This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen
Buffalo Sabres Goaltender
An .891 in thirty-three games, and the club's least bad answer to its worst problem.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | BUF | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 14 | 3.88 | 0 | 149 | .906 |
| 2021-22 | BUF | 9 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 23 | 2.74 | 0 | 277 | .917 |
| 2022-23 | BUF | 33 | 17 | 11 | 4 | 115 | 3.61 | 0 | 1054 | .891 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 46 | 20 | 19 | 6 | 152 | 3.47 | 0 | 1480 | .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
33 games, 17-11-4, an .8909 save percentage and a 3.61 goals-against average, with no shutouts on 1,054 shots faced.
Buffalo’s goaltending was measured at 16.8 goals worse than expected across the season, 25th in the league, and it is the single reason a club that scored 296 goals — third in the league — missed the playoffs.
46 career games, a career save percentage of .897. Seventeen wins on an .891 tells you how much scoring was in front of him.
The Physical Game
6-5 and 223, and he is a very large goaltender who plays a blocking game — he sets deep, he takes up the middle of the net, and he lets the shot hit him rather than reaching for it.
The size costs him across the crease: he is beaten on the second play more than he should be, and the rebounds are not controlled well enough for a club that gives up as many second chances as this one does.
The Mental Game
He has had hip surgery serious enough to cost him most of a season, which for a goaltender who plays deep and wide is a serious thing rather than a footnote.
The temperament reads as steady — 33 games behind the 26th-ranked defence without the numbers collapsing further is something — but nothing yet suggests a goaltender who steals games, and this club needs one badly enough that steadiness is not the requirement.
The Intangibles
Fifty-fourth overall in 2017, and he has been the club’s goaltending answer in waiting for six years without the waiting ever ending.
He is 24. Buffalo has spent a decade unable to solve this position and currently has three goaltenders with a combined career save percentage under .900 — the club is a legitimate playoff team at .905 and it does not have anybody who has done that.
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 sets deep, he takes up the middle of the net, and he lets the shot hit him rather than reaching for it”
“The size costs him across the crease: he is beaten on the second play more than he should be”
“the rebounds are not controlled well enough for a club that gives up as many second chances as this one does”