BUFFALO, N.Y. — Believe it or not, we’re heading into the Buffalo Sabres season this week as the young players take part in Prospect Challenge practice on Wednesday.
Their first game is Thursday in Harborcenter against this year’s No. 1 overall pick Juraj Slafkovky and the Montreal Canadiens.
The first practice of training camp for the veterans is Sept. 22 with the first preseason game on Sept. 25 in Washington.
In the final 28 games of last season, the Sabres had a points percentage of .625 which was 13th in the NHL. It was better than the Tampa Bay Lightning, Vegas Golden Knights, and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
It’s hard to carry one season into the next, but Kevyn Adams didn’t make a lot of changes. Gone are Colin Miller, Dustin Tokarski, Cody Eakin, John Hayden, Drake Caggiula, Mark Pysyk, and Will Butcher.
Coming in fresh are Eric Comrie, Ilya Lyubushkin, and Riley Sheahan. Buffalo will also watch high-end prospects Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka try to break into the lineup too.
With very little change, fans have a slightly higher expectation for this team because they liked what they saw last April. That was evident because more people came to the arena to watch games in that final month to see if what was happening on the ice was real.
In my mind, this is a huge season for the young players and the franchise. Buffalo doesn’t have an overly difficult schedule in October and I believe we will see more fans in the building hoping this team is finally headed in the right direction. A bad October means we'll see crowds of 7,000 again.
Quinn, Peterka, Peyton Krebs, and Casey Fitzgerald all got to play three rounds in the Calder Cup playoffs last year with Rochester. The experience they gained there has to carry over into this season because most of them played very well. These players showing improvement right out of the gate is exactly what this team needs to have a good October.
I don’t think this year is a playoff year, but they must have quite a few more points than the 75 they earned last year, so how do they accomplish that?
It all starts with Don Granato. He has been a head coach that doesn’t think about a playoff race in April or having a good month in October. Granato’s mentality is what is each player going to do to get better when they get on the ice on Sept. 22? He wants his players in the moment, not five months down the road.
Having that mentality has worked very well and because of it, we saw a great improvement in all those players I mentioned earlier as well as Rasmus Dahlin, Tage Thompson, Mattias Samuelsson, Jeff Skinner, Henri Jokiharju, Dylan Cozens, and Rasmus Asplund.
Will every single player thrive and be better this season? Probably not, but I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think that most of them will.
The elephant in the room is of course the goaltending. Craig Anderson is good, but at his age, he can’t play 50 or more games. Analytics tells the Sabres that Comrie is ready to play on a regular basis in the NHL. If the goaltending isn’t better than last season, the team will have very little improvement, so that’s an important part of the season.
In the final 28 games of the season, the Sabres were on a 103-point pace. If they somehow could play that way for the full year, that gets them into the playoffs, but that of course is unrealistic. What has to be realistic is these young players must advance and their team must be better.
The youngsters need the experience of important games in March. Kevyn Adams’ plan must move forward this year because next season is the year that the playoff drought must be broken. Without that, the fans will just look at Adams as an inexperienced general manager.
