The Buffalo Sabres have not even played their first game of the second half as they received some bad news. Defenseman Mattias Samuelsson will be getting surgery after an upper body injury and will be out for the season.
Mattias Samelsson requires surgery and will miss the remainder of the season due to an upper-body injury.
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) February 4, 2024
Wishing you a speedy recovery, Sammy 💙 pic.twitter.com/NrJaWba7bl
This is not the best news to say the least. When he is healthy, Samuelsson is a huge part of the team. When he's not playing, they seem to struggle without him. Mattias has been dealing with injuries all season, so this just adds on to the pain. He only played in 41 games, scoring one goal and registering six assists. He is not known to be productive in the scoring aspect but having him on the blue line is a huge help for Buffalo.
Before the start of last season, Samuelsson signed a 7 year, $30 million contract extension with the Sabres. It's really unfortunate because when he is in the lineup, he's a pain to play against. He's a big body and does a solid job of defending. The issue is he always seems to get hurt and when he does, they're not short term injuries.
Say what you want to say about the contract, but it's frustrating seeing him hurt so much. I get it, hockey is a physical sport and each player is going to be banged up. It just seems like Mattias has the worst luck.
The last paragraph seems like I'm taking a shot at Mattias, but I'm not. It's just a trend that everyone has been noticing. It's tough because as mentioned earlier, he is a key to the Sabres when on the ice. However, if you go back to last season, the team did better when he was playing. On the other hand, it was the opposite when he was not playing.
Let's hope Mattias has a speedy recovery and will be ready to go for next season. With that being said, Buffalo's defensive core needs to step up for the final 33 games.