This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Eric Comrie
Buffalo Sabres Goaltender
An .886 in nineteen games, on a club whose whole problem is goaltending.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | WPG | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4.05 | 0 | 39 | .897 |
| 2017-18 | WPG | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 12 | 3.99 | 0 | 94 | .872 |
| 2018-19 | WPG | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 5.01 | 0 | 28 | .821 |
| 2019-20 | DET | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 9 | 4.28 | 0 | 66 | .864 |
| 2020-21 | NJD | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3.00 | 0 | 33 | .909 |
| 2021-22 | WPG | 19 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 44 | 2.58 | 1 | 550 | .920 |
| 2022-23 | BUF | 19 | 9 | 9 | 1 | 68 | 3.67 | 1 | 594 | .885 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 47 | 22 | 19 | 2 | 145 | 3.32 | 2 | 1404 | .897 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
19 games, 9-9-1, an .8855 save percentage and a 3.67 goals-against average, with 1 shutout on 594 shots faced.
It is a poor number by any standard and the worst of the three goaltenders Buffalo used. 47 career games at .897.
He was signed as the answer and was the worse half of a tandem that finished 25th.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 190, which is small for a modern goaltender, and he plays an active, athletic game because he has to — he moves well and challenges out, and he is beaten high more than a bigger man would be.
The puck-handling is competent. The rebound control is ordinary, and behind a defence that surrenders as many chances as this one it is exposed constantly.
The Mental Game
Nine years of professional hockey for 47 NHL games is a long apprenticeship, and he had one very good half-season in Winnipeg that got him this job.
Nothing about last year suggests it transferred. The honest reading is a career backup who was given a starter’s expectation on a club that had no better option.
The Intangibles
Fifty-ninth overall in 2013 to Winnipeg, and a decade of being the third goaltender in a good organisation before Buffalo gave him a real contract.
He is 28. He is the third of three goaltenders here who have never posted a season above .910, on a club that scored the third-most goals in the league and missed the playoffs — which is the whole of Buffalo’s problem in one sentence.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
“he moves well and challenges out, and he is beaten high more than a bigger man would be”
“The rebound control is ordinary, and behind a defence that surrenders as many chances as this one it is exposed constantly.”