lyon both played well while sharing the crease during the regular season, everything came crash down in the playoffs.

Neither Lyon (.904 save percentage in 10 postseason appearances) nor UPL (.876 SV% in six games) could lock down the starting job when it mattered most.

Changes were already expected to clear out the logjam at the position, and now there's even more uncertainty with serious questions about whether Lyon or Luukkonen are capable of backstopping the Sabres on a future Stanley Cup push.

Ellis (.903 SV% in 16 regular-season games) played well as a rookie, which could give him some trade value if Kekalainen opts against a complete overhaul of the goaltending depth chart but still wants to remove the three-goalie rotation from the equation for 2026-26.

Meanwhile, it feels like Levi probably played his final game in the Buffalo organization. The former prized prospect — his star has faded a bit now that he's 24 without a full-time NHL job in hand — has completed three AHL seasons and still doesn't have a clear path to the Sabres.

This summer probably represents the franchise's last chance to trade him for at least modest value, and the two-time Mike Richter Award winner deserves an opportunity to finally receive consistent NHL starts somewhere.

Alternatively, it's not totally out of the realm of possibility the Sabres trade UPL and then allow Levi to battle with Ellis for the backup role behind Lyon to open next season.

Something has to give, however, because beyond the four goalies discussed here, Buffalo also has a few other promising prospects at the position, led by Yevgeni Prokhorov and Ryerson Leenders, whose short-term future is also up in the air at the moment.

So, this depth chart could look completely different within the next handful of years.

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