5 monumental setbacks that crushed the Sabres 2023-24 season
The Buffalo Sabres season isn’t officially over, but it would take a 180-degree turnaround for this team to end its playoff drought this year.
After collapsing in the worst way possible against the Edmonton Oilers, you can argue the Sabres 2023-24 season is officially crushed. The playoff drought will turn to 13 years, and you just have to ask when will this nightmare finally end?
Following a surprise season in 2022-23, we thought 13 would be the magic number. But that isn’t the case, and the Sabres can start looking toward 2024-25, hoping that what they saw this season was nothing more than growing pains.
Or was it? Think about it for a minute - there are more than just a few setbacks that caused this season to be one of disappointment, and if they bounce back starting in October 2024, a forgettable one.
From now until the new league year begins, blame will be rampant, and no one, from general manager Kevyn Adams to head coach Don Granato, is immune.
In reality, the Sabres down season was one of the most unpleasant storylines in the NHL. But perhaps it will be nothing more than a blip in what has been a journey of a rebuild that kicked off when the organization hired Adams in 2020.
Monumental setbacks crushed the Sabres season
Misfortune bloomed, even as far back as October, and bad luck lurked at virtually every corner, regardless of whether it was the summer of 2023, midseason, or, as we stand, the home stretch to another (likely) 82-game campaign.
So what hurt the Sabres in 2023-24 the most and how did they end up dramatically performing under expectations in what was supposed to be a season to end the league’s longest playoff drought?
There are five setbacks that jumped out, from mishandling young talent early in the year to making seemingly every backup goaltender look like an All-Star. But there was also an injury bug that refused to stop biting, even before the season began.
Mishandling Devon Levi
Devon Levi put up a better seven-game sample than we initially thought he would give us late last season, and it ended with everyone believing he was the right fit to be the Sabres No. 1 goaltender. While Levi deserved to be the frontrunner for the Blue and Gold’s rotation based on his solid pay and the marginal results from Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Eric Comrie, we soon discovered he wasn’t quite ready for the 1A, or No. 1 role.
Levi’s preseason was so-so, but his first two games should have been all it took to end the three-goaltender rotation before it even started. In losses to the New York Rangers and Islanders to open the season, Levi finished with an 0.881 save percentage, allowing seven goals on 59 shot attempts.
Instead of sending Levi to Rochester after those first two games, he started the next two contests and didn’t look much better. Meanwhile, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, if you remember correctly, won three of his first four games, posted one shutout, and logged a 0.926 save percentage in that span.
Luukkonen wasn’t overtly consistent as 2023 winded down, but he was still a better option than Levi. It’s possible the Sabres would have won a few more games had they simply assigned Levi to Rochester earlier in the year instead of trying to develop him in Buffalo. The good news is that they eventually put him with the Amerks, and it worked wonders for his development.
Loss of team identity
While defense and goaltending were problems that needed to be fixed in 2022-23, this didn’t need to happen at the expense of what was an exciting unit that caught the league off-guard. The Sabres developed an identity that year, and six months after they finished third in the league with 296 goals scored, everyone waited for an encore.
Except that encore came in the form of just 216 goals after 72 contests or 3.00 goals per game. Adjust that number to 82 outings, and you get 246 goals, which is just 14 more than the 2021-22 team scored.
The Sabres only needed to continue to play with a style that let them overachieve last season, and they would probably be on pace to at least win half their games again. Given how weak the Eastern Conference is, their chances of snagging the second wild card spot probably would have been there until the final games, if not the last game, of the season.
The remedy here is simple: Go back to what made you one of the league’s most exciting teams for the 2024-25 season. Now that we know Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen is a much better-than-advertised goaltender, chances are, returning to that pace won’t result in another 300 goals allowed.
Injuries to the top-liners and Jack Quinn
The Sabres have been disappointing as a group and you don’t like to use injuries as an excuse. But when your top scorers miss extended time, it’s okay to point the finger at the injury bug. This also meant the Sabres, despite trying to get better defensively at the expense of their high-octane game that we loved last season, probably wouldn’t have reached the 296-goal mark anyway.
But you can also confidently say that their scoring wouldn’t have been so inconsistent. It started when we found out Jack Quinn would miss six months, and 17 games after he returned, Quinn went down with another injury that shelved him for what looks like the rest of the season. He also had 12 points and five goals in those contests, adjusted for 58 points across 82 games.
Update: Jack Quinn has since returned to practice and appears to be on-track to return.
Meanwhile, Alex Tuch, Tage Thompson, and Jeff Skinner missed a combined 26 games, which often occurred at different times. No, 296 goals weren’t happening this season, despite Casey Mittelstadt (when he was still around) holding steady production-wise and JJ Peterka enjoying what is currently a 24-goal season.
If injuries don’t hit the Sabres like this next season, expect their offense to at least better resemble what we saw in 2022-23. Even if they don’t revert their style to what it was, Buffalo will score more than their currently projected 246 goals.
Failing to take advantage of pedestrian goaltenders
When the Sabres recorded their first win of the 2023-24 season, it occurred against Jonas Johansson, who only gave up two goals in the game’s first 60 minutes before he allowed the game-deciding goal in overtime. But it didn’t stop there, as they put up just a trio of goals on Dan Vladar before Jake Allen recorded a 0.973 save percentage in what was a 3-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens.
After showing off some of their high-octane style for a few games, Buffalo faced a Philadelphia Flyers team with Samuel Ersson in the net on November 3rd. Ersson also allowed just one goal and recorded a 0.955 save percentage against Buffalo.
It became a problem for the Sabres all season, and while they have certainly had their moments, specifically in a 9-4 blowout win over the Toronto Maple Leafs, the team we saw last year would have easily put four or more goals up on those mentioned above.
Sure, injuries and tweaks to their game - plus an abysmal power play - were all factors here. But some of these teams put you under the impression that they were daring the Sabres to return what made them so dangerous last season. The problem? Buffalo never, or rarely, answered.
Making zero adjustments in the home opener
Next to the top item in this slideshow, you may have noticed a theme here: Every other slide has to do with the Sabres inconsistency when they had the puck, and it started with the first game of the season. Remember when the New York Rangers played a 1-3-1 defense that the Sabres couldn’t figure out?
New York provided a blueprint on how to stop the Sabres, and that was to prevent them from cleanly handling the puck past the neutral zone. Buffalo saw something similar the following game against a physical Islanders team that has landed over 25 checks per game on average.
It’s not that the Sabres haven’t improved offensively since those first two games, but opponents knew how to stop what was one of the league’s best scoring units from a season ago.
Tweaking the style, injuries, and playing bad hockey against backup goaltenders all contributed. But once again, just think about how many close games the Sabres may have won had the coaching staff just figured things out faster.
Buffalo has been a better team in 2024 than they were at the end of 2023, but their 105 goals in the current calendar year averages just 3.08 per game. Once again, adjust that number to 82 contests, and you get 253 goals, which is barely better than their current pace.
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(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)